GROUP REPUTATION AS A MOTIVE OF CHILDREN'S PROSOCIALITY

Abstract

The issue of the emergence and development of strategically motivated prosocial behavior in childhood is discussed in the article. In general, we consider prosocial behavior as a system of experiences and actions aimed at benefits the other people or whole group. This phenomenon has many varieties: helping, gifting, equitable sharing of resources, compassion and empathy, psychological support, defending, etc. The ultimate goal of these behavioral strategies is to meet the needs of other people according to their interests, intentions and states. However, people can implement a humanistic idea on the basis of different personal motives. Their modality is within the broad dichotomous series of “altruism - selfishness". A socially valuable act may be driven by certain self-serving goals related to the future benefits. Strategically-motivated prosocial behavior is one of these types of promotion. The previous research distinguished three basic motives which underlie strategically-motivated prosocial behavior: motives of reciprocity, reputation and self-presentation. The last two motives are associated with the person's desire for social recognition and affirmation of self-importance.

Reputational motivation of prosocial behavior has recently emerged into an independent area of research. We can distinguish two interrelated issues within the mentioned problem: the influence of individual reputation vs group’s reputation on prosocial behavior. Each of these issues associated not only with the mature strategies, but also with the ontogenetically early manifestations of these forms of behavior. The present study analyzes the age-related features of preschoolers’ understanding and using a motive of group's reputation in situations with a potential prosocial context. It is noted that older preschoolers are able not only to carry out a system of actions, aimed at enhancing the group's reputation, but they are also concerned with monitoring and influencing the peers’ behavior in order to improve performance. The obtained results of our research have shown that under condition of competition children were more concerned with the group’s outcome and reputation and it had a positive effect on their prosocial behavior. Despite the self-presentational motives underlying their behavior, they supported and helped each other. In our opinion, the mutual influence of different motives of children’s prosocial behavior requires further investigation.