Raising Altruism

Through the use of subtle clues, 18 month-old infants were primed for group affiliation and then observed for their response to a researcher who "accidentally" dropped a bundle of sticks.  The infants whose background image included two nearly touching wooden dolls were found to be three times more likely to spontaneously offer help as the infants with dolls facing away from each other, only one doll, or just wooden blocks in their background.

These results indicate that if mere hints in the lab can heighten helpfulness, then simple changes in actual environments might help to raise altruistic children in the real world.

Image: "DSC_1024" by The Dilly Lama on Flickr, courtesy of Creative Commons.