Prosocial behavior: what "be a helper" does to young children, before and after a mistake

Bryan, C. J., Master, A., & Walton, G. M. (2014). "Helping" versus "being a helper": Invoking the self to increase helping in young children. Child Development, 85(5), 1836–1842. doi:10.1111/cdev.12244 · free full text

Who was studied: 149 children ages 3 to 6.

Design: Two laboratory experiments

What they found: Children who heard about "being a helper" helped significantly more across four tasks than children who heard about "helping" or children in a control condition, both with the adult who used the words and with a new adult.

Foster-Hanson, E., Cimpian, A., Leshin, R. A., & Rhodes, M. (2020). Asking children to "be helpers" can backfire after setbacks. Child Development, 91(1), 236–248. doi:10.1111/cdev.13147

Who was studied: 139 children ages 4 to 5.

Design: Two laboratory experiments

What they found: After pretend helping scenarios that went wrong, such as spilling milk while trying to pour, children asked to "be helpers" had more negative attitudes than children asked "to help." In the second study, the "be helpers" wording reduced actual helping after children ran into difficulties.

Rhodes, M., Leslie, S.-J., Yee, K. M., & Saunders, K. (2019). Subtle linguistic cues increase girls' engagement in science. Psychological Science, 30(3), 455–466. doi:10.1177/0956797618823670

Who was studied: 501 children ages about 4 to 6 across four experiments.

Design: Laboratory experiments

What they found: Describing science as an action ("Let's do science!") rather than an identity ("Let's be scientists!") increased girls' persistence in new science games.

Moderate for the idea that wording shapes young children's behavior in the moment: several experiments from two research groups point the same way. Limited for everyday life: these were short laboratory tasks with modest samples (about 140 to 500 children), and we didn't find large independent replications of the original "be a helper" effect.

• They don't show that calling a child "a helper" changes who they become over years. The effects were measured within one session.
• They don't show that identity words are always harmful. The original study found an effect; the problem appeared after setbacks. The original effect hasn't been widely replicated.

Prosocial behavior is any action meant to benefit someone else: helping, sharing, comforting, cooperating, and including others. In young children it shows up as picking up something another child dropped, offering a toy, patting a crying friend, or helping set the table.

In lab studies, many toddlers already help in simple ways by around 18 months to 2 years. Between 3 and 7, helping becomes more flexible and more tied to understanding what other people need. It also becomes more sensitive to what adults say and to how children see themselves.

That last point is where a small set of experiments about words comes in.

Prosocial behavior doesn't arrive all at once. Toddlers often help in simple, concrete ways, like handing over something an adult can't reach. Through the preschool years, children get better at noticing what someone else needs, comforting a friend, and sharing even when it costs them something.

Sharing is a good example of how gradual this is. In large US survey data on children ages 3 to 5, the share whose parents say they usually or always share toys rises from about 61% at age 3 to about 79% at age 5. See our data on what's typical at 3, 4, and 5.

A sense of fairness keeps developing through the school years. In cross-cultural experiments (Blake and colleagues, 2015), children objected to getting less than a peer earlier than to getting more, and the age of the second reaction varied by society. So a five-year-old who shares unevenly isn't being unkind; they're still learning.

This matters for how adults react. Helping and sharing at 4 or 5 are skills in progress, and the way adults talk about them shapes how children feel about trying again.

In 2014, Christopher Bryan, Allison Master, and Gregory Walton tested whether a tiny change in wording could change how much young children help. Children ages 3 to 6 heard an adult talk either about "being a helper" (a noun, which suggests an identity) or about "helping" (a verb, which describes an action).

Then the children had chances to help: picking up crayons that spilled, putting away toys, opening a container, and so on. Children in the "helper" condition helped significantly more across the four tasks than children in the "helping" condition or a baseline condition. The effect held even when a different adult needed help.

The authors' explanation: children, like adults, want to see themselves as good kinds of people, and an identity word gives them a chance to live up to one.

A few years later, Emily Foster-Hanson, Andrei Cimpian, Rachel Leshin, and Marjorie Rhodes asked a follow-up question: what happens when helping goes wrong?

Children ages 4 and 5 were asked either to "be helpers" or "to help," then acted out a series of helping scenarios with props. Some went well. Others went wrong, like spilling milk while trying to pour it.

After the scenarios that went wrong, children who had been asked to be helpers had more negative attitudes than children asked to help. In a second study, the "be helpers" wording actually reduced children's helping after they had run into difficulties.

One explanation the authors offer: if helping is part of who you are, a failure to help says something about you. If helping is just something you do, a failure is just something that happened.

The pattern isn't limited to helping. In four experiments with 501 young children, Marjorie Rhodes and colleagues found that describing science as an action ("Let's do science!") rather than an identity ("Let's be scientists!") increased girls' persistence in new science games.

This fits well with research on praise. In Mueller and Dweck's classic studies, praising children for being smart, an identity, made them cope worse with failure than praising what they did; those children were about 10 to 12, and later replications have been mixed. Our study brief on praise and growth mindset covers that research and its limits.

Taken together, the studies suggest that identity wording can raise effort at first and backfire after setbacks, although only the helper study tested setbacks directly. Young children make a lot of mistakes, so the "when they don't" part matters.

None of this means you should never say "You're a great helper." It means action words are probably the safer default, especially around mistakes.

Ask for help as an action: "Can you help me carry this?" Describe what your child did: "You gave her a turn. She looks happy." After something goes wrong, keep the focus on the action and on trying again: "The tower fell when you were helping. Let's build it together."

Give children real chances to help that they can succeed at, and model helping yourself. Children learn as much from seeing adults help as from being asked to.

These are small changes in wording, supported by short laboratory experiments. They're cheap to try and unlikely to hurt, which is a good reason to try them, but not a reason to expect dramatic changes.

What is prosocial behavior?

Prosocial behavior is any voluntary action meant to benefit another person, such as helping, sharing, comforting, or cooperating. In young children, examples include picking up something a friend dropped, offering a toy, or comforting a crying sibling.

What are examples of prosocial behavior in children?

Common examples at ages 3 to 7 include sharing snacks or toys, helping clean up, holding a door, comforting someone who is hurt, including another child in a game, taking turns, and helping a parent with a chore.

Should I call my child a good helper?

Occasionally is fine. Experiments suggest that identity words like "helper" can increase helping, but can backfire after mistakes. Using action words most of the time, like "Thank you for helping," and keeping the focus on what happened after a setback, is a safer everyday habit.

At what age do children start helping others?

Many children start helping spontaneously before age 2, for example by picking up something an adult dropped. Helping becomes more flexible and more responsive to others' needs through the preschool and early school years.

How do I encourage my child to help without rewards?

Ask for help with real tasks they can manage, notice and describe their help, model helping others yourself, and let them see the effect of their help on others. Research on rewards for helping is mixed; real chances to help that your child can manage are a safe starting point.

Week 8 of the course is about fairness and helping, with "I can help" as the phrase — practiced as something you do, in real moments.

See the program

Read next

• How to Teach Kids Kindness: Noticing Comes Before Niceness
• Teaching Empathy to Children: Empathy Activities for Ages 4–7