New research has revealed that young children are always inclined to help others, but at the expense of themselves, they have less sympathetic reactions.
A new study has revealed that young children are naturally inclined to help others, but they stop showing this empathy at one point.
Researchers also concluded their study, saying that when empathy for others is at the expense of themselves, children reduce their sympathetic responses.
The study, published wednesday in the Journal of the Royal Society Open Science, examined the nature of helping others in more than 280 children aged four and five years.
Scientists, including James Kirby of the University of Queensland in Australia, conducted experiments to determine what factors provoked their empathy and what prevented them from doing so.
Empathy is a widely studied human behavior that is strongly linked to the spirit of helping and comforting others.
However, this attitude is associated with a complex motivation and sensitivity to one's own personal difficulties as well as to others, that is, it comes with a commitment to reduce or prevent anxiety.
Previous studies have shown that children have a natural tendency to show compassion whenever possible.
However, it is unclear under what circumstances they can stop helping others.
In the new study, scientists tried to examine what factors can increase more empathetic behavior in young children and what conditions may make them less helpful to others.
In this study, the researchers asked the children to play puzzle games, on completion of which they received a sticker as a reward.
Children picked three of their favorite stickers from the larger section before being introduced to the game.
He played with big men or puppets like Millie da Monkey, Eli the Elephant and George da Giraffe who didn't have enough pieces to accomplish the task. The children were clearly upset in three different ways after failing to get stickers.
Explaining this behavior in the research, the scientists said that 'it gave children three opportunities to help others.' ‘
"If the child helped them after the puppet showed distress, it was seen as a sympathetic attitude," he added. ‘
The task ended either when the child helped or when the child did not help even after three (distressing) gestures.
The researchers found that the children helped in all studies whenever they had extra pieces of puzzles.
But when he didn't have enough pieces to complete the puzzle himself, he didn't help others.
"We found strong evidence that empathy is reduced in children at the expense of themselves," the researchers explained. ‘
The scientists also found that gaining empathy had no effect on children's behavior because they had the same probability of helping an older man and a puppet.
The results showed that children aged four and five were more likely to reduce empathy responses at the expense of themselves than those for whom empathy is to be expressed.
The researchers also sought to change the study conditions to understand what factors could increase children's chances of dropping puzzles and their reward stickers.
They did the same thing in a separate experiment by telling the children that they could share their puzzle pieces and they were also told that they were in the same team with puppets or grown-ups. However, the researchers said that they did not succeed in this either.
The researchers added: "It is possible that the children saw the 'limited' amount of resources available in the combined basket and felt that they had to get the necessary pieces before the puppet. ‘
The results of all experiments show that self-worth is an important barrier to empathy in children, which means that reducing this value can increase the feeling of empathy.
According to scientists, these results may help increase empathy in young children.
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