These results question the current dominant claim that social experiences cannot account for early occurring altruistic behavior. Is it truly the case that social experience has little or no role to play in promoting early helping? Thus, we proposed that a brief experience with reciprocity (e.g., passing a ball back and forth) could well communicate benevolent values or practices and thereby serve as a trigger of children’s altruism. After a few minutes, the experimenter would "accidentally" knock an object off the table, and observe whether the child would help pick it up, exactly as in the 2006 study. When the experimenter left the room, the assistant proceeded to reach toward the objects in the same help-seeking way that the experimenter had done in study 1. The results: Children who took part in the reciprocal, back-and-forth play were three times more likely to pick up the fallen item as kids who engaged in parallel play. Our findings may seem inconsistent with another recent finding that 2-y-olds do not seem to help puppets who help them any more than they help puppets who do not help them, which has been interpreted to mean that young toddlers do not use reciprocity as a cue for helping (15). In the first group (which mimicked the 2006 study), a researcher rolled a ball back and forth with a child while chatting. Here, the experimenter and the child would each play with their own ball, known as "parallel play," while the experimenter engaged in the same kind of chitchat. The experimenter’s affect and conversation within the interaction (e.g., “This is a nice ball!”) was standardized across conditions. Next, one assistant sat in front of the child for one uninterrupted minute and engaged in either reciprocal or parallel play (counterbalanced); then the second assistant engaged in the other form of play for a second uninterrupted minute. Moreover, we found this with an age group in which altruism had been depicted as occurring naturally and without much need for social input (8).
– Back in 2006, a study that went on to gain prominence found that 18-month-olds were willing to be helpful even without being prompted. Many assumed this was evidence of innate altruism, but new research out of Stanford and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that these kids were actually primed by the playful researchers, if subtly, to display generosity—which means that altruistic behavior may be dictated by our experiences, however brief, instead of mere instinct, reports Stanford News. "People often call something 'innate' because they don't understand the kinds of subtle experiences that can make something, like altruism, flourish," says the lead author, admitting that "the findings will stir up some controversy, but in a good way." To investigate the effect of the original study's priming, researchers mimicked it with a group of 34 toddlers, rolling a ball back and forth with the child while chatting, then knocking over an object to see if the child would pick it up. They split the group in two; in the second group, the adult and child played with their own ball independently while talking. Turns out the kids who played with the adult were three times as likely to help out and pick up the dropped object. "Kids are always on the lookout for social cues, and this is a very prominent one," says another researcher. "Does the person's play indicate that they'll care for me? These actions communicate a mutuality, and the child responds in kind." To foster altruism at home, the researchers suggest, model it, reports Yahoo. (Altruism has been linked to a specific gene.)