Kształtowanie zachowań prospołecznych u dzieci w wieku przedszkolnym

Abstract

Although prosocial behaviour is paid more and more attention in the present day psychological research, there is still felt – especially in Poland – a reat lack of sufficient empirical data on the initial appearance and then on the development of that kind of behaviour in case of children at pre-school age. There is a need of investigating and characterisation of situations which may stimulate prosocial behaviour of children at that age. In experimental research which the paper presents 141 children of five and six from nursery schools were involved. The expected prosocial behaviour consisted in sharing and helping. The basic way of influencing the children’s behaviour was presenting them with an appropriate model of reacting in a given situation. It was found out that the degree of generalization of the behaviour in question depended largely on the child's age. Hence: the younger the children - the more numerous must be the instances of the model pro-social behaviour, and then the occasions given to the children of reacting in an appropriate way. Displaying prosocial behaviour seemed to be influenced by the child’s sex: there were less instances of prosocial behaviour in boys than in girls. But one may suppose that the difference in that respect may have its source in still persisting, culturally induced, different ways of bringing up boys and girls, as it was found that the child's sex did not affect his/her ability to display the stimulated prosocial behaviour. The last remark is that the prosocial behaviour taught in nursery schools must be appropriate to the child's age.