Tina Malti is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Centre for Child Development, Mental Health, and Policy at the University of Toronto, Canada. She studies why certain children become aggressive while others show high levels of concern from a young age, and how to nurture wellbeing and ethical orientations in all children. She is co-editor of the Handbook of Child and Adolescent Aggression (2018) and president of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development. Maayan Davidov is Associate Professor in the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Toronto, Canada. She pursues research on the development of empathy in the early years, different aspects of parenting and their contributions to children's functioning, and cultural influences on socialization.
'Tina Malti and Maayan Davidov's new Cambridge Handbook of Prosociality: Development, Mechanisms, and Promotion is the state of the art for research and scholarship on prosocial development in childhood through adulthood. This is a very impressive collection of top scholars from a wide range of perspectives on prosociality as it emerges and is applied in a wide array of contexts, from the home to schools and the community. Fascinating questions are posed and grappled with, including the role of genetics, the neurobiology of prosociality, how prosociality changes across the lifespan, how it can be challenged in the context of ingroup bias and outgroup distrust, and its connection to moral values and moral cognition. We learn about the role of siblings, parents, schools, and the media for facilitating or suppressing acts of helping, caring, and sharing towards others. This is an indispensable guide for anyone interested in finding out what makes humans prosocial and how we can foster this orientation for a more just and civil society.' Melanie Killen, University of Maryland, USA and Editor of the Handbook of Moral Development 'As social animals, humans are born with a healthy dose of empathy and prosociality. It is paramount to know how these tendencies develop in the young and how they can be augmented. For anyone interested in this complex topic, this handbook does an admirable job reviewing current knowledge.' Frans de Waal, author of Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves