The Development of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior in Adolescence

Abstract

This chapter is about the development of prosocial and antisocial behavior in children and adolescents. Prosocial behavior can be defined as voluntary behavior that is aimed at fulfilling another person’s need for support (Bar-Tal, 1984; Eisenberg and Fabes, 1998). It includes spontaneous acts of comforting (physically or verbally expressing sympathy or reassurance), sharing (giving materials or work space that one is using or giving a “turn” to another person), and helping (physically assisting or offering physical assistance). Antisocial behavior can be defined as acts that inflict physical or mental harm or property loss or damage on others. It is behavior that is intended to lower the well-being of other persons, which may or may not constitute the breaking of criminal laws (Coie and Dodge, 1998; Loeber and Schmaling, 1985; Rutter, Giller, and Hagell, 1998). Research on the development of prosocial behavior and research on the development of antisocial behavior have been rather independent of each other. Whereas prosocial behavior has been studied mainly by social-developmental psychologists, antisocial behavior has been studied mainly by criminologists and developmental psychopathologists. Perhaps because of the greater salience of the consequences of aggression, delinquency, and criminality, scientists have devoted much more attention to antisocial behavior than to prosocial behavior. Many large-scale, prospective, longitudinal studies of general population samples have been carried out to untangle the roots and consequences of antisocial behavior across the life span. Well-known examples are studies in Christchurch (Fergusson, Horwood, and Nagin, 2000), Dunedin (Silva and Stanton, 1996), and Stockholm (Wikstrom, 1987). Whereas the development of antisocial and criminal behavior has long been the subject of investigation, interest in the development of