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Prosocial Reasoning and Behaviour among Indian Children

A Naturalistic Study

Neerja Chadha is senior faculty at the School of Continuing Education, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi. Her areas of interest are human development and cultural psychology.

Girishwar Misra

Girishwar Misra is Professor and former Head, Department of Psychology and Dean of Faculty of Arts, University of Delhi. His areas of interest include cultural psychology, applied social psychology, and human development. He has published a large number of research articles and has co-authored/edited books in these areas.

This study explored the nature and development of patterns of prosocial reasoning and behaviour of Indian children (N = 167), between 5 and 14 years of age, from low and high SES, in naturalistic contexts. Prosocial reasoning of children in real life contexts was characterised primarily by authority/punishment orientation, concern for needs of others, pragmatism, mutual gain orientation, and orientation to honouring request made. Orientation to physical needs of others and to honouring request made, increased with age. Some gender and SES differences in prosocial reasoning were noted. Prosocial behaviour, however, was not significantly influenced by age, SES, or gender. Apart from a low negative correlation with authority/punishment orientation, prosocial responding was found to be unrelated to the use of any reasoning category. In most cases of non-prosocial behaviour, children could nevertheless take the perspective of the potential recipient or perceive the need for prosocial behaviour. The observations and findings have been discussed from methodological and sociocultural perspectives.

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