THE ELICITATION AND DURABILITY OF ALTRUISTIC BEHAVIOR IN CHILDREN
Authors: White Glenn M. 
Published: August 2014

The effects of enforced rehearsal (ER), model‐observation (O), and model‐observation plus voluntary rehearsal (OVR) on private charitable behavior, both immediately following the experimental manipulations and after an interval of several days, were examined.

Obtaining a winning score on a preprogrammed miniature bowling game provided the rationale for furnishing 210 fourth‐ and fifth‐grade children with five‐cent gift certificates. Located near the game was an open charity box. The number of certificates which a subject (S) deposited in the box, while alone, constituted his altruism score. All Ss were given identical game instructions by a male experimenter (E), who also served as the model (M) in those conditions demanding one. Each S was run individually.

ER Ss were explicitly instructed to donate one gift certificate each time they won two, and E remained in S's presence while S rehearsed the giving rule twice. All other Ss were given permissive instructions concerning the charity box.

OVR Ss observed M donate twice and played the game in M's presence, also winning twice. If OVR Ss donated, the act went unnoticed and unrewarded. O Ss also observed M donate; however, no opportunity was provided to rehearse in M's presence.

The results indicate that where the motivational stakes are reasonably high, observation alone is not a sufficient eliciting agent. O Ss failed to evidence significantly more altruism than controls. This finding is interpreted as applying a needed corrective to the modeling research area, imposing a boundary condition on the efficacy of modeling.

For girls, OVR resulted in significantly more altruism than obtained among controls. This result held for both sessions, indicating that the OVR effects were powerful enough to bridge an interval of several days. By all available indicants, OVR girls consistently internalized the altruistic norm, which they had observed and then complied with in M's presence, even though the rehearsal had received no external positive sanctions. These results are interpreted as supporting those theoretical formulations which assign motivational properties to internalized standards.

The results for OVR boys are directionally the same as for OVR girls; however, they fail to reach statistical significance.

ER Ss, evidencing a rule‐obedience component of socialization, engaged in extensive giving during Session 1, giving more than Ss in any other condition While their Session 2 performance dropped markedly, it still remained higher than for all other Ss, except OVR girls. In general, the explicit, though benign, giving instructions had a powerful effect upon ER Ss' behavior; however, some interesting complications were suggested by an internal analysis of the ER condition.

In general, girls gave more and were significantly more consistent in their giving than boys.

Results from three additional experimental conditions, employed to allow a comparison of Ss who were exposed to the experimental manipulations hut were not tested for altruism until Session 2 with Ss described above, indicate that the experimental effects on altruistic behavior tended to decrease as a function of time regardless of whether S practiced the charitable behavior in E's absence, during Session 1.