Prosociality in young Latinx children: Exploring the role of grandparents.

Theories of human development informed by cultural anthropology and evolutionary biology suggest that aspects of human prosociality are in fl uenced by grandparents ’ interactions with grandchildren. Yet, the traditional focus within developmental psychology on European American nuclear families has yielded little empirical work on this topic. Recognizing the prevalence of live-in grandparents in Latinx communities, we conducted a preregistered study with young Latinx children ( N = 250, M child age = 5.02 years old). The study was intentionally designed to take place within the supermajority Latinxneighborhoodsof Los Angeles County. These are low-income,urban neighborhoods with high rates of grandparent involvement with grandchildren. Because the study took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, we set up a mobile lab in an outdoor setting, which allowed us to use an experimental, prosocial behavioral-choice task that involved random assignment. Predicted probabilities from a logistic regression model showed that Latinx children with grandparents living at home were 1.56 times as likely to exhibit prosocial choice behavior as those who did not have grandparents living at home, and this effect was signi fi cant while controlling for other preregistered covariates (education, economic insecurity, gender, age, etc.). These fi ndings of an association between the presence of Latinx grandparents and children ’ s prosociality contribute to our understanding of Latinx psychology and child-rearing. The fi ndings also have broader implications for theories of culture, socialization, and prosociality.