This chapter provides an overview of the similarities and differences in the development of prosociality across cultural contexts and examines the role of social cognitive and motivational factors in shaping cultural diversity. We focus on helping and sharing, examined most extensively across cultures. Low-cost helping and sharing show similar developmental trajectories and levels across cultures. Development of costly helping diverges across cultures in the second year. Costly sharing diverges around middle childhood, coinciding with children’s adherence to cooperative norms of their society. Social cognitive foundations of prosociality develop along similar trajectories, suggesting that diversity in costly prosocial behaviors is best explained by motivational processes. New research suggests that collaboration influences motivational processes, producing similar levels of costly prosociality across diverse societies. To identify the psychological and sociocultural mechanisms underlying human development, it is critical to merge deep understanding of the everyday lives of children with theoretically guided experiments.

Peer review supports decisions related to publications, grant proposals, awards, or personnel selection. Independent of the specific occasion, we propose validity as a chief evaluation criterion for reviews. While applicable to all occasions, the principles of validity-oriented quality control are particularly suited for journal reviews. Beyond evaluating validity and the scientific potential of a given piece of research, we address how peer reviewing serves important functions and is accountable for the growth of science at a more superordinate level. We also provide guidelines and concrete recommendations for how a good peer review may serve these functions. Good peer review, thereby, fosters both the advancement of scientific research and the quality, precision, and sincerity of the scientific literature. The end of the chapter is devoted to a core set of good reviewer practices, conceived as an essential feature of academic culture.

Bayes factors – evidence for one model versus another – are a useful tool in the social and behavioral sciences, partly because they can provide evidence for no effect relative to the sort of effect expected. By contrast, a non-significant result does not provide evidence for the null hypothesis tested. If non-significance does not in itself count against any theory predicting an effect, how could a theory fail a test? Bayes factors provide a measure of evidence from first principles. A severe test is one that is likely to obtain evidence against a theory if it were false – to obtain an extreme Bayes factor against the theory. Bayes factors show why cherry picking degrades evidence, how to deal with multiple testing, and how optional stopping is consistent with severe testing. Further, informed Bayes factors can be used to link theory tightly to how that theory is tested, so that the measured evidence does relate to the theory.

This chapter focuses on relational practices of care to nurture prosociality in children and adolescents. We begin by introducing care as an ethical stance toward another that requires attention and commitment to another, as well as sensitivity to the developmental needs and uniqueness of every child. We then outline the practices of relational care, and how they matter for efforts aimed at nurturing children and adolescents’ prosocial orientations. It is argued how recognition of and careful attention to children and adolescents and their ethical development can move humanity forward, and how true commitment to others and an ethical self can contribute to the flourishing of all children. We present examples of nurturing care, including community-based and organizational initiatives as well as existing research-based psychological programs, and we discuss implications for policy. We conclude by outlining next steps for a future agenda of transforming nurturing care for all children and adolescents.

Experimental research designs feature two essential ingredients: manipulation of an independent variable and random assignment of subjects. However, in a quasi-experimental design, subjects are assigned to groups based on non-random criteria. This design allows for manipulation of the independent variable with the aim of examining causality between an intervention and an outcome. In social and behavioral research, this design is useful when it may not be logistically or ethically feasible to use a randomized control design – the “gold standard.” Although not as strong as an experiment, non-equivalent control group pretest–posttest designs are usually higher in internal validity than correlation designs. Overcoming possible threats to internal and external validity in a non-equivalent control group pretest–posttest design, such as cofounding variables, are discussed in relation to sample selection, power, effect size, and specific methods of data analyses.

Social and behavioral researchers often draw on archival data – data collected by an entity other than the research team – to conduct scientific inquiry. Researchers typically seek to make claims about measured variables that extend beyond the measures themselves, such as interpreting a measure as representing an unobservable theoretical construct. Though researchers using archival data encounter many issues, this chapter focuses on two that have received less attention. The first concerns how researchers should justify the interpretations and uses they attach to archival measures. The second concerns how to justify generalizing findings. This chapter provides a framework to help researchers address these issues by drawing on contemporary validity theory in education and psychology as well as theory regarding causal mechanisms from philosophy and sociology. These concepts are illustrated using multiple examples from published studies.

The steps social and behavioral scientists take after the end of a study are just as important as the steps taken before and during it. The goal of this chapter is to discuss the practical and ethical considerations that should be addressed before participants leave the physical or virtual study space. We review several post-experimental techniques, including the debriefing, manipulation checks, attention checks, mitigating participant crosstalk, and probing for participant suspicion regarding the purpose of the study. Within this review, we address issues with the implementation of each post-experimental technique as well as best practices for their use, with an emphasis placed on prevention of validity threats and the importance of accurate reporting of the steps taken after the experiment ends. Finally, we emphasize the importance of continuing to develop and empirically test post-experimental practices, with suggestions for future research.

This chapter discusses the intertwining of morality, values, and prosociality from childhood to adolescence. We define prosocial behaviors as acts that, if completed as intended, would directly promote the goals or welfare of others. We begin with three theoretical points: (1) People do not view all prosocial actions as inherently good or morally right. (2) Judgments about prosocial behaviors derive from reasoning about both moral and nonmoral values. (3) Judgments of right and wrong guide decisions about prosocial behaviors. From these propositions, we discuss research on three developmental periods: infancy and toddlerhood, when prosocial behaviors emerge; preschool age, when children make judgments of right and wrong; and school age to adolescence, when developments in social understanding and the coordination of competing considerations enable changes in prosocial judgments and decisions. Greater attention to how evaluative judgments shape prosocial decisions can strengthen efforts to explain and intervene on the development of prosociality.

Cross-sectional studies are a type of observational studies in which the researcher commonly assesses the exposure, outcome, and other variables (such as confounding variables) at the same time. They are also referred to as “prevalence studies.” These studies are useful in a range of disciplines across the social and behavioral sciences. The common statistical estimates from these studies are correlation values, prevalence estimates, prevalence odds ratios, and prevalence ratios. These studies can be completed relatively quickly, are relatively inexpensive to conduct, and may be used to generate new hypotheses. However, the major limitation of these studies are biases due to sampling, length-time bias, same source bias, and the inability to have a clear temporal association between exposure and outcome in many scenarios. The researcher should be careful while interpreting the measure of association from these studies, as it may not be appropriate to make causal inferences from these associations.

Meta-analysis is a form of data synthesis that statistically combines the results of primary research studies responding to a given question. It has become an indispensable tool for decision making and advancement of knowledge in a variety of disciplines. This chapter provides an overview of this method, beginning with a brief discussion of systematic reviews – the research methodology that undergirds meta-analysis. The chapter then explores specific components of this approach as it is most widely applied in the literature, including issues related to effect sizes, heterogeneity of study outcomes, scope of the analysis, and quality-control issues to consider when conducting a meta-analysis. A brief overview of new and emerging methods for the synthesis of primary research data is also provided, highlighting different forms of meta-analysis and different approaches for the synthesis of research data. Practical examples are provided as illustrations to clarify and reinforce the concepts presented in this chapter.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources that establishes familiarity with and an understanding of current research in a particular field. It includes a critical analysis of the relationship among different works, seeking a synthesis and an explanation of gaps, while relating findings to the project at hand. It also serves as a foundational aspect of a well-grounded thesis or dissertation, reveals gaps in a specific field, and establishes credibility and need for those applying for a grant. The enormous amount of textual information necessitates the development of tools to help researchers effectively and efficiently process huge amounts of data and quickly search, classify, and assess their relevance. This chapter presents an assessable guide to writing a comprehensive review of literature. It begins with a discussion of the purpose of the literature review and then presents steps to conduct an organized, relevant review.

Finding one’s niche in any scientific domain is often challenging, but there are certain tips and steps that can foster a productive research program. In this chapter, we use terror management theory (TMT) as an exemplar of what designing a successful line of research entails. To this end, we present an overview of the development and execution of our research program, including testing of original hypotheses, direct and conceptual replications, identification of moderating and mediating variables, and how efforts to understand failures to replicate mortality salience effects led to important conceptual refinements of the theory. Our hope is that recounting the history of terror management theory and research will be useful for younger scholars in their own research pursuits in the social and behavioral sciences.

This chapter reviews recent research on the relation between early social-cognitive development and the ontogeny of prosocial behavior. In particular, it focuses on action understanding, cognitive perspective taking, affective perspective taking, social learning, reciprocity, and strategic behavior, as well as self-related cognitive processes. For each aspect, central theoretical considerations and an overview of current empirical findings are presented. The chapter concludes with a discussion of implications of these lines of research for the promotion of early prosocial behavior.