Prosocial Behavior

Empathy Circles are a hands on, walking the talk, empathy practice. The circles are based in science from many different disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, biology, philosophy and arts (i.e. dance and literature). When developing the empathy circles, we did not want to get fussy over the term while getting distracted from the real important outcomes of the volumes of books, scientific studies and practices developed. We therefore decided to take a blended approach to empathy and started to actually practice in the empathy circles what all these different disciplines had to say about it. We blended science and practice to both decipher what empathy looks and feels like as well as figure out what works and what does not work in practice. Combining the different disciplines lead us to propose five phases of empathy: Self-empathy, mirrored empathy, reflective empathy, imaginative empathy and empathic creativity or -action. At the core of these five phases of empathy are different levels of synchronicity between two or more people.

Empathy Circles are meant to be a hands-on method in supporting your practice.

Is gratitude developmentally related to improvements in social behavior? This study examined 566 adolescents (51.6% female, M age = 11.95 years at baseline, 68.0% White, 11.0% African-American, 9.9% Asian-American, 1.9% Hispanic, 8.8% “Other”) from middle school to high school for 4 years. Controlling for social desirability, age, SES, and gender, gratitude growth predicted decreases in antisocial behavior over 4 years, and life satisfaction growth marginally mediated this relation. Further, gratitude growth predicted increases in prosocial behavior over 4 years, but life satisfaction did not mediate this relation. Reverse models were also examined. Antisocial behavior growth predicted gratitude change, which was mediated by life satisfaction growth. Prosocial behavior growth predicted gratitude change, but was not mediated by life satisfaction growth. Finally, gratitude growth predicted family support, trust, and intentional self-regulation at the 4 year timepoint, and it predicted empathy with marginal significance. Implications for theory and educational applications are discussed.

In deze handleiding wordt gespecificeerd hoe de aanpak van pesten en andere vormen van agressief gedrag in scholen kan worden gesteund via passende Informatie- en Communicatie Technologie. De inbreng en mede-verantwoordelijkheid van leerlingen speelt een zeer essentiele rol in de pedagogiek die hier wordt voorgestaan. De eigen meetbare, positieve resultaten kunnen door de leerlingen steeds worden verbeterd.

This study aims to identify the impact of social media use on user's prosocial behavior. In today's development of technology, there is no doubt that internet needs are increasingly dominant in everyday life, both in socialization, education, business and others. Social media has a huge impact on one's life. For society, especially among adolescents, social media has become a necessity that makes it a consumer no day without opening social media. Does the use of social media affect the prosocial behavior of a user? Prosocial behavior refers to behavior that can benefit other people around it. Prosocial behavior is often regarded as the foundation of human relationships and has a positive value. The research used was a survey. The questionnaire used has 3 parts. Part A is demographic, part B is a social media usage pattern. While part C is prosocial behavior. The results showed that alpha chroma values ​​were high at 0.915. The sample involved 350 active social media ...

This study investigated the relationship between the monetary giving and volunteering behavior of adolescents and the role-modeling and conversations about giving provided by their parents. The participants are a large nationally-representative sample of 12-18 yearolds from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics' Child Development Supplement (n ¼ 1244). Adolescents reported whether they gave money and whether they volunteered. In a separate interview parents reported whether they talked to their adolescent about giving. In a third interview, parents reported whether they gave money and volunteered. The results show that both role-modeling and conversations about giving are strongly related to adolescents' giving and volunteering. Knowing that both role-modeling and conversation are strongly related to adolescents' giving and volunteering suggests an often overlooked way for practitioners and policy-makers to nurture giving and volunteering among adults: start earlier, during adolescence, by guiding parents in their role-modeling of, and conversations about, charitable giving and volunteering. Ó Educators, community leaders, and policy-makers expend considerable effort to encourage adults to perform two particular prosocial behaviorsgiving money to charities that help people and giving time in voluntary service. Adult giving and volunteering are most likely part of an ongoing pattern of behavior that began much earlier in development, and both theory and laboratory-based experimental work suggest that role-modeling and conversations about prosocial behavior will affect the development of prosocial behavior ). Yet we know very little about the effectiveness of parental efforts to encourage these behaviors in nationally-representative population studies that describe U.S. adolescents in their natural settings. This represents a significant gap in our understanding. As Eisenberg and Mussen (1989, p. 156) point out:

Recognizing that violent behavior is a complex phenomenon that is manifested in many different ways, the focus of this paper is to inform the development and implementation of school-based violence prevention strategies. The Second Step Program of the Jefferson County Public Schools is highlighted as an example of a successful violence prevention program for kindergarten through middle school aged children. Second Step is designed to prevent aggressive behavior by increasing prosocial behavior, reflected by competence in peer interactions and in interpersonal conflict resolution skills. Based on the habits of thought model that violence can be unlearned, Second Step includes activities to help students acquire empathy, impulse control, problem solving, and anger management skills. An evaluation of the program revealed that the Second Step curriculum provides positive effects on the central measures of empathy, impulse control, problem solving, and anger management. (Contains 39 references and 3 tables.) (GCP) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.

This article examines social integration of deaf children in inclusive settings in The Netherlands. Eighteen Grade 1-5 deaf children and their 344 hearing classmates completed 2 sociometric tasks, peer ratings and peer nomination, to measure peer acceptance, social competence, and friendship relations. Deaf and hearing children were found to be similar in their peer acceptance and friendship relations, but differences occurred in social competence. Deaf children scored lower than hearing children on prosocial behavior and higher on socially withdrawn behavior. Structural equation modeling showed peer acceptance, social competence, and friendship relations to be stable over time, and the structure of interrelations between variables at 2 measurements were found to be the same for deaf and hearing participants.

There is growing recognition of the need to examine distinct forms of prosocial behaviors and to conduct research on prosocial behaviors among ethnic minorities. Middle school students (mean age 5 12.67 years; 54% girls; European American, n 5 290; Mexican American, n 5 152) completed a multidimensional measure of prosocial behavior and measures of parental monitoring, externalizing behaviors, and religiosity. Results yield supportive evidence that anonymous, dire, emotional, compliant, public, and altruism are different forms of prosocial behaviors. Moreover, the measure of prosocial behaviors shows measurement equivalence properties across ethnicity and gender. The discussion focuses on the multidimensional nature of prosocial behaviors and implications for future research on prosocial behaviors. JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE, 20(2), 334-358 r

Mental health problems in children represent a significant international health concern, with up to one in five children using mental health services during the course of any given year. Identifying the processes of what prevents social, emotional and behaviour difficulties (SEBD) and promotes healthy development from an early age can make a significant contribution to the promotion of positive mental health in children. This article describes a longitudinal study which sought to identify the risk and promotive factors as young children move from the early to junior years in primary school. Multilevel analysis was used to identify the individual, classroom, school, home and community factors that predict change in SEBD and in prosocial behaviour in the early school years. It also calculated the cumulative effect of the various risk and promotive factors on the pupils' well-being and mental health. The article presents the windows of vulnerability and opportunity for young children's healthy development, proposing a trajectory for healthy development in early and middle childhood.

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Food sharing offers a clear example of prosocial behaviour, in which one individual's actions benefit another. Researchers have proposed a range of hypotheses that explain why food sharing may occur among unrelated individuals. Two such hypotheses, reciprocity and dominance, have been tested in many species, including fish, corvids, rats, bats and primates, showing that (1) recipients sometimes reciprocate sharing back to previous donors and (2) dominant individuals share more than subordinates. Although primates dominate the study of prosocial behaviour, active donation of food is actually quite rare in primates. In contrast, several corvid species spontaneously share food much more frequently. Here, we explored the role of reciprocity and dominance in spontaneous food sharing among male pinyon jays, Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus, a North American corvid species that exhibits high levels of social complexity. Unlike much of the previous work, we tested prosocial behaviour among unr...

Aristotle considered moral beauty to be the telos of the human virtues. Displays of moral beauty have been shown to elicit the moral emotion of elevation and cause a desire to become a better person and to engage in prosocial behavior. Study 1 (N = 5380) shows engagement with moral beauty is related to several psychological constructs relevant to moral education, and structural models reveal that the story of engagement with moral beauty may be considered a story of love and connectedness; it is uniquely predictive of caring for, being empathic of, loving, and valuing benevolence toward others. Study 2 (N = 542) demonstrates that the personality trait of engaging with moral beauty moderates susceptibility to elevation. These studies suggest that encouraging students to engage with moral beauty might increase their desire to become better persons and to do good. Convergent with other research showing that moral emotions motivate moral behavior, we suggest that moral education programs increase their focus on developing engagement with moral beauty.

The aim of this paper is to present the preliminary empirical results of qualitative research that examines the junior-age-children´s understanding of a prosocial behavior present in fairy tale characters. The reasons for this research were the unsatisfying results in the PIRLS reading literacy measures achieved by Slovak pupils on the one hand, and the underrated position the formative function of literary texts has in Slovak classroom practice on the other hand. Besides other theories the research builds on the premise that literary text has „the potential to encourage prosocial behavior in children, but this aspect has been only minimally explored“ (Aram, Deitcher, Shoshan, & Ziv, 2017, pp. 157–158). Our research has qualitative, exploratory character; therefore, hypotheses are not formulated. On the contrary, an inductive approach is utilized. The focus is put on three key concepts: prosocial behavior, literary characters, and children´s reading comprehension. The research sample consists of both a set of literary texts (fairy tales) and the groups of pupils (3rd and 4th graders). The research was conducted in four phases: 1) theoretical analysis of prosocial behavior with focus on child´s prosocial development (see Schroeder & Graziano, 2015); 2) content analysis of Slovak fairy tales and the identification of characters with prosocial behavior (see Stanislavová, 2013); 3) designing the literary prosocial role models; 4) examination of children´s fairy tale reading comprehension and their understanding of the prosocial literary role model. In the last research phase the procedure of shared reading was used (see e.g. Tennent, 2015). The empirical data were collected via the research methods of observation, semi-structured interview and content analysis of children´s multimodal text reflection. Preliminary research findings imply the positive impact of shared reading on children´s successful inference making. Moreover, shared reading of the selected fairy tales seems to promote children´s processing of their individual interpretation of prosocial behavior found in literary characters. The findings may be beneficial for elaborating the shared reading strategies in primary literary education, what would foster the formative function of literary reading.

The present study tests whether aggression and prosocial behavior can coexist as part of a socially functional and adaptive profile among early adolescents. Using a person-centered approach, the study examined early adolescents' likelihood of being classified into profiles involving aggressive and prosocial behavior, social status (popular, liked, cool), machiavellianism, and both affective and cognitive components of empathy (empathic concern and perspective taking, respectively).  Participants were 1170 early adolescents (10-12 years of age; 52% male) from four schools in metropolitan Santiago, Chile. Through latent profile analysis, three profiles emerged (normative-low aggressive, high prosocial-low aggressive, and high aggressive-high popular status). Both empathic concern and perspective taking were higher in the high prosocial-low aggressive profile, whereas the high aggressive-high popular status profile had the lowest scores on both empathy components as well as machiavellianism. No profile emerged where aggressive and prosocial behaviors were found to co-exist, or to be significantly above the mean. The results underscore that aggressive behavior is highly contextual and likely culturally specific, and that the study of behavioral profiles should consider social status as well as socio-emotional adjustment indicators. These complex associations should be taken into consideration when planning prevention and intervention efforts to reduce aggression or school bullying and to promote positive peer relationships.

We investigate how implicit influences of Christian religious representations affect prosociality. We examine the direct impact of religion as an independent variable on prosocial behavior. We do so by priming participants with religious words in a scrambled sentence task before they make a dictator game and a prisoner's dilemma game decision. Priming religious words significantly increased prosocial behavior in both games: participants in the treatment group were more generous and cooperative than participants in the control group. The priming effect was present regardless of participants' self-reported religiosity. Self-reported religiosity was not correlated with generosity or cooperation.

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Three studies explore the effects of perspective-specific justice sensitivity on indicators of both prosocial behavior (i.e., existential guilt, solidarity, and responsibility ascriptions towards the disadvantaged) and antisocial behavior (i.e., the willingness to transgress a norm in a moral temptation dilemma). On the basis of theoretical considerations and earlier findings it is expected that being sensitive towards injustice from a beneficiary's perspective is associated positively with prosocial and negatively with antisocial behavior, whereas the opposite should be true for being sensitive towards injustice from a victim's perspective. The results from all three studies support these hypotheses. It is argued that JS-beneficiary indicates a genuine, "other-oriented" concern for justice and social responsibility, whereas JS-victim indicates a mixture of "self-related" and justice-related concerns.

Friendships between individuals can be found throughout lifespans. This study examined an interaction between adolescents who consider themselves close friends. Inspection of friends' interaction when working on a joint task may allow the classification of close friendships in adolescence. In addition friends were asked about their jojr.t daily activities to allow the detection of possible characteristics of interaction across friendship types. The study also examined adolescents' conceptions of friendship across various possible types of friendship. Subjects (N=90) included 23 pairs of female and 22 pairs of male Israeli 10th graders who identified themselves as friends. Analysis revealed three main patterns of adolescents' close friendships: interdependent, enmeshed, and disengaged. The three types reflect different qualities of relationships at the dyadic level which transcend the behavior of individuals. In the interdependent type friends were close to each another and they also respected each other's personal views and preferences. In the enmeshed type friends were very close to each another, it was very important to them to act in consensus, and they suppressed individual preferences for a greater sense of closeness and unity. In the disengaged type each partner emphasized individuality and separateness while working on a joint task.

This study examined the role of pro-victim attitudes, personal responsibility, coping responses to observations of bullying, and perceived peer normative pressure in explaining defending the victim and passive bystanding behavior in bullying. A total of 462 Italian early adolescents (mean age = 13.4 years, SD = 9 months) participated in the study. The behaviors were measured through two informants: each individual student and the teachers. The findings of a series of hierarchical regressions showed that, regardless of the informant, problem solving coping strategies and perceived peer normative pressure for intervention were positively associated with active help towards a bullied peer and negatively related to passivity. In contrast, distancing strategies were positively associated with passive bystanding, whereas they were negatively associated with teacher-reported defending behavior. Moreover, self-reported defending behavior was positively associated with personal responsibility for intervention, but only under conditions of low perceived peer pressure. Finally, the perception of peer pressure for intervention buffered the negative influence of distancing on passive bystanding tendencies. Future directions are discussed.

In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of volunteering activities for young people at improving their non cognitive skills and other employability measures, including a Trier social stress test, in three randomised trials in the UK. We find significant improvements in non cognitive skills but more most (but indicative) improvements in performance in an interview measure.

This longitudinal research examined a structural model of the self-regulatory mechanisms governing transgressive conduct. Perceived academic and self-regulatory efficacy concurrently and longitudinally deterred transgressiveness both directly and by fostering prosocialness and adherence to moral selfsanctions for harmful conduct. The impact of perceived social self-efficacy was mediated through prosocialness. Moral disengagement and prosocialness affected transgressiveness through the mediating influence of irascible affectivity and hostile rumination. Ruminative affectivity, in turn, both concurrently and longitudinally affected transgressiveness. Moral disengagement also contributed independently to variance in transgressiveness over time. This pattern of relations was obtained after controlling for prior transgressiveness. The structural model was replicated across gender and provided a better fit to the data than did several alternative models. Social cognitive theory analyzes human self-development, adaptation, and change from an agentic perspective . The capacity to exercise some measure of control over one's thought processes, motivation, affect, and action operates through mechanisms of personal agency. Diverse lines of research have documented the prominent role that self-regulatory mechanisms play in the development and pursuit of socially valued life

Research was conducted to assess young preschoolers' knowledge of emotion and to explore the relation between children's understanding of emotion and their prosocial behavior. This discussion briefly describes measures devised to investigate knowledge of emotion, and outlines findings. Also discussed are relations between knowledge of emotion and social competence, as rated by teacher and peers. In addition, the discussion covers research in progress that investigates relations between knowledge of emotion and socialization variables, such as the mother's attitudes about emotionality, her expressed emotions, and her discussion of emotion with the child. (RH)

PeaceBuilders is a universal, elementary-school-based violence prevention program that attempts to alter the climate of a school by teaching students and staff simple rules and activities aimed at improving child social competence and reducing aggressive behavior. Eight matched schools (N Ͼ 4,000 students in Grades K-5) were randomly assigned to either immediate postbaseline intervention (PBI) or to a delayed intervention 1 year later (PBD). Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze results from assessments in the fall and spring of 2 consecutive school years. In Year 1, significant gains in teacher-rated social competence for students in Grades K-2, in child self-reported peace-building behavior in Grades K-5, and reductions in aggressive behavior in Grades 3-5 were found for PBI but not PBD schools. Differential effects in Year 1 were also observed for aggression and prosocial behavior. Most effects were maintained in Year 2 for PBI schools, including increases in child prosocial behavior in Grades K-2. Implications for early universal school-based prevention and challenges related to evaluating large-scale prevention trials are discussed.

This study examined the role of pro-victim attitudes, personal responsibility, coping responses to observations of bullying, and perceived peer normative pressure in explaining defending the victim and passive bystanding behavior in bullying. A total of 462 Italian early adolescents (mean age= 13.4 years, SD=9 months) participated in the study. The behaviors were measured through two informants: each individual student and the teachers. The findings of a series of hierarchical regressions showed that, regardless of the informant, problem solving coping strategies and perceived peer normative pressure for intervention were positively associated with active help towards a bullied peer and negatively related to passivity. In contrast, distancing strategies were positively associated with passive bystanding, whereas they were negatively associated with teacher-reported defending behavior. Moreover, self-reported defending behavior was positively associated with personal responsibility for intervention, but only under conditions of low perceived peer pressure. Finally, the perception of peer pressure for intervention buffered the negative influence of distancing on passive bystanding tendencies. Future directions are discussed.

Children in three suburban elementary schools participated for 5 consecutive years (kindergarten through fourth grade) in a comprehensive intervention program designed to enhance prosocial development. Children in three similar schools served as a comparison group. Cognitive-social problem-solving skills and strategies were assessed annually using one of two different hypothetical-reflective interview measures: one focusing on situations involving conflicts with a peer, and the other on object acquisition and peer group entry situations. The conflict resolution interview was administered to the children in kindergarten, second, and fourth grades, while the object acquisition and peer group entry interview was administered in first and third grades. Classroom observations indicated that the program was implemented during each of the 5 years. Analyses of the social problem-solving data indicated that program children scored significantly higher on measures of cognitive problemsolving skills (i.e., interpersonal sensitivity, consideration of others' needs, and means-ends thinking), and used resolution strategies which were significantly more prosocial than comparison children. Moreover, the differences between program and comparison children in their approaches to solving hypothetical problem situations generally increased from kindergarten through fourth grade, and were replicated among a second cohort of children at kindergarten and first grade. These findings suggest that a comprehensive intervention program which is embedded within the normal classroom and school environment con be of considerable benefit in enhancing children's social competencies.

This manuscript presents the results of a pilot study, Kuykuitin. A project that provides history teachers of elite schools in Chile with firsthand contact with history teachers in an intercultural school in the Araucanía. This region is the conflict zone with higher levels of violence between the Mapuche and the Chilean State. The pilot study analyzes the perceptions of the students of elite schools in the city's capital -Santiago -about the Mapuche and the present-day conflict, before and after their history teachers participated in the Kuykuitin project.

Children's perceptions of popular and unpopular peers were examined in 2 studies. Study 1 examined the degree to which 4th-8th-grade boys and girls (N ϭ 408) nominated the same peers for multiple criteria. Children viewed liked others as prosocial and disliked others as antisocial but associated perceived popularity with both prosocial and antisocial behavior. In Study 2, a subset of the children from Study 1 (N ϭ 92) described what makes boys and girls popular or unpopular. Children described popular peers as attractive with frequent peer interactions, and unpopular peers as unattractive, deviant, incompetent, and socially isolated. In both studies, children's perceptions varied as a function of the gender, age, and ethnicity of the participants.

Fostering emotional skills in the elementary (primary) school classroom can lead to improved learning outcomes, more prosocial behavior, and positive emotional development. Incorporating emotional skill development into the naturalistic and implicit teaching environment is a key feature of what is meant by the emotional climate of the classroom. The emotional content of spontaneous teacher-student interactions was of interest in the current study. The investigation focused on how teachers manage emotional events and, in particular, what positive strategies they use while doing so. A total of 60 hours of observation took place in the classrooms of six teachers who had been nominated for having exceptional positive classroom environments. These observations were reduced to prominent themes: (1) fostering classroom relationships, (2) setting and managing emotional guidelines, (3) being emotionally aware, and (4) managing emotional situations. The study provided support for Harvey and Evans' (2003) model of the classroom emotional climate.

Prosocial behaviour has its roots in infancy and early childhood. To fully capture its importance it is essential to understand how it develops across ages, the factors that contribute to individual differences, its moral and value bases, the clinical aspects of low and excessive prosocial behaviour, and its relevance for schooling.

This study examined the concurrent relationship between participation in extracurricular activities and externalizing and internalizing problems and social school behavior in a Spanish community sample, separately for boys (n 5 439) and girls (n 5 428), enrolled in 2nd, 4th, or 6th grades. emotional and behavioral adjustment and social competence. Overall, the relations were low and different according to gender, type of activity, and informant. Better adjustment was more related to participation in sports activities in boys and to participation in nonsports activities in girls. Size effect was higher for girls and decreased for both boys and girls when parental education and parenting practices were considered. Findings supported previous results obtained in American adolescents. C 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The study investigated how role models' behavior may positively or negatively influence African American early adolescents' attitudes toward violence and violent behavior. Participants in this study included 331 African American seventh and eighth graders from low-income neighborhoods in an urban, Midwestern city. The study used a model developed and tested to assess the relationships between role model prosocial behavior, role model antisocial behavior, adolescents' attitudes toward violence, and adolescents' violent behavior. The model developed was assessed using structural equation modeling. Results revealed the following: (a) Role model prosocial behavior is indirectly related to less violent behavior through adolescents' attitudes toward violence, (b) role model antisocial behavior is directly linked to increased violent behavior and indirectly linked to increased violent behavior through adolescents' attitudes toward violence, and (c) role model antisocial behavior appear to have a stronger effect on African American early adolescents' violent behavior than role model prosocial behavior. Possible explanations for study findings and implications are discussed.

Gratitude is an important aspect of human sociality, and is valued by religions and moral philosophies. It has been established that gratitude leads to benefits for both mental health and interpersonal relationships. It is thus important to elucidate the neurobiological correlates of gratitude, which are only now beginning to be investigated. To this end, we conducted an experiment during which we induced gratitude in participants while they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. We hypothesized that gratitude ratings would correlate with activity in brain regions associated with moral cognition, value judgment and theory of mind. The stimuli used to elicit gratitude were drawn from stories of survivors of the Holocaust, as many survivors report being sheltered by strangers or receiving lifesaving food and clothing, and having strong feelings of gratitude for such gifts. The participants were asked to place themselves in the context of the Holocaust and imagine what their own experience would feel like if they received such gifts. For each gift, they rated how grateful they felt. The results revealed that ratings of gratitude correlated with brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex, in support of our hypotheses. The results provide a window into the brain circuitry for moral cognition and positive emotion that accompanies the experience of benefitting from the goodwill of others.

Despite the widespread interest in the topic of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), little empirical research has tested the fundamental assumption that these forms of behavior improve the effectiveness of work groups or organizations in which they are exhibited. In the present study, the effects of OCBs on the quantity and quality of the performance of 218 people working in 40 machine crews in a paper mill located in the Northeastern United States were examined. The results indicate that helping behavior and sportsmanship had significant effects on performance quantity and that helping behavior had a significant impact on performance quality. However, civic virtue had no effect on either performance measure.

This study addresses the effects of security cameras on prosocial behavior. Results from previous studies indicate that the presence of others can trigger helping behavior, arising from the need for approval of others. Extending these findings, the authors propose that security cameras can likewise trigger such approval-seeking behaviors by implying the presence of a watchful eye. Because people vary in the extent to which they strive for others' approval, it was expected that the effects of security cameras on prosocial behavior vary with participants' need for approval. To test these predictions, an experimental study was conducted with "presence of security camera" and "need for approval" as independent variables. Results showed that participants indeed offered more help in the presence of a security camera but only to the extent that this helping involved public or observable behavior. As expected, this effect was more pronounced for individuals high in need for approval. Practical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.