Toddlers' prosocial behavior: from instrumental to empathic to altruistic helping.

Though recent research has highlighted prosocial behavior as negatively associated with problem behavior during adolescence, we know little about how these variables might be associated longitudinally, whether there are bidirectional effects, and whether there might be different patterns of co-occurrence of behaviors for different individuals. Thus, the current study examined relations between prosocial and problem behaviors in three different ways in an attempt to better understand these associations. Participants included 500 adolescents recruited from a Northwestern state in the USA who took part in the study every year from age 12 to 18 (50% female, 67% European American). Growth curve analyses suggested that change in prosocial behavior was negatively associated with change in aggression and delinquency over time. A longitudinal panelmodel suggested that prosocial behavior and aggression were negatively associated bidirectionally, and that prosocial behavior was negatively associated with delinquency over time. Finally, mixture modeling conducted at ages 12, 15, and 18 revealed heterogeneity in the ways in which prosocial and problem behaviors co-occur. The discussion focuses on the complexity of interrelations between prosocial behavior and problem behavior across adolescence.

Prior studies have indicated that prosocial behavior might be a protective factor for developing internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems. However, little research has been conducted on within-person changes of prosocial behavior and behavioral problems over time. With random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs), the current study analyzed longitudinal associations between prosocial behavior and behavioral problems in two twin cohorts (98% Western European): in early childhood (age M = 4.77, SD = .58, 52% girls, N = 440) and middle childhood (age M = 7.94, SD = .67, 51% girls, N = 512). To obtain robust results, two parental reported questionnaires and an observational task were used as prosocial behavior assessments. In line with the literature, we found a significant between-person association between externalizing behavior and parent reported prosocial behavior in middle childhood, but not in early childhood. Some evidence indicated that changes in externalizing problems affect later prosocial behavior in middle childhood. Overall, however, the RI-CLPMs provided most support for the hypothesis that within-person changes in prosocial behavior are not related to within-person changes in behavioral problems. Thus, our findings did not support the hypothesis that increased prosocial behavior directly results in decreased behavioral problems, but emphasizes the need to take into account the multifaceted nature of prosocial behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

There is little understanding about how prosocial behavior toward different targets might change over time, and what might promote initial levels and age-related changes in prosocial behavior. Thus, this study examined longitudinal change in prosocial behavior toward strangers, friends, and family from early adolescence through the transition to adulthood. Participants included 500 adolescents from the United States (age 12 to age 20; 52% female, 65% European American). Latent growth curve models suggested that prosocial behavior toward strangers increased across early to mid-adolescence and then flattened out during the transition to adulthood, prosocial behavior toward friends increased steadily, and prosocial behavior toward family was relatively stable across adolescence and then increased. Predictors of initial levels and growth in prosocial behavior varied by target.

The primary aim of the current study was to evaluate the 16-months follow-up effects of the short-term school-based positive youth development (PYD) intervention program Try Volunteering on empathy and prosocial behavior. The secondary aim was to test the theory of change in prosocial behavior through the change of empathy in the intervention settings. The quasi-experimental study design (pre-test, post-test, follow-up at 4 months and follow-up at 16 months) was used for the program efficacy evaluation. The current study assessed 538 students, 272 from the intervention school (49.1% girls, aged from 13 to 16 (Mage = 15.26; SDage = 0.69) at pre-test) and 264 from the control school (40.1% girls, aged from 14 to 17 (Mage = 15.24; SDage = 0.65) at pre-test). The results of the multivariate Latent Growth Curve analysis indicated that empathy increased significantly in the intervention group and remained stable in the control group. No significant change was found in either of groups for prosocial behavior. In addition, the results revealed that the positive change in empathy fully mediates the relationship between program participation and positive change in prosocial behavior. The present findings highlighted the relevance of promoting empathy in school settings as a strategy for fostering prosocial behavior during adolescence as the positive contribution to community and society.

Family members and friends can play an important role in adolescents’ prosocial behavior. To better understand the relation between support and prosocial behavior in adolescence, it’s important to conduct longitudinal studies that distinguish between within-dyad variance and between-dyad variance. The current study investigated longitudinal associations between adolescents’ prosocial behavior, autonomy support, and emotional support from family and friends across adolescence. Across six annual years, 497 Dutch adolescents (284 boys; mean age T1 = 13.03 years, SDage = 0.46), fathers, mothers, siblings, and friends reported on their prosocial behavior. Adolescents also reported on perceived autonomy and emotional support. Between-dyads almost all associations of support and prosocial behavior of family members and friends with adolescents’ prosocial behavior were significant, with higher levels of adolescents’ prosocial behavior being associated with higher levels of prosocial behavior and support from fathers, mothers and friends. Within-dyads, several concurrent associations were significant, but within-dyads links between prosocial behavior and autonomy support are particularly driven by adolescent-mother or adolescent-sibling effects. This study highlights processes that occurred either at the between-dyad level or at the within-dyad level, but that varied per relationship type and that adolescents are the main catalysts in within-dyads changes in prosocial behavior and support. Preregistration: This study was preregistered on 20 January 2020 at https://osf.io/vxkm3/?view_only=dca87fd1585c444ba5cd5a00c22280ae.

The present study was designed to investigate stability and changes in prosocial behavior and the parent and peer correlates of prosocial behavior in rural adolescents. Participants were from a rural, low SES community in the Eastern United States. The participants were in 7th, 8th, and 9th grades at Time 1 and 10th, 11th, and 12th grades at Time 4, and completed measures of prosocial behavior and quality of parent and peer relationships. Latent growth curve modeling revealed that despite moderate stability in individual differences in prosocial behavior and slight increases in quality of peer and parent relationships, level of prosocial behavior declined until late high school with a slight rebound in grade 12. Furthermore, increases in the quality of peer relationships predicted decreases in prosocial behavior for girls but not boys. Discussion focuses on continuity and change in prosocial behavior and the gender‐based relations between quality of parent and peer relationships and prosocial behaviors in adolescence.

The Interplay of Prosocial and Conduct Problem Behaviour: Implications for Developmental and Life-Course Criminology.

Modeling social norms increasingly influences costly sharing in middle childhood

Stark cultural variation in prosocial behavior, as elicited with economic experiments, is evident despite the high mobility of humans. Conformity to local norms has been posited to play an integral role in the maintenance of this variation. Experiments suggest that adults indeed rapidly infer pro- and antisocial norms in new or altered social environments and adjust their behavior to reflect the inferred norms. Studies of the ontogeny of prosocial behavior show that by middle childhood, children’s prosocial behavior conforms to that of local adults. Furthermore, by this stage, children are susceptible to the manipulation of explicit normative information. However, their propensity to extract or infer normative information from the environment and change their behavior accordingly has not been investigated. Here, we assess whether children 1) rapidly infer local prosocial norms in a novel, realistic social environment, 2) extend these inferences to norms for unobserved behaviors, and 3) alter their behavior in the novel environment to align with the inferred norms while still 4) maintaining their baseline prosocial behavior outside of the novel environment. We used questionnaires to measure children’s perceived pro- and antisocial descriptive norms in their Own Neighborhoods as well as in a novel “Neighborhood X,” to which they were introduced via a slideshow. Norms for Neighborhood X diverged drastically dependent upon which slideshow they witnessed (Prosocial or Antisocial condition), a result robust to the exclusion of questions about norms for behaviors observed in the slideshow. Children’s perceptions of prosocial norms in their Own Neighborhoods predicted their prosocial behavior (Dictator Game) in their Own Neighborhood. Moreover, even though information about giving behavior was not presented in the slideshow, inferred norms for Neighborhood X predicted children’s prosocial behavior in that neighborhood as well. These changes in prosocial behavior were transitory and specific to Neighborhood X; prosocial behavior in a separate “Helping Task” was best predicted by prosocial norms within the children’s Own Neighborhoods. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that humans have a propensity to rapidly infer and conform to local prosocial norms, thus maintaining group differences in prosocial behavior, and further indicate that this propensity is in operation by middle childhood.

While the adverse effects of economic inequality on prosocial behavior have been well-documented, the dynamic processes and underlying mechanisms during emerging adulthood remain equivocal. Whether this relation is consistent across different socioeconomic status groups also awaits to be unveiled. To address these gaps, this three-year longitudinal study shed light on the developmental nature of subjective economic inequality, trust, as well as prosocial behavior, and the nuance within such associations across low- and high-socioeconomic status groups. This study collected data from 1065 Chinese emerging adults (649 females; Mage = 18.34 years, SD = 0.77) at Time 1, with 981 (attrition rate = 7.88%), 874 (attrition rate = 10.91%), and 830 (attrition rate = 5.03%) participating in Time 2, Time 3, and Time 4, respectively. Results of latent growth modeling found that subjective economic inequality increased, whereas trust and prosocial behavior declined over time. Initial levels of subjective economic inequality were indirectly through initial trust linked to the initial levels of and changes in prosocial behavior. Multi-group results revealed that in the high-socioeconomic status group, initial subjective economic inequality affected subsequent growth in prosocial behavior via changes in trust, whereas in the low-socioeconomic status group, the effect occurred through initial trust. These findings highlight that declining trust is the central mechanism by which subjective economic inequality reduces prosocial behavior, with different influencing pathways across socioeconomic status groups in the Chinese cultural context.

Youth today spend a tremendous amount of time with digital media. The purpose of the present study was to estimate developmental associations between screen media use between the ages of 15 and 17 and corresponding changes in prosocial behavior. Participants (N = 1,509) were part of the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development, a population-based study of children born in the province of Quebec, Canada. Youth self-reported internet and video game use and television or movies/DVD viewing, as well as prosocial behavior at the ages of 15 and 17. Analyses were conducted using multilevel linear modelling to account for between-, within-, and lagged-person effects. Internet and video game use accounted for less prosocial behavior at the within-person and lagged-person levels. Television use also accounted for lagged-person effects in prosocial behavior. Finally, internet use and television viewing contributed to between person differences in prosocial behavior. Our study presents strong statistical evidence that media use during adolescence can undermine the development of prosocial behavior.

Objectives: This study aimed to classify latent groups based on the developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior in early childhood. In addition, it aimed to verify whether peer play interactions (play interaction, play disruption, and play disconnection) and self-control during preschool years have significant influences on the classification of latent groups.Methods: This study included 1,201 children(617 males, 51.4%; 584 females, 48.6%) drawn from the 7th, and 9th-11th waves of the Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC). Latent class growth modeling was used to analyze the data.Results: The patterns of changes in prosocial behavior in early childhood were classified into three groups: high-increasing, moderate-stable, and low-decreasing. Among the predictors, play interaction, play disruption, and self-control significantly affected the classification of the latent groups. Specifically, children who exhibited high levels of play interaction and low levels of play disruption during the preschool years were more likely to belong to the high-increasing group, indicating a more positive prosocial behavior. However, those with low self-control were more likely to belong to the low-decreasing group, showing a relatively negative developmental trajectory of prosocial behavior.Conclusion: This study confirmed heterogeneities in the developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior in early childhood, differentially predicted by preschool-age peer interaction qualities and self-regulation. The findings highlight the importance of taking a comprehensive approach in early childhood education to enhance children's prosocial behavior development utilizing both interpersonal and intrapersonal factors during preschool years.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming much of society in a short time. Regardless of whether we know it, we interact with AI systems when we seek information online, shop, work, and engage with social media. AI has massive potential to promote human wellbeing but also poses considerable risks, as set out in an open letter signed by leaders in the field, such as Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI”. This paper examines how AI can be used as a powerful tool to change pro-social behaviors as part of social marketing programs. We examine opportunities to build on existing efforts to use AI for pro-social behavior changes and the challenges and potential risks that AI may pose. The specific aims of the paper are to explore how AI can be used in social marketing policy, strategy development, and operational delivery. We also explore what this means for future social marketing practice. We present an overview of case studies from the social marketing field and the application of AI in the past, present, and future. We examine the following key question: can these new technologies can be used to promote social good, and if so, how? Through examples from policy, strategy development, operations, and research in social marketing, we examine how AI has been used and successfully applied to improve consumer outcomes and analyze its implications for social marketing. We conclude that AI has substantial promise but also poses some challenges and has potential negative impacts on efforts to promote pro-social behavior changes. Used well, AI may enable social marketers to more rapidly assess how to modify programs of action to ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness. We suggest future research and programs within this field.

(1) Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has collectively increased stress levels, with individuals making difficult choices between protecting themselves and helping others. Previous research has shown that people engage in more prosocial, or helping, behavior as they age and in moments of acute stress, but it is unclear how c stress has influenced perceived changes in prosocial behavior in the later stages of the pandemic and whether this varies across the lifespan. (2) Methods: The current study explored how perceived stress, age, and gender impact participants’ reports of perceived changes in their prosocial behavior due to the pandemic using survey questions administered through an online subject pool (n = 201). (3) Results: Hierarchical linear regression results revealed results indicated a significant main effect of perceived stress (β = −0.166, p = 0.021) and age (β = −0.217, p = 0.003) but not gender (β = −0.062, p = 0.370) on perceptions of how one’s prosocial behavior was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. (4) Conclusions: Study findings showed that older adults and individuals with higher levels of perceived stress reported a decrease in their prosocial behavior, which supported our hypotheses. These findings provide unique insight into the influence of a long-term health crisis on different groups of people’s participation in prosocial behavior, with implications for mental health and community engagement during a pandemic.

Holding a low social position among peers has been widely demonstrated to be associated with the development of depressive and aggressive symptoms in children. However, little is known about potential protective factors in this association. The present study examined whether increases in children’s prosocial behavior can buffer the association between their low social preference among peers and the development of depressive and aggressive symptoms in the first few school years. We followed 324 children over 1.5 years with three assessments across kindergarten and first grade elementary school. Children rated the (dis)likability of each of their classroom peers and teachers rated each child’s prosocial behavior, depressive and aggressive symptoms. Results showed that low social preference at the start of kindergarten predicted persistent low social preference at the start of first grade in elementary school, which in turn predicted increases in both depressive and aggressive symptoms at the end of first grade. However, the indirect pathways were moderated by change in prosocial behavior. Specifically, for children whose prosocial behavior increased during kindergarten, low social preference in first grade elementary school no longer predicted increases in depressive and aggressive symptoms. In contrast, for children whose prosocial behavior did not increase, their low social preference in first grade elementary school continued to predict increases in both depressive and aggressive symptoms. These results suggest that improving prosocial behavior in children with low social preference as early as kindergarten may reduce subsequent risk of developing depressive and aggressive symptom.