PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOUR The moral foundations of prosocial behaviour Tina Malti, PhD, Sebastian P. Dys, MA, Antonio Zuffianò, PhD University of Toronto, Canada May 2015 Introduction Moral development describes the emergence and changes in an individual’s understanding of, and feelings about, moral principles across the lifespan. Morality includes various dimensions, most prominently emotions, knowledge and reasoning, values, and morally relevant, prosocial behaviours. While some of these components strongly develop across the first five years of life, there are also great inter-individual differences that lay the foundation for individual differences in prosocial behaviour. 1 These differences are believed to be due to biological and environmental factors. 2 Developmental differences occur through maturation and are socialized by peers, parents, cultural values and practices. 3 Subject Early moral development is an important foundation for prosocial behaviour. Moral emotions may facilitate children's prosocial conduct through the affective consequences of their actions for the self 4,5 (e.g., guilt) and/or the affective concern for others 6 (e.g., sympathy). Alternately, they may become increasingly aware of the reasons why it is important to help others, which may motivate them to engage in prosocial behaviour. Thus, if parents and teachers want to socialize prosocial behaviour in young children, it becomes an important question to consider the affective and cognitive components of morality that may facilitate such outcomes. Progress has been made in the study of early moral development in recent years. 7 Most of the previous work has focused on either emotion or judgment. Yet, both moral emotions and moral cognitions appear necessary for the emergence of prosocial behaviour. 8 What is less known is the relation between moral emotions and moral cognitions and how their relations change over time. There is also a need to study trajectories of moral affect, moral cognition, and prosocial behaviour, as well as their socialization antecedents. Research on the role of peers in early moral development has also remained relatively limited. For example, it still needs to be ©2015 CEECD / SKC-ECD | PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOUR 1