The influence of socialization goals and practices on the development of prosocial behavior in the toddler years: A cross-cultural study

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Joscha Kärtner
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: from 2012 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 221288005

The overarching goal of this longitudinal, cross-cultural study is to analyze the influence of caretakers socialization goals and practices on their toddlers prosocial behavior at 18 and 30 months of age. To do so, we differentiate between three domains of prosocial behavior (i.e., helping, comforting, and cooperation) and contrast the socialization thereof in families from a prototypical autonomous sociocultural context (urban middle-class families in Germany) with families from an autonomous-relational sociocultural context (middle-class families in Delhi, India). The three main objectives of this study are: First, to describe the development of the three domains of prosocial behavior in the two sociocultural contexts, namely increases with age, within-domain stabilities, and domain-specificity. Second, we analyze whether interindividual and cross-cultural differences in caretakers prosocial socialization goals lead to differences in toddlers prosocial behavior. Furthermore, we hypothesize that the influence of socialization goals is mediated by specific socialization practices, namely disciplinary practices, assignment of responsibility, and social approval. Finally, we hypothesize that this mediation is culture-specific in that caretakers capitalize on different socialization practices to support toddlers prosociality. To test these hypotheses, we analyze whether, prospectively, there are influences of caretakers socialization goals and practices on toddlers prosocial development and whether, modeled contemporaneously, the relations between caretakers socialization goals and practices and toddlers prosociality increase with age. Third, we address the question what leads to the domain-specificity of prosocial behavior. Therefore, we analyze domain-specific socialization goals and practices and assess other important socio-cognitive (i.e., self-other-differentiation) and socio-emotional concepts (i.e., emotion-regulation skills) that might lead to domain-specific development of early prosocial behavior.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: India
• Participating Person: Dr. Nandita Chaudhary