Sharing, Comforting, and Helping in Middle Childhood: An Explorative Multimethod Study

Previous studies focusing on prosocial strategies used by school-aged children often relied on laboratory methodologies. This research examines children’s responses to their peers’ experiences of sadness, exploring their real-life narratives using a mixed-method approach. Four hundred forty-five children (age range: 7–10; Mage = 8.89; SDage = 1.07; 53.9% female) were asked in class to write about an event in which a peer experienced sadness and how they behaved in response to such event (prosocial strategies). In addition, children were asked to rate the intensity of their sadness reaction and their levels of prosociality and empathy using self-report scales. This mixed-method approach allowed the combination of quantitative and qualitative information. Using thematic analysis, prosocial strategies were categorized into comforting, helping, sharing, and inaction; sad events were classified into relational issues, accidents/illness, frustrations, losses/difficult events, and non-identified. A MANCOVA was used to explore differences in sadness intensity, empathy, prosocial motivation across children using different prosocial strategies. Multinomial regression models were used to assess whether the use of specific prosocial strategies was linked to particular types of sad events, as well as to different levels of empathy and prosocial motivation. Children reported comforting as their most strategy for all events except accidents/illness. Although sharing was less frequently used, it emerged as the most used strategy in relational issues events. Helping was more prevalent during accidents/illness and relational issues events. Younger children were more likely not to adopt any prosocial behavior compared to their older, more empathic, and prosocial counterparts. These findings underscore the significance of sadness as a trigger for prosocial behaviors and the importance of recognizing context-specific prosocial strategies to foster social-emotional competence in children.