Summer Allen: Drive to help

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I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:14

“A study of 24-month-old children found that they will help an unfamiliar adult regardless of parental presence or encouragement, suggesting that the drive to help is intrinsically motivated. And a study of 18- and 30-month olds found that children of both ages voluntarily engaged in instrumental helping (such as helping an experimenter reach a clothespin that is out of reach), empathic helping (such as giving a cold experimenter a blanket or giving a sad experimenter a toy), and altruistic helping (such as handing over the child’s own blanket to a cold experimenter or the child’s favorite toy to a sad experimenter), although the 30-month-old children, who were better able to understand other people’s emotional cues, engaged in all forms of helping earlier and with less communication than did the 18-month-old children. This all serves as evidence of the deep proclivity in young children toward generosity.”

Summer Allen in “The Science of Generosity” White Paper produced by the Greater Good Science Center.

In recent days this research has revealed that generosity is innate or inborn. God made us to give and we need to do it for our survival. Then we learned that over time that tendency is moderated by our social environment.

Today interested me as I have an 18-months-old granddaughter. This study showed that at her age “the drive to help is intrinsically motivated.” That means God made her to offer instrumental, empathetic, or even altruistic help.

I praise God for this “deep proclivity” for generosity and hope my son and his wife can nurture it though societal factors will aim to moderate it or even shut it off altogether. But why study all this?

A friend said to me recently that he was really enjoying this modern research on generosity. I echoed that I marveled how it reinforced what we know in Scripture, that we are “fearfully and wonderfully” made.

God, show us how societal factors have moderated our giving of instrumental, empathetic, and/or altruistic help. Thanks for putting this drive to help in us. Empower us by your Spirit to live it out I ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.