The relation between prosociality and self-esteem from middle-adolescence to young adulthood

Abstract

The present study examined the longitudinal relations between prosociality and self-esteem. Participants were 386 (50.3% males) middle adolescents (Mage=15.6) assessed over a 10-year period until they entered into young adulthood (Mage=25.7). First, multivariate latent curve analysis indicated that the developmental increase of prosociality was positively related to the parallel increase of self-esteem. Second, an autoregressive cross-lagged model revealed that the direct effect of prosociality on self-esteem was statistically significant but essentially negligible. These findings corroborated from a long-term longitudinal perspective previous studies highlighting the positive correlation between the development of prosociality and self-esteem, and pointed out to the need for further investigating the relation between the two constructs. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.