Image: Juliane Liebermann/Unsplash via ETX Daily Up
Could children help adults to be better people?
Social psychologists from the United Kingdom’s University of Bath and Cardiff University studied the effect that the presence of children can have on adults, known as the “child salience effect.”
The study findings, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, focus specifically on “how the presence of children influences adults’ compassionate motivations and behaviors.”
How seeing a child could boost empathy
TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
To study this, the researchers carried out eight different experiments involving more than 2,000 participants. One experiment involved monitoring the number of donations made to a charity with no link to children on a shopping street in Bath, England.
Here, the psychologists found that the presence of children increased the number of donations. When no children were present, the team observed roughly one donation every 10 minutes. When children were around, the number of donations doubled, rising to two every 10 minutes. And this increased generosity in the presence of children appeared to affect all adults, regardless of their age, sex and whether or not they were parents.
