Prosocial behavior and childhood trajectories of internalizing and externalizing problems: The role of neighborhood and school contexts.

Eirini Flouri,Zahra Sarmadi

doi:10.1037/dev0000076

Abstract

This study investigated the role of the interaction between prosocial behavior and contextual (school and neighborhood) risk in children’s trajectories of externalizing and internalizing problems at ages 3, 5, and 7. The sample was 9,850 Millennium Cohort Study families who lived in England when the cohort children were aged 3. Neighborhood context was captured by the proportion of subsidized (social rented) housing in the neighborhood and school context by school-level achievement. Even after adjustment for child- and family-level covariates, prosocial behavior was related both to lower levels of problem behavior at school entry and to its trajectory before and after. Neighborhood social housing was related to the trajectory of problem behavior, and school-level achievement to lower levels of problem behavior at school entry. The negative association between prosocial and problem behavior was stronger for children attending low-performing schools or living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The adverse “effect” of low prosocial behavior, associated with low empathy and guilt and with constricted emotionality, on internalizing and externalizing problems appears to be exacerbated in high-risk contexts.

Highlights

Prosociality is a trait that can be characterized by the tendency to care for, share with, and help other people
The two groups differed in prosocial behavior only at the last time point, with children in the analytic sample scoring higher than those excluded from it
Following children from the United Kingdom’s Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) from ages 3–7, we found that when prosocial behavior—a constellation of behaviors characterized by cooperation, caring, and empathy—was low, children had poor emotional and behavioral outcomes across the study period

Summary

Introduction

Prosociality is a trait that can be characterized by the tendency to care for, share with, and help other people. Prosocial behavior is negatively related to externalizing (“actingout”) problems, it co-occurs with both high and low internalizing (anxiety and depressive) symptoms (Nantel-Vivier, Pihl, Côté, & Tremblay, 2014). It does appear, that engagement in prosocial behavior is linked to subsequent social information pro-. The relatively scarce research on its role in behavioral outcomes suggests that school-level achievement is related negatively to individual students’ internalizing and externalizing problems (Midouhas, Kuang, & Flouri, 2014)

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Conclusion