Abstract
Prosocial behavior refers to actions directed to the welfare of the others and it is influenced by physical and social aspects of the environment. This study objected to investigate chiefly the occurrences of care behavior among institutionalized children. Four boys and one girl took part in this study, with ages between four and six years old, who were observed in the yard of the school. A total of ten sessions of twenty-five-minute were recorded for each focal subject, summing 250 minutes of recordings. At total, 26 behavioral events which denoted care with the others were identified and organized into the following categories: Helping, Care-taking playing, Establishing affectionate contact, and Entertaining. The results indicate that while participants are at the school yard, the most demonstrated behavior subcategory involves cooperation attitudes (Helping subcategory). The data also show that male focal subjects who were older than five years old and were at school for less than 15 months would emit more care behaviors. Concerning receivers, it was found that the girls who were studying at school, younger children and the ones who had less time in the institution received more prosocial behavior. It is expected that the results of this study may contribute to future researches while investigating prosocial behavior in educational settings, especially when they involve special populations, such as children who live in shelter institutions. Similarly, studies like this can encourage the development of (pedagogic-political and other) projects in institutions for children in order to stimulate prosocial behavior among peers.
Highlights
Prosocial behavior refers to actions directed to the welfare of the others and it is influenced by physical and social aspects of the environment
Before the stated by the literature (Alexandre & Vieira, 2004; Carvalho, 2000; Cavalcante, 2008; Costa & Cavalcante, 2012) about prosocial behavior between institutionalized children and the lack of publications on the theme, this study aimed at investigating both aspects of the environment, physical and social, in addition to the attributes of the focal subject as personal and physical, and social aspects that compete with the manifestation of the care behavior between peers in the yard of an educational institution
The data in reference to the emission of the subcategories at the school yard reveal there was a great diversity of prosocial behaviors emitted by the focal subjects, which points out that the school may be an environment that favors solidarity actions when there is the concern in stimulating their users to be sympathetic
Summary
Prosocial behavior refers to actions directed to the welfare of the others and it is influenced by physical and social aspects of the environment. According to Bronfenbrenner (1996), with regards to the environmental characteristics that define the great urban centers it is verified that how these living areas for children are currently structured probably reflect ecological changes that resulted from substantial changes in the familie's routine and in the dynamics of the interactions between people in these contexts It might be mentioned the reduced presence of children playing on the sidewalks, or on the streets, watched by their parents and/or in the company of neighbors and friends, as a habit that produced an urbanization logic that is not based on the verticalization and the segregation of the spaces so common nowadays. The current urban environment tends to reduce the changes of a close and intimate interaction between people, increasing the individualism and decreasing the prosocial activities, besides limiting such behaviors to specific environments since childhood (Carrus et al, 2005)
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