The multifaceted nature of prosocial behavior in ... - Wiley Online Library

Received: 26 December 2015

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Revised: 1 February 2017

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Accepted: 2 April 2017

DOI: 10.1111/sode.12242

REVIEW

The multifaceted nature of prosocial behavior in children: Links with attachment theory and research Jacquelyn T. Gross

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Jessica A. Stern | Bonnie E. Brett |

Jude Cassidy University of Maryland Correspondence Jacquelyn Gross, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA. Email: [email protected]

Abstract Prosocial behavior involves attempting to improve others’ welfare and plays a central role in cooperative social relationships. Among the manifold processes that contribute to prosocial development is the quality of children’s attachment to their caregivers. Often, researchers have investigated the link between secure attachment and broad indices of prosociality. Recent theory and research, however, suggest that children’s prosocial behavior is multifaceted, with distinct correlates and developmental trajectories characterizing specific prosocial behaviors. We offer a theoretical model of the role of parent–child attachment in the development of prosocial behavior, first broadly, and then with regard to comforting, sharing, and helping, specifically. Further, we review the empirical work on this topic from infancy through adolescence. Overall, evidence supports an association between secure attachment and prosociality, broadly defined, but results vary across comforting, sharing, and helping. We discuss potential explanations for the findings and outline directions for future research examining the role of attachment in shaping the diversity of prosocial behaviors across development. KEYWORDS

attachment, emotion regulation, empathy, prosocial behavior, social competence

1 | INTRODUCTION Prosocial behavior involves voluntary action to improve another’s welfare; it encompasses diverse behaviors, such as feeding a hungry child, lending a hand to a stranger, or soothing a distraught friend. Individual differences in prosociality emerge early in life and carry significant implications for social development (e.g., Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006). Given the importance of prosociality in sustaining cooperative human relationships, substantial research has focused on understanding the factors that contribute to its development. One of the most influential theories of social

Social Development. 2017;1–18.

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development, attachment theory provides a useful lens for understanding early prosociality (Bowlby, 1969/1982; Sroufe, 2005). Our goals in this paper are to provide a theoretical model of attachment’s role in prosocial development, to synthesize research linking parent–child attachment and prosocial behavior in childhood, and to generate further investigation of this important topic by bringing Bowlby’s (1969) theory of parent–child relationships into conversation with modern perspectives on prosociality.

2 | ATTACHMENT AND PROSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT: A THEORETICAL MODEL Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982) proposes that children possess a biologically-based attachment system that evolved to keep them in proximity to a caregiver in times of threat; caregivers, in turn, possess a caregiving system that allows them to respond to children’s distress with help, protection, and comfort. Ainsworth (1989) defined an attachment bond as the affectional tie of a child to her caregiver that is long-lasting, emotionally salient, personspecific, and involves the child’s attempts to use the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore and a safe haven in times of threat. The consistency and care with which caregivers respond to children’s needs contribute to individual differences in the quality of children’s attachment, which are reflected in children’s behavior toward the caregiver (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). From a history of sensitive responsiveness to their needs, children develop secure attachments, in which they seek proximity to the caregiver when distressed, derive comfort, and effectively reenter the world of exploration. In contrast, from a history of inconsistent or rejecting caregiving, children develop insecure attachments, including avoidance—characterized by children’s downplaying of distress and failure to seek comfort —and ambivalence—characterized by children’s high levels of distress and failure to derive comfort when it is offered. Finally, children who have experienced frightened or frightening caregiving are thought to develop disorganized attachments, characterized by the lack of a coherent strategy for regulating distress and maintaining proximity to a caregiver (Schuengel, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 1999). In Bowlby’s (1969/1982) theory, attachments to individual caregivers contribute to internal working models (IWMs) related to these figures (i.e., learned cognitive representations of how people may be expected to behave and a complementary representation of the self). Over time, these initial IWMs are thought to become incorporated into generalizations about others more broadly (including representations about the nature of relationships and about others as trustworthy and deserving of care), guiding children’s expectations and behaviors in new social situations. Secure IWMs involve a script-like model of distress being met with care (secure base script), expectations that social partners will be responsive, and attributions of others as generally well-intentioned (Johnson, Dweck, & Chen, 2007; Waters & Waters, 2006). These representations predict children’s behavior in variety of domains, and likely support children’s prosocial behavior by giving a ‘roadmap’ for how others’ needs might be addressed, and by instilling a view of others as worthy of care, arousing altruistic motivation to meet their needs. Conversely, insecure IWMs involve scripts, expectations, and attributions likely to undermine prosocial behavior (see Dykas & Cassidy, 2011); for example, insecure-avoidant children are more likely to make hostile attributions about peers’ behavior (Suess, Grossmann, & Sroufe, 1992), whereas insecure-ambivalent children are more likely to expect peers to dislike or reject them (Ziv, Oppenheim, & Sagi-Schwartz, 2004). In other words, secure (positive) or insecure (negative) IWMs may serve as a central mechanism through which attachment influences prosocial behavior (see Figure 1). Another principal mechanism linking attachment to prosocial behavior is emotion regulation (Bowlby, 1973). Considerable research demonstrates that, from repeated experience of coregulation with a sensitive caregiver, secure children are better able to regulate emotion (Calkins & Leerkes, 2011; Cassidy, 1994). In turn, emotion regulation supports prosociality, because children must be calm enough to focus on others’ needs (e.g., Eisenberg & Fabes, 1995). Secure children are also more likely to demonstrate effortful control—a component of self-regulation that involves voluntary control over emotions, attention, and behavior (Viddal et al., 2015). Like emotion regulation, effortful control has been shown to predict prosociality in children and adolescents (Aguilar-Pardo, Martínez-Arias, & Colmenares, 2013; Alessandri et al., 2014), allowing them to inhibit play or other activities and activate other-oriented behaviors.

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FIGURE 1

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Theoretical model of links between attachment and prosocial behavior

Importantly, insecure children may still engage in some prosocial behaviors, but their motivations may differ from those of secure children. For instance, an insecure-avoidant child may share a toy with a high-status peer to avoid confrontation, whereas an insecure-ambivalent child may help peers out of eagerness to please adult figures whose affection, she has learned, is contingent on displaying desired behavior. Although such links are amply supported in the adult literature (see Shaver, Mikulincer, Gross, Stern, & Cassidy, 2016), attachment-related differences in children’s prosocial motivation have been understudied. (See Eisenberg, VanSchyndel, & Spinrad, 2016, for further discussion of children’s prosocial motivations.) In sum, we propose a model in which secure attachment supports children’s prosocial behavior via three key mechanisms: IWMs, emotion regulation, and effortful control, which inform children’s motivations and, in turn, prosocial behavior (Figure 1). Beyond these mechanisms, attachment and prosociality are linked via common parenting antecedents. For example, parental modeling of prosocial behavior may both scaffold children’s own prosociality (e.g., Hammond & Carpendale, 2015) and contribute to children’s attachment quality. Modeling not only encourages imitation of prosocial acts, but also engrains prosocial values and expectations for how people treat each other (content that contributes to IWM formation). Importantly, parents’ sensitive responding to distress appears to be the most salient factor influencing child attachment (e.g., Leerkes, 2011); thus, secure children may be most likely to demonstrate prosociality in contexts involving others’ distress. In non-distress situations, other dimensions of parenting such as socialization likely contribute to prosociality directly (see Padilla-Walker, 2014), or in interaction with attachment. For example, evidence suggests that parents’ socialization of prosocial moral values is more effective among secure parent–child dyads, because secure children are more receptive to socialization efforts (Kochanska, Aksan, Knaack, & Rhines, 2004). Additionally, the theoretical link between attachment and prosocial behavior is qualified by multiple potential moderators. At the level of the child, sex, genetics, and temperament may interact with attachment to predict prosociality (e.g., Laible, Carlo, Murphy, Augustine, & Roesch, 2014). For example, research suggests that toddlers’ temperamental inhibition and sex interact with parenting to predict prosociality, with parenting showing the strongest influence among temperamentally inhibited girls (Hastings, Rubin, & DeRose, 2005). Similarly, in line with differential susceptibility models, research has demonstrated that irritable infants are more affected by environmental influences for better and for worse (for a review see Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2007). Thus, for inhibited or irritable children, secure attachment may be especially instrumental—and insecure attachment especially detrimental—to prosocial development. In addition to gene-by-environment interactions, children’s active role in eliciting parental behaviors and co-creating their social environment raises the possibility of gene–environment correlations predicting prosociality. For

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example, children’s prosocial behavior has been shown to elicit greater maternal affection (Panaccione & Wahler, 1986), such that children’s prosociality may contribute to ongoing cycles of positive parent–child interactions that support both security and ongoing prosociality. At the contextual level, the link between attachment and prosociality is also moderated by situational factors such as the presence of others, the presence and salience of emotional cues, and the target of children’s prosocial overtures. €tner, Over, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2015); For example, children are less prosocial when bystanders are present (Plo insecure children may be especially susceptible to the bystander effect, in light of findings that insecure children are more likely to be bystanders than defenders in bullying situations (Nickerson, Mele, & Princiotta, 2008). Other research demonstrates that some children are more prosocial toward in-group members (e.g., Yu, Zhu, & Leslie, 2016); however, given evidence that experimental priming of attachment security attenuates in-group bias in adults (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001), it is possible that attachment security also reduces such in-group biases in children, making them more likely to be prosocial across multiple contexts. Further, findings linking attachment and prosociality vary depending on whether the target is a sibling, a peer, an experimenter, or the mother (e.g., van der Mark, van IJzendoorn, & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2002). When considering prosocial behavior toward mothers, maternal characteristics add further complexity: For example, children of depressed or single mothers often demonstrate relatively high levels of prosocial behavior (e.g., Rehberg & Richman, 1989). One study suggests that the effect of maternal depression on child prosociality is strongest among secure children who also have behavior problems (Radke-Yarrow, Zahn-Waxler, Richardson, Susman, & Martinez, 1994). Thus, prosociality arises from the complex interplay among child attachment and characteristics of the social environment. Both individual-level and contextual processes are embedded in a broader bioecological context (Bronfenbrenner, 1992), in which links among parenting, attachment, and situational variables may shift as children influence, and are influenced by, their home, neighborhood, and cultural environments (see McGinley, Opal, Richaud, & Mesurado, 2014). The majority of cross-cultural studies to date have linked secure attachment to children’s social competence across a variety of domains, suggesting that security’s promotion of positive outcomes such as prosociality may be universal (see Mesman, van IJzendoorn, & Sagi-Schwartz, 2016); at the same time, culture appears to influence which type of insecurity emerges from a difficult parent–child relationship and which attachment relationships are most predictive of developmental trajectory (Mesman et al., 2016). In cultures with high social density, for example, attachment to parents may be less predictive of prosociality, whereas broader indices of social support or attachment to multiple caregivers may be more meaningful. Culture also influences social norms for prosocial behavior and how children respond to others’ distress (e.g., Trommsdorff, Friedlmeier, & Mayer, 2007). However, most research linking attachment and prosociality to date has focused on Western cultures, in which children’s principal attachment is typically to the mother; thus, the majority of studies reviewed here focus on child–mother attachment. The link between prosociality and attachment must also be considered in the context of development—encompassing children’s growing social-cognitive capacities and age-normative changes in social relationships. Following developmental models proposed by Gottlieb (2007), Cicchetti (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010), and others (e.g., Bowlby, 1988), we view attachment as one piece of a multidetermined pathway toward prosociality, with secure attachment as a precipitating factor in a positive developmental cascade (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010) in which proximal effects of security on children’s functioning beget further competencies that ultimately foster prosociality. The mechanisms proposed above invite the possibility of an indirect link from attachment to prosociality that could be characterized as a cascade of influences building in a probabilistic manner across development. For example, secure attachment early in development may contribute to children’s ability to form meaningful peer relationships when they enter school; these relationships may provide increased opportunities to participate in prosocial behaviors, which in turn sustain positive interactions with peers into adolescence, reinforcing children’s views of others as good and continuing the ‘virtuous cycle’ of care. Finally, we note that understanding the development of prosociality requires acknowledging its multifaceted nature. Recent theory and research suggest that distinct types of prosocial behavior can be differentiated in childhood using multiple taxonomies (e.g., Hay & Cook, 2007), with many researchers focusing on helping, sharing, and comforting € hn-Popp, Licata, Sodian, & Meinhardt, 2013). Dunfield (2014) suggests that children develop the ability (e.g., Paulus, Ku

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to recognize and respond to three types of need that call for different responses: comforting addresses the emotional need to reduce an unpleasant affective state, sharing meets the material need to acquire a desired resource, and helping addresses the instrumental need to complete a goal-directed action. Growing evidence supports this taxonomy. For instance, in both longitudinal (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1999) and concurrent investigations of prosociality in children (e.g., Dunfield & Kuhlmeier, 2013), these behaviors appear to be distinct and are often uncorrelated. Studies also find that each behavior is characterized by distinct neurophysiological correlates (Paulus et al., 2013), developmental trajectories (e.g., Dunfield & Kuhlmeier, 2013; see Eisenberg et al., 2006), and parenting antecedents (e.g., Brownell, Svetlova, Anderson, Nichols, & Drummond, 2013; Pettygrove, Hammond, Karahuta, Waugh, & Brownell, 2013; Rehberg & Richman, 1989). Moreover, unique social-cognitive skills are required for each behavior (e.g., Svetlova, Nichols, & Brownell, 2010). Given the mounting evidence that these behaviors are distinct in children, researchers have highlighted the need to study them as separate constructs (see Dunfield, 2014). Accordingly, understanding the role of attachment in children’s prosociality requires examining specific behaviors independently, considering whether and how attachment might contribute to the development of each. In the following pages, we review research investigating attachment and prosocial behavior from a developmental perspective, beginning with general prosociality (as it has traditionally been studied), then building on the proposed model to generate hypotheses regarding specific prosocial behaviors (comforting, sharing, and helping).

3 | ATTACHMENT AND GENERAL PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR: EMPIRICAL WORK 3.1 | Infancy through preschool Among infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, evidence predominantly supports a positive association between attachment security and general prosociality, although studies are too few to draw strong conclusions. Studies using parentreported attachment have found that preschoolers’ security was related to mother-reported prosociality directly (Laible, 2006) and, in a second sample, indirectly via effortful control (i.e., correlated with effortful control, which in turn correlated with prosociality; Laible, 2004), but not to teacher-reported prosociality (Lafrenière, Provost, & Dubeau, 1992). In a study using the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP; Ainsworth et al., 1978), a gold standard observational measure of attachment, secure attachment at age two predicted prosocial behavior toward peers three years later (Iannotti, Cummings, Pierrehumbert, Milano, & Zahn-Waxler, 1992). Another study using the SSP found that preschoolers’ security was positively associated with prosocial behavior toward their mother, but only among children with behavior problems, and in combination with maternal depression (Radke-Yarrow et al., 1994). In a sample of oneyear-olds, however, no link was observed between security in the SSP and mother-reported prosociality (Carter, Little, Briggs-Gowan, & Kogan, 1999).

3.2 | Early and middle childhood Research linking attachment and general prosociality in middle childhood has varied widely in its measures of attachment and provides similarly varied results. In general, longitudinal studies comparing specific attachment classifications have found meaningful differences in children’s later prosocial behavior, whereas cross-sectional studies employing other attachment metrics have produced more mixed results. For example, eight- and nine-year-olds who had been secure in the SSP at 15 months were rated by parents and teachers as more prosocial than those who had been insecure-avoidant, but not insecure-ambivalent (Bohlin, Hagekull, & Rydell, 2000). Another study found that children who were secure in the SSP at age three were rated by mothers as more prosocial in grade school than those who were disorganized, but not insecure (Seibert & Kerns, 2015). In contrast, in a study that only compared children who had been secure vs. insecure in the SSP (and did not differentiate specific attachment categories), no attachmentrelated differences emerged in children’s prosocial interactions with younger siblings (Volling & Belsky, 1992). Using an

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observational measure of six-year-olds’ attachment security, Bureau and Moss (2010) found no links to children’s prosociality as rated by teachers. In one study employing a self-report attachment measure, elementary school children’s security with both mother and father was associated with concurrent prosociality, but only in a model including parental affection, and only for girls (Michiels, Grietens, Onghena, & Kuppens, 2010). As children enter early and middle childhood, researchers are able to examine their representational world through the use of narrative story-stem measures. The evidence linking attachment IWMs and general prosociality in this age group is similarly mixed. In the study by Bohlin et al. (2000) described above, when attachment IWMs were assessed concurrently with a story-stem task, no links to prosociality emerged (though this measure did not differentiate insecure subtypes). Similarly, in the above study by Bureau and Moss (2010), no links were observed between eight-year-olds’ IWMs and prosocial behavior; however, teacher-rated prosociality at age 6 predicted children’s disorganized representations at age 8. Conversely, five-year-olds with secure IWMs were rated as more prosocial by their teachers one year later compared to children with insecure-avoidant, but not insecureambivalent, IWMs (Rydell, Bohlin, & Thorell, 2005). Among low-income, racially diverse families, five-year-olds’ attachment IWMs were related to teacher reports—but not mother reports—of prosociality (Futh, O’Connor, Matias, Green, & Scott, 2008).

3.3 | Adolescence Developmental shifts in attachment occur as teenagers learn how to maintain their relationships to parents while also increasing autonomy (Allen & Tan, 2016); these shifts may be associated with changes in the nature and strength of the links between attachment and prosociality. Importantly, developmental changes also make it possible for adolescents to form attachment bonds with peers or romantic partners, such that new attachment bonds may influence prosociality alongside, or in interaction with, attachment to parents. The Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment-Revised (IPPA-R; Gullone & Robinson, 2005) is a widely used measure assessing teens’ attachment bonds. In studies using the IPPA-R, adolescents from diverse backgrounds and cultures who report greater security with parents also report being more prosocial (Andretta et al., 2015; Chan et al., 2013; Nie, Li, & Vazsonyi, 2016; Oldfield, Humphrey, & Hebron, 2016; Thompson & Gullone, 2008; see also Keskin & Çam, 2010). Using a similar measure, self-reported attachment to the mother, but not to the father, was correlated with self-reported prosociality in early adolescence (Markiewicz, Doyle, & Brendgen, 2001). These studies also provide support for the mediators proposed in Figure 1, including empathy (Thompson & Gullone, 2008) and self-control (Nie et al., 2016), consistent with findings in the adult literature (see Shaver et al., 2016). In the only adolescent study to use the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985), a narrative assessment tapping individuals’ ‘state of mind with respect to attachment,’ secure/autonomous adolescents were more likely than insecure/dismissing, but not insecure/preoccupied, adolescents to be nominated by their peers as prosocial (Dykas, Ziv, & Cassidy, 2008).

3.4 | Summary In summary, evidence involving children’s general prosocial behavior is equivocal. Although much of the evidence favors a positive association with attachment, the mixed findings warrant further investigation. Support for a positive association appears to be most consistent in adolescence, perhaps due to more consistent methodology. Notably, the adolescent evidence mirrors evidence from the adult literature linking self-reported attachment to observational measures of prosociality (e.g., Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath, & Nitzberg, 2005). Moreover, this association emerged across diverse samples, including African American youths involved in the criminal justice system; Turkish, British, Chinese, and American students; and children ranging in age from 9 to 17. An examination of available effect sizes from the reviewed studies reveals that the magnitude of effects in childhood is less consistent—ranging from small to moderate—than it is in adolescence, when effects are consistently small (with one exception; Andretta et al., 2015).

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4 | ATTACHMENT AND THE MULTIFACETED NATURE OF PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR Although the research on general prosociality sheds some light on the role of attachment in children’s capacity for responding to others’ needs, we cannot draw conclusions about the specific behaviors they use or to which needs they are responding. A growing consensus recognizes that many inconsistencies in the prosocial literature may be explained by failure to consider that prosociality is a multidimensional construct (e.g., Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2014; Hay & Cook, 2007). In response, studies of parenting antecedents of prosocial behavior have increasingly adopted this view (see Padilla-Walker, 2014), yet the literature on attachment antecedents has not evolved in the same way. Historically, studies on children’s attachment-related differences have focused on general prosociality, like the studies just reviewed, or on comforting, reflecting the perspective that social development results in part from how children themselves have been comforted (Bowlby, 1969/1982). This section offers a theoretical account of how attachment may relate to specific types of prosocial behavior, integrating the multidimensional approach used in other social development research and the model in Figure 1. Although many dimensions of prosociality merit consideration, we focus on three behaviors that comprise a commonly studied taxonomy (comforting, sharing, and helping; Dunfield, 2014) and yet are understudied in the attachment literature (except comforting). For each behavior, we also review evidence on links to attachment.

4.1 | Comforting 4.1.1 | Theory Of all prosocial behaviors, comforting is perhaps most relevant to attachment theory, given that security develops in part from children’s experiences of co-regulation by a caregiver when distressed (Bowlby, 1969/1982), and that evidence suggests that parents’ effective comforting most centrally predicts secure child attachment (Leerkes, 2011). Because attachments are formed in the context of distressing emotions, they may influence children’s behavior more in social situations involving greater negative emotion (compared to low- or non-emotional situations; see PadillaWalker, 2014). Specifically, security fosters the development of cognitive and regulatory skills such as emotion regulation (see Calkins & Leerkes, 2011), supporting children’s ability to respond to others’ distress (e.g., Panfile & Laible, 2012); these skills may play a lesser role in prosocial responses during low- or non-emotional situations. Although helping and sharing can occur in emotional contexts (such as when a child shares a toy with a sad peer), comforting is always a response to emotional distress, whether real or perceived, and the degree of negative emotion present in comforting situations is typically greater. Beyond emotion regulation, how might receiving comfort promote the ability to provide comfort? One explanation posits that these experiences contribute to a child’s secure base script, described earlier. Cognitive scripts, or schemas, guide expectations and behavior in new situations, such that individuals expect a series of events to occur as they have in past situations. Thus, children with a history of sensitive care possess an implicit script of how comforting situations typically unfold: Distress elicits bids for help, which precipitate the caregiver’s recognition of the bid and sensitive response, resulting in alleviation of the distress and a return to exploration (Waters & Waters, 2006). Evidence that such scripts of expected comforting are linked to security comes from visual habituation studies demonstrating that secure infants expected a ‘mother’ (represented by a large oval) to comfort a ‘child’ (represented by a small oval simulating distress), whereas insecure infants expected the ‘mother’ to withhold comfort (e.g., Johnson et al., 2007). The secure base script is thought to guide secure individuals’ comforting in response to others’ distress, because they know when comfort is needed and how to provide it effectively.

4.1.2 | Evidence The available evidence supports the theory that secure children are more comforting than insecure children; several null or mixed findings, however, raise questions about whether the link is more complex than previously believed.

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€hler, 2000) attachment security Among infants, both concurrent (van der Mark et al., 2002) and earlier (Bischof-Ko in the SSP predicted greater observed comforting toward an adult experimenter simulating distress. Observed comforting toward the mother, however, was not predicted by earlier attachment classifications (van der Mark et al., 2002), nor current classifications (except among girls; Radke-Yarrow et al., 1994). Panfile and Laible (2012) found no direct links from mother-reported toddler attachment to comforting of a distressed experimenter; however, more secure toddlers were better able to regulate emotions, which then predicted mother-reported empathy, which in turn predicted observed comforting. These findings suggest that the contribution of attachment to young children’s comforting of adults is complex and perhaps indirect. More consistent evidence emerges for children’s comforting of other targets, including peers and siblings. Secure one-year-olds (in the SSP), compared to insecure infants, were rated by classroom observers as more sympathetic to peers’ distress at age three (Waters, Wippman, & Sroufe, 1979). In two studies, preschoolers who had been secure in the SSP as infants were more responsive to peers’ distress in the classroom than those who had been insecureavoidant, but equally comforting as those who had been insecure-ambivalent. These findings were reported for both observed (Kestenbaum, Farber, & Sroufe, 1989) and teacher-reported comforting (Sroufe, 1983), using the same sample of children. Studies using attachment measures that do not differentiate insecure subtypes cannot detect such differences. For example, no (observer-rated) secure-insecure differences were found in preschoolers’ observed comforting of a distressed peer in the classroom (Mitchell-Copeland, Denham, & DeMulder, 1997). Another study with peers indicates how parenting can affect both attachment and comforting: Main and George (1985) reported that, compared to non-abused toddlers, abused toddlers (who typically are insecurely attached; Cyr, Euser, BakermansKranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2010) were less likely to respond to a peer’s distress with comfort in a daycare setting, and more likely to respond with physical attacks, fear, or anger. Evidence for behavior toward siblings is mixed: One study found that more secure older siblings (ages 2–7, assessed via mother-reported attachment) were more likely to respond to their infant siblings’ distress with comfort during a separation paradigm (Teti & Ablard, 1989). In contrast, SSP attachment classification at 12 months (with both mother and father) did not predict sibling comforting during a separation paradigm at age 4 (Volling, 2001).

4.2 | Sharing 4.2.1 | Theory When considering whether attachment security would influence children’s sharing as it does comforting, it is helpful to consider potential mediating mechanisms, such as emotion understanding and emotion regulation. These skills may aid sharing in some contexts, given evidence that children share more when they are aware of others’ distress if not shared with (Paulus & Moore, 2015). Thus, the advanced abilities of secure children to identify or empathize with others’ negative emotions, in addition to their increased capacity to regulate their own emotions and behaviors in response, may result in increased sharing. If security promotes social-emotional skills underlying sharing, such as emotion regulation, then attachmentrelated individual differences may be more likely to emerge in situations requiring higher levels of these skills. For example, perhaps attachment plays a role only when sharing is difficult (e.g., emotionally charged situations or those requiring greater costs), because greater effortful control, emotion regulation, or perspective-taking is required (e.g., Aguilar-Pardo et al., 2013). These emotional capacities and sensitivity to emotions generally may contribute to children’s prosociality even in non-overtly emotional situations, possibly via affective perspective-taking (Vaish, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009). In a recent study, preschoolers who anticipated that others would experience more distress when not being shared with were subsequently more generous in a resource allocation task not involving overt emotion (Paulus & Moore, 2015). These studies suggest that children represent others’ emotions when sharing, such that more advanced emotional functioning supports sharing, both in the presence and absence of overt distress. Considering that secure children have better emotional functioning in general, including enhanced affective perspective-taking (Laible & Thompson, 1998), they may be more able or willing to respond to others’ material needs in a variety of contexts.

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Another mechanism through which attachment may influence sharing is children’s IWMs of others as generally well-intentioned and trustworthy. Evidence suggests that once children view a partner as trustworthy and responsive, sharing is more likely (Sebastian-Enesco & Warneken, 2015). For secure children, seeing others this way may not require expectations of immediate material reciprocation, because secure children have a history of reciprocal and mutually beneficial interpersonal interactions. Thus, the secure IWM of others as trustworthy may boost generosity with new people (for evidence in adults, see Sommerfeld, 2009). In support of this idea, infants were more likely to give a treat to a partner they evaluated as prosocial and good during a resource allocation task (Hamlin, Wynn, Bloom, & Mahajan, 2011).

4.2.2 | Evidence Consistent with the hypothesis that attachment-related individual differences will emerge particularly in situations when sharing is difficult, a recent study found that five-year-olds’ secure IWMs on a story-stem task were associated with greater sharing with a disliked peer (but not with a friend or stranger) and in costly (but not noncostly) sharing situations (Paulus, Becker, Scheub, & Kӧnig, 2015), presumably because these situations require greater socio-cognitive capacities such as emotion regulation and inhibitory control. Further, the authors found that children with organized attachment patterns shared more across all recipients and situations compared to their disorganized peers. We also note the possibility that attachment might not influence children’s sharing. van IJzendoorn, BakermansKranenburg, Pannebakker, and Out (2010) argue that context is the most powerful determinant of children’s sharing, with attachment, parenting, temperament, and genetics having limited influence. They conclude that ability to be prosocial does not always translate into prosocial behavior, which depends on context. They also note, however, that the lack of genetic or environmental main effects on sharing is not incompatible with gene-environment interactive effects. Indeed, a subsequent study found that seven-year-olds with secure attachment representations donated more money, but only if they had a dopamine-related ‘risk gene’ (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2011); these results suggest that children may be differentially susceptible to the influence of attachment on donating.

4.3 | Helping 4.3.1 | Theory The intriguing finding that even subtle changes to a toddler’s social environment, such as brief laboratory exposure to photographs evoking affiliation, can increase helping (Over & Carpenter, 2009) points to a reasonable prediction that stable, enduring features of the social environment, like daily exposure to sensitive relationships, would affect helping in important ways. For example, parents’ sensitive helping of children when needed may promote this behavior via modeling, while also fostering a secure IWM of others as available and responsive. As mentioned earlier, however, parents’ sensitive responding to distress appears to be the most salient factor influencing child attachment, and instrumental help is often needed in non-distressing contexts, such as when a child needs help with homework. Conversely, just as co-regulation of distress is a function of the safe haven, parental support of exploration, often in nondistressing contexts, is a function of the secure base, and is an important contributor to the development of security , Be langer, & Whipple, 2014). Thus, it may be that parents’ helping both models this behav(e.g., Bernier, Matte-Gagne ior and supports children’s exploration in security-building ways. In addition, although most infants demonstrate simple instrumental helping in laboratory settings (e.g., Warneken, Hare, Melis, Hanus, & Tomasello, 2007), contextual factors modulate helping behavior in more complex, real-world set€ tner et al., 2015) and cost to the child (Eisenberg-Berg & Neal, 1981). An tings, including traits of the recipient (Plo important question becomes whether attachment-based differences in helping would emerge in these situations, perhaps due to secure children’s enhanced social-emotional functioning or positive IWMs of others. Regarding one of the contextual factors, recipient traits, some evidence suggests children selectively help in-group € tner et al., 2015). Children vary widely in their social perceptions, with some implicitly trusting and members (Plo accepting others, and other children remaining distrustful and rejecting. Beyond the well-controlled laboratory, where social situations become more ambiguous, their positively biased IWMs may incline secure children to more readily

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view others as part of their in-group (for evidence in adults, see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001), leading to increased altruistic helping (see Gillath et al. 2005). Further, given that children also selectively help social partners to whom they have attributed good intentions (Dunfield & Kuhlmeier, 2010; Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007), having access to an IWM of others as typically good and trustworthy could more often lead secure children to evaluate others as well-intentioned in ambiguous situations (e.g., Cassidy, Kirsh, Scolton, & Parke, 1996). With regard to another contextual factor, cost of helping, some evidence points to reduced helping when costs are high (Eisenberg-Berg & Neal, 1981), although other studies indicate that children help regardless of cost (Nielsen, Gigante, & Collier-Baker, 2014). Costs need not be material, however; helping draws on cognitive resources, such as children’s ability to focus and sustain attention, regulate emotions, or inhibit/initiate competing actions (elements of effortful control; Rothbart & Bates, 2006). In real-world situations, where costs are more ambiguous, it is possible that secure children perceive helping to be easier and less costly, aided by their effortful control or emotion regulatory capacities.

4.3.2 | Evidence No research has yet explored children’s attachment and helping, and so we draw from evidence in adulthood, as well as theory, as a starting point. In support of the prediction that insecure children would perceive helping as more costly, attachment-avoidant adults perceived the emotional costs of helping to be higher than secure or attachment-anxious adults, and as a result, they helped less often; experimentally reducing these potential costs increased attachmentavoidant individuals’ helping (Richman, DeWall, & Wolff, 2015). Additionally, studies of adults suggest that attachment-avoidant individuals are less cooperative, volunteer less often and for more egoistic reasons, and prefer self-reliance in themselves and others (Shaver et al., 2016). Evidence with attachment-anxious adults is less consistent, with some studies pointing toward increased helping relative to secure individuals, perhaps due to a compulsive need to help others and be accepted (Ein-Dor, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2011). However, both attachment-avoidant and attachment-anxious adults endorse more egoistic motives for helping, including self-enhancement and self-protection (Gillath et al., 2005). As with sharing, we note the possibility that attachment does not influence children’s helping. Studies of attachment-related differences in children’s expectations of others’ helping point to this possibility. Johnson, Dweck, and Dunfield (2013) note that infants’ expectations regarding instrumental helping appear universal (Hamlin et al., 2007), but expectations regarding comforting vary by attachment (Johnson et al., 2007). They posit that secure infants have IWMs of others as comforting, but not necessarily helpful, and offer evidence that insecure adults selectively avoid identifying others’ emotional, but not instrumental, goals.

5 | DISCUSSION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS Our goal in this review was to bring together the rich literatures on attachment theory and prosocial development to offer a detailed theoretical framework for understanding attachment-related individual differences in prosociality across childhood. In particular, we highlighted the need to better understand how secure attachment may contribute to specific behaviors such as comforting, sharing, and helping. Although the evidence generally supports a link between parent–child attachment and prosociality, the link is complex, and much additional research is needed. In this section, we first discuss findings related to attachment and individual prosocial behaviors and outline future directions for comforting, sharing, and helping research. We then discuss broader issues of theory and measurement that may contribute to inconsistent findings and outline recommendations for addressing these issues.

5.1 | Attachment-related comforting, sharing, and helping To summarize the reviewed evidence, a growing number of studies support attachment’s role in children’s comforting, whereas few have examined sharing or helping. The paucity of studies on sharing and helping is a significant roadblock

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to understanding precisely how attachment influences the full range of children’s prosocial behavior, and so the field is ripe for research into these, and other, behaviors. Regarding sharing, future research can extend the findings of Paulus et al. (2015), including whether disorganized children in particular struggle with responding to others’ material needs. Additionally, researchers should investigate which of the proposed mediators are unique to sharing and which characterize other prosocial behaviors as well. For example, perhaps children’s IWMs of others as trustworthy are particularly influential in their decision to share resources because they encourage children to perceive others as more reciprocal partners. Given evidence that context is important in predicting sharing behavior (van IJzendoorn et al., 2010), future research should investigate the interactive contributions of attachment and situational factors, such as the relationship of the child to the target and the child’s perceived value of the resource. Finally, exploring gene-attachment interactions may shed light on mixed findings as well (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2011). Regarding children’s helping, much work remains to be done in understanding attachment antecedents. It may be that links arise only in certain circumstances, such as those involving social evaluation of the person needing help, or those requiring effortful control or emotion regulation. Researchers should examine contextual variables, including laboratory vs. naturalistic settings, helping costs (material, mental, and emotional), and the target of help (e.g., out-group member). Additionally, previous research on infants’ expectations for others’ helping (e.g., Hamlin et al., 2007) points to an interesting future direction. Specifically, how do children’s expectations of others’ behavior (which compose their IWMs generalized from attachment experiences) correspond to their own helping behavior, and how do both helping expectations and actions relate to attachment and IWMs (see Johnson et al., 2013)? Although children’s comforting behavior has received the most research attention, many questions remain. For example, research has yet to explore attachment-related comforting in children over the age of 8. In addition, no studies have directly tested secure base scripts as a mechanism linking security with children’s comforting; however, the fact that secure base scripts predict expectations regarding others’ comforting makes this a promising future direction (Johnson et al., 2007). Only one study has provided support for emotion regulation and empathy as mediators of the attachment–comforting link (Panfile & Laible, 2012), raising questions such as: Does emotion regulation play a larger role in predicting children’s comforting, compared to their helping or sharing? What other potential mediators could be included in future studies (e.g., self-control; Nie et al., 2016)? Additionally, many moderating paths in Figure 1 are ripe for empirical examination; for example, contextual factors such as the level of emotional distress expressed by the target could be systematically varied. Bringing together research on specific dimensions of prosocial behavior will be important moving forward, as we seek to understand the range of mechanisms needed to explain attachment–prosociality associations. Identifying those mechanisms that are common vs. unique across types of prosociality will provide a more complete understanding of attachment’s role in prosocial development.

5.2 | Considerations for theory and measurement Although many studies of both general and specific prosocial behaviors suggest that secure children are indeed more prosocial, several others with null or mixed findings indicate that the association is complex, and these inconsistencies warrant investigation. As previously discussed, one reason for inconsistent results among studies of general prosociality may be the inability to differentiate among specific types of prosocial behavior; however, there are doubtless other factors at play. In this section, we explore other explanations for the mixed results, drawing on our theoretical model (Figure 1), and we outline a research agenda to better understand the complexities of attachment’s role in prosocial development. First, research may benefit from employing gold standard measures of both attachment (e.g., the Strange Situation) and prosocial behavior (e.g., independent observer ratings of helping, sharing, and comforting), from standardizing methods, or from using multiple assessments of attachment and prosocial behavior within the same study. Within the literature to date, numerous methodological differences across studies make it difficult to discern clear explanations for inconsistent findings. For example, adult-report measures may be influenced by informants’ overall impressions of

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the child, resulting in less measurement specificity. Relatedly, systematic study of contextual factors will be crucial in elucidating which variables matter in which situations. For example, prosocial behavior in the classroom may be more closely related to the teacher–child relationship than the parent–child relationship (Kienbaum, Volland, & Ulich, 2001). Future studies using multi-method and multi-informant approaches can help to untangle the effects of specific assessments and contexts. Second, research should take a more systematic approach to examining developmental processes that may influence results. Longitudinal studies and those comparing multiple age groups can elucidate how attachment influences change over time, and can examine cascading effects of early attachment on later prosociality. Current evidence suggests a more consistent attachment–prosociality link among adolescents compared to children, but all adolescent research has been cross-sectional; thus, prospective studies tracking attachment from early childhood through adolescence may find less consistent links from early-life attachment. A goal for future research will be to uncover not only the changing nature of attachment–prosociality associations across ontogeny, but also the reasons for the changes. Moving beyond cross-sectional, correlational studies toward longitudinal designs may shed light on questions of continuity and change, sensitive periods, and the temporal sequence of this link. Likewise, future research may also benefit from evolutionary perspectives on altruism in humans throughout the lifespan to understand how individual differences in attachment could bolster or interfere with species-typical prosocial development. Third, future work should examine the unique and interactive contributions of multiple types of relationships (and multiple aspects of relationships) in children’s lives. Recent research indicates that relationships with mothers, fathers, and teachers independently influence prosocial development; in one study, fathers and teachers contributed directly to young children’s prosocial behavior, whereas mothers contributed indirectly via the teacher–child relationship (Ferreira et al. 2016). Research in non-Western cultures in which multiple caregivers are the norm will be important for understanding the influence of various relationships across cultures. Likewise, other aspects of parenting should be measured in conjunction with attachment, to isolate the unique effects of attachment from the well-established effects of other parenting influences (e.g., Padilla-Walker, 2014). Fourth, nearly all investigations of children’s attachment and prosocial behavior have been correlational in nature. Researchers should move beyond correlational designs to establish causal connections between attachment and prosocial action, as has been done in the adult literature (e.g., Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001). Experimental methods such as security priming and attachment interventions could be borrowed from this literature to untangle confounding influences such as other aspects of parenting. In addition, future research should consider the differences in prosocial development across subtypes of insecure attachment. Theory and evidence suggest that there are important distinctions, and that collapsing across insecure categories risks ‘washing out’ group differences. In every empirical section reviewed here, evidence for insecure subtype differences was apparent in studies spanning various ages and using various methods (e.g., Dykas et al., 2008; Kestenbaum et al., 1989; Paulus et al., 2015), often with diminished prosociality among insecure-avoidant or disorganized, but not insecure-ambivalent children. Attachment theorists have posited that acting prosocially invites emotional closeness, which attachment-avoidant individuals seek to avoid and attachment-anxious individuals crave (to satisfy their wishes for intimacy and acceptance, or to avoid rejection; Shaver et al., 2016). These differences could influence prosocial behavior in children as they do in adults (see Shaver et al., 2016), and warrant further investigation. Furthermore, little is known about how attachment security influences children’s motives underlying their prosocial behavior. Research in adulthood supports the notion that attachment security drives altruistic motivations for acting prosocially, whereas both forms of insecurity promote egoistic motivations (Gillath et al., 2005). If insecureavoidant children wish to avoid emotional connection, perhaps they are less driven by altruistic motives, which are based on empathic concern, and more driven by egoistic motives, such as avoiding punishment or obtaining approval (see Eisenberg et al., 2016). Among attachment-anxious adults, egoistic motives may result in ‘compulsive caregiving’ that is intrusive and insensitive to others’ signals (Collins, Ford, Guichard, Kane, & Feeney, 2010). An interesting future direction is to see whether this phenomenon applies to insecure-ambivalent children as well, and how emotion regulation and IWMs play a role. For example, even if insecure-ambivalent children show similar levels of comforting to

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secure children, do they have different motivations? Are their attempts less successful or accompanied by personal distress? Given that both attachment-anxious adults and insecure-ambivalent children show considerable personal distress when witnessing others’ suffering (e.g., Mikulincer et al., 2005; Volling, 2001), these individuals may be motivated to comfort to reduce their own distress, and not out of genuine concern for others. A growing body of research on ‘pathological altruism’ suggests some children may be motivated by guilt, a need for control, or desire to overcome their own inadequacies, and that these individuals tend to be unsuccessful at providing care (Zahn-Waxler & Van Hulle, 2012). Future studies could examine whether insecure attachment, particularly insecure-ambivalence, contributes to pathological altruism in children. Finally, we note that the multifaceted nature of prosocial behavior goes beyond the single taxonomy discussed here. We view the proposed model as an initial conceptualization to guide future work on additional dimensions of prosociality that merit consideration (e.g., public vs. private occurrences, spontaneous vs. compliant acts; see Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2014). Each dimension brings complexity to the model and may have implications for the role of attachment (e.g., perhaps secure children are more spontaneously, but not more compliantly prosocial, because they are more motivated by sympathy; Eisenberg et al., 1990). In summary, exploring these and other issues may help explain the inconsistent findings, contributing to our understanding of the complex link between attachment and prosocial behavior in childhood. Many unanswered questions about the impact of attachment on children’s developing prosocial behavior remain, making this a ripe area for future research. We echo Greenberg and Turksma’s (2015) call for leveraging the unique insights from developmental research to foster kindness and caring in homes, neighborhoods, and schools, and add that secure human relationships may support this effort, because in some instances, as Fraiberg (1980) claimed, ‘We do unto others as we were done to.’ Understanding the developmental roots of prosocial behavior in childhood is central not only to attachment research, but also to the broader goal of cultivating a kinder, more altruistic society.

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How to cite this article: Gross JT, Stern JA, Brett BE, Cassidy J. The multifaceted nature of prosocial behavior in children: Links with attachment theory and research. Social Development. 2017;00:1–18. https://doi.org/10. 1111/sode.12242