Learning not to help in Nanjing and London–Cultural elaboration of empathy in childhood

Abstract

Helping is one of the key features of human sociality. The ethnographic record is pervaded by accounts of people doing things with and for each other from an early age. Developmental psychology has shown that by the time children begin to walk and talk, they already display helpful behavior in many situations. These findings suggest that the propensity to help is biologically based, rather than directly taught. While doing research on children's cooperation in Nanjing, China, and London, UK, it became clear to me that school‐aged children were socialized into not helping, rather than helping. This raises the question: what are some of the cultural and psychological processes shaping this core human behavior? To address this, I bring together three levels of culturally grounded analysis: helping behaviors, the cognition of empathy, and its emotional underpinnings. Drawing on cultural ontologies of personhood, I show that in London, children are expected to be generally helpful, but not at a great cost to themselves, while in Nanjing, there is less emphasis on general helpfulness, but highly costly helping is expected in particular relationships.