Mechanisms underlying prosocial behavior, behavior or actions carried out with the intention to benefit another individual, are unclear. Previous studies have found a positive relationship between...Show moreMechanisms underlying prosocial behavior, behavior or actions carried out with the intention to benefit another individual, are unclear. Previous studies have found a positive relationship between empathy and prosocial learning. The current study, inspired by the study of Lockwood and colleagues (2016), consists of two experiments where the link between prosocial learning, learning to obtain rewards for others, and empathy is investigated through a probabilistic learning task based on reinforcement learning principles. Participants had to choose between two different symbols and learn which of these had the highest probability of earning points in three different conditions: for themselves (selfish), for another person (other) or for no one (none). The first experiment measured the conditions with two probabilities (60/40, 70/30), whereas in the second experiment one probability was used (75/25). The aim of the current study was to replicate the findings of Lockwood and colleagues (2016) who found a positive relationship between empathy and prosocial learning with the same probabilities as our second experiment. The results from both experiments revealed no significant relationship between empathy and prosocial learning. The second experiment showed that participants learned better in the selfish condition compared to the prosocial and none condition. It can be concluded that in the current study no link was found between empathy and prosocial learning, which might be explained from the differences in research design between the study of Lockwood and colleagues (2016) and the current study. There seemed to be a self-bias in learning, i.e., people learn better for themselves than for others.Show less
The aim of this study was to investigate if parental verbal threat vs. safe comments paired with strangers led to children having more fear beliefs and attention towards the stranger paired with...Show moreThe aim of this study was to investigate if parental verbal threat vs. safe comments paired with strangers led to children having more fear beliefs and attention towards the stranger paired with threat comments, while also looking if temperament (measured as behavioral inhibition (BI)) would have a moderating role. It was expected that children would have more fear beliefs and attention towards the stranger paired with parental verbal threat comments compared to the stranger paired safe comments and that BI would have a moderating role on the effect of parental verbal comments. The sample consisted of 4-6-year-olds. In the experiment a manipulation was used where one stranger was paired with threat comments and the other one with safe comments, both given by the parent. Then, the children encountered the strangers during a social and interaction task. The results show that children’s fear beliefs about the stranger paired with parental threat comments were significantly higher than about the stranger paired with parental safe comments. This was not the case for children’s attention towards the strangers. So, parental verbal threat comments paired with a stranger led to more fear beliefs but did not increase attention. Furthermore, the moderating role of temperament was not significant. To conclude, this study supports the growing evidence that children's fear beliefs can be changed by giving information but did not found this effect for attention. Also, the effect of verbal threat information on fear beliefs and attention did not differ as a function of child temperament.Show less
