The current study explored adolescents' experiences with bystander intervention in cyberbullying situations. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study investigated the utility of using the five-step bystander intervention model (notice, interpret as an emergency, accept responsibility to intervene, know how to help, act) to the cyberbullying…

This research explored early ecological-moral sense, by investigating 2.5- and 5-year-old children's evaluations of overt and covert pro-environmental actions using both rewarding and reaching paradigms (N = 96; 100% White). In Experiment 1, the overt pro-environmental action was compared with the action of harming the environment. In Experiment…

Gifts can be individually, dyadically, or collectively chosen and oriented. Society, in its identification of the gifted, has chosen to focus on individual and sometimes dyadic goods. This practice represents a culture of individualism, but it has become solipsistic. We argue that identification instead should focus on those most likely to help to…

This study investigated the relationship between traumatic life stress, trust, and prosocial behavior as a positive mental health outcome in Syrian refugee children in Canada. Trust is a resilience factor shown to promote adjustment after resettlement. The specific goals of the study were to test the influence of refugee children's traumatic life…

Sharing resources is fundamental for human cooperation and survival. People tend to share resources more with individuals they feel close to compared to those who are more socially distant. This decline in generosity at increasing social distance is called social discounting and is influenced by both social traits and abilities, such as empathy,…

This study examined young children's behaviour predictions in direct reciprocal prosocial situations. Participants aged 4-6 years (N = 60) listened to four stories that addressed the actor's previous behaviour (prosocial/non-prosocial) combined with the partner's behaviour (prosocial/non-prosocial). Then, they made predictions regarding the…

The intellectually gifted have been found to have higher levels of many prosocial dispositions, but there is limited evidence of increased prosocial behavior. The present research used existing and original datasets to examine relations between intellectual giftedness and prosocial behavior and dispositions. In Study 1, those identified as…

This study examined whether typically developing (TD) twins of non-TD children demonstrate enhanced empathy and prosociality. Of 778 Hebrew-speaking Israeli families who participated in a twin study, 63 were identified to have a non-TD child with a TD twin, and 404 as having both twins TD. TD twins of non-TD children (27% males) were compared to…

Researchers have demonstrated that dialogue-based intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) can be effective in assisting students in learning. However, little research has attempted to explore the necessity of equipping dialogue-based ITS with one of the most important capabilities of human tutors, that is, maintaining polite interactions with students,…

The goal of this project was to substantiate a more positive conceptualization of adolescent risk behavior and to compare adolescent viewpoints of risk behavior to the items on the Prosocial and Health Adolescent Risk Behavior Scale (PHARBS). A total of 57 high school students participated in the research. Researchers recruited students from an…

The present investigation aims to identify best practices to design virtual reality (VR) story-worlds to promote prejudice reduction and foster prosocial attitudes toward under-represented groups. Past research shows that VR, which allows the simulation of scenarios that would otherwise be prohibitively difficult or impossible in real life, can be…

Few studies on the development of forgiveness involved young children and adolescents, and very few involved samples from non-western countries. This study focused on the development of willingness to forgive a particular transgression in participants aged 4 to 12 years and from two different cultures: a South African culture (Mozambique) and a…

Numerous studies have documented children's understanding of fairness through their ability to rectify inequities when distributing resources to others. Understanding fairness, however, involves more than just applying norms of equity when distributing resources. Children must also navigate situations in which resources are collected from them for…

Recent work suggests that common knowledge is an important cognitive mechanism for coordinating prosocial behavior, in part because it reduces uncertainty about others' cooperative behavior. However, it remains unclear whether children also rely on common knowledge to solve coordination problems. Here we examined whether 6- to 9-year-old children…

Many scholars have documented the critical importance of youth having access to spaces of joy and homeplaces in which they learn to matter. Research has shown that Black LGBTQ+ youth often struggle to locate homeplaces and spaces of joy in K-12 schooling contexts due to societal beliefs flowing from anti-blackness, (hetero)sexism, homophobia,…