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Conscience in Toddlerhood : The Link Between Guilt and Helping

University of British Columbia. Department of Psychology

Experiencing guilt versus shame is linked to reparative prosociality in toddlerhood (e.g. Drummond et al., 2017; Kolak & Volling, 2022); but, how a tendency to experience guilt or shame relates to other empathic and altruistic behaviours among toddlers remains relatively unknown. Here, we evaluate whether 29-month-olds’ (n=48, Mage=30.23 months, SD=0.64) guilt- or shame-proneness (after breaking a toy; Barrett et al., 1993) is concurrently associated with comforting an ‘injured’ researcher (Zahn-Waxler et al., 1992) and sharing valuable belongings (Newton et al., 2016). Concurrent analyses unveiled that toddlers who exhibited guilt did not have higher comforting (t(44.36)=0.14, p =.89) or sharing (t(44.963)=0.23, p=.82) scores than toddlers who exhibited shame, suggesting that experiencing guilt/shame might not play a role in all the prosocial behaviours toddlers produce.

Text

University of British Columbia. Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference (PURC)

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0433022

Arts, Faculty of; Psychology, Department of

Faculty; Undergraduate

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