The Caring Child / Edition 1

by Nancy Eisenberg

Overview

Much of this century’s empirical research in the social sciences has been devoted to understanding the causes and contributing factors of antisocial behavior. In studies of children’s moral reasoning and conduct, developmental psychologists have probed the cognitive and social bases of aggression, conflict, delinquency, and prejudice. In contrast to psychology’s lengthy preoccupation with negative behavior in children, the study of children’s altruistic, cooperative, and sharing behavior has a relatively short history.

The Caring Child provides the most up-to-date account of our current understanding of the motivations behind prosocial behaviors and how these motives develop and are elicited in various situations. When do children first exhibit prosocial behavior, particularly altruism? How do helping, sharing, and comforting behaviors change with age? Why are some children more caring than others? Are differences among children’s prosocial behaviors a result of hereditary factors, of how children are raised, or both? Can prosocial tendencies be enhanced by parents’ and educators’ deliberate attempts to instill altruistic motives and to teach caring behaviors?

Nancy Eisenberg broadens our concept of the moral potential of children as she shifts the focus from censoring antisocial behaviors to the active promotion of kindness and caring in children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674097261
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	02/01/1992
Series:	The Developing Child , #28
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	102
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.60(d)

Table of Contents

1. The Study of Prosocial Behavior

2. Benevolent Babies and Caring Children

3. Motives for Prosocial Actions

4. Characteristics of Prosocial Children

5. The Biological Bases of Altruism

6. Cultural Influences

7. Socialization in the Family

8. Socialization outside the Home: School, Peers, and the Media

9. The Effect of Circumstances

10. Conclusion

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

This brief but information-packed book, by an important and prolific contributor to the study of helpful and generous behavior in children, provides a useful review of the existing research on the caring child.

Contemporary Psychology - Ervin Staub

This brief but information-packed book, by an important and prolific contributor to the study of helpful and generous behavior in children, provides a useful review of the existing research on the caring child.
— Ervin Staub

Contemporary Psychology