A recent research demonstrated that kids who are generous to others in need feel better after sharing their winnings. Scientists also found that a child’s propensity to share was linked to mother’s compassionate behavior. Generous kids were basically modeling their mothers’ pro-social behaviors.

How to raise a generous child?

Researchers from the University of California tested how likely kids were to donate part of their winnings from a game to others less fortunate, and found that a mother’s compassionate attitude was linked to how a child was likely to behave when asked to share, when combined with the child’s own changes in physiological reactions in response to a request for help.

Kids aged 4 and 6 were playing a game in a lab, where they were able to earn tokens. Eventually every child got exactly the same number of tokens, which they could exchange for a prize. But before they could do it, they were asked to donate some of their tokens to a “sick child”  who couldn’t come on the day to play or to kids that were going through hard times.

Generous kids were basically modeling their mothers’ pro-social behaviors.

Mothers of the kids were asked a variety of questions, some of which demonstrated how likely a mother would be behaving in a pro-social and generous way.

At the same time, kids’ heart rate was recorded with a monitor. This revealed the fact that kids who chose to donate more of their tokens were calming down faster than the ones who donated fewer tokens or none at all. Scientists concluded that pro-social behavior produced a good feeling in kids that helped them to calm down faster.

Researchers concluded that both mother’s compassionate behavior and internal physiological regulation were the factors supporting kids’ pro-social attitude. Kids were feeling good when sharing, which helps to reinforce generous actions.

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