Abstract
IntroductionBuilding on prior evidence that prosocial behavior is related to the regulation of personal distress in difficult situations, and given that physiological regulation is a central contributor to effective emotion regulation, this investigation evaluated whether and how children's autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity during emotion challenges influenced later expressions of prosocial behavior.MethodsThe current study utilized a diverse sample of school‐aged children (N = 169; 47.9% female; 47.3% Latinx) to evaluate relations between children's parasympathetic (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) and sympathetic (i.e., pre‐ejection period; PEP) reactivity in response to each of three film‐elicited emotion challenges (i.e., sadness, happiness, and fear) at age 7 and both observed and parent‐reported prosocial behavior one year later.ResultsChildren's parasympathetic reactivity to a film eliciting sadness evidenced a nonlinear relation with later prosocial sharing such that children who evidenced either RSA withdrawal or augmentation in response to the sad emotion challenge engaged in higher levels of prosocial behavior than children who evidenced relatively low or absent reactivity. Parasympathetic reactivity to films eliciting happiness or fear was not significantly related to later prosocial behavior. Likewise, children's sympathetic reactivity in response to the emotion challenges did not significantly predict later prosocial behavior.ConclusionsThese findings provide preliminary support for a nonlinear association between children's parasympathetic emotion reactivity and later prosocial behavior, and suggest that children's ANS regulation in sad emotion contexts may be particularly important for understanding prosocial development.
Highlights
Building on prior evidence that prosocial behavior is related to the regulation of personal distress in difficult situations, and given that physiological regulation is a central contributor to effective emotion regulation, this investigation evaluated whether and how children's autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity during emotion challenges influenced later expressions of prosocial behavior
There were no significant differences between dyads who completed both visits and those who did not on all study variables
Separate polynomial regression models tested the relation of children's respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and pre‐ejection period (PEP) reactivity in response to each film clip with their later observed and parent‐reported prosocial behavior while holding child gender, race/ ethnicity, verbal ability, family socioeconomic status (SES), and prosocial behavior constant
Summary
Over the past two decades, researchers have directed increased attention to three prominent areas of developmental science. Building on prior studies that point to the salience of emotion for understanding patterns of ANS regulation and social behavior, this investigation explored children's parasympathetic and sympathetic reactivity in response to a series of film clips designed to elicit sad, happy, or fearful emotions as related to both observed and parent‐reported expressions of prosocial behavior one year later. This study sought to advance our understanding of ANS reactivity and prosocial behavior by evaluating both linear and nonlinear models of association between 7‐year‐old children's parasympathetic and sympathetic reactivity in response to sad, happy, and fearful emotion films and both observed and parent‐reported expressions of prosocial behavior one year later. Because the emotion‐eliciting film clips were dependent on children's ability to understand the film content, we included children's verbal ability as a covariate
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