Model affect and children's imitative altruism.

Abstract

Aronfreed (1968) has stressed the importance of conditioned emotional responses to the development and maintenance of altruistic behavior. He has suggested that the reinforcements which sustain self-sacrificing behavior are changes in the aider's affectivity which have been previously conditioned to the helping act. This conditioning process may occur through the child's observations of the contingencies which affect an exemplar's affective states. On the basis of the principle of the gradient of reinforcement, it was expected that if a child observes a model demonstrating positive affect immediately following an altruistic act, he will be more likely to imitate both the function of the model's behavior (e.g., helping others) and the particular form by which this function is manifested (e.g., the particular motor sequence comprising the donation act) than one who deserves a delay in such vicarious reinforcement.