Prosocial Tendencies among Chinese American Children in Immigrant Families: Links to Cultural and Socio‐demographic Factors and Psychological Adjustment

The present study examined relations between prosocial tendencies (dispositional sympathy and prosocial behavior) and psychological adjustment using a multi‐method and multi‐informant approach in a socioeconomically diverse sample of first‐ and second‐generation Chinese American children from immigrant families (N = 238, M age = 9.2 years). We tested the concurrent associations between: (a) children's dispositional sympathy (rated by parents, teachers, and children, and observed prosocial behavior), (b) psychological adjustment (parent‐ and teacher‐reported externalizing problems and social competence); and (c) cultural and socio‐demographic factors (children's Chinese and American orientations, family Socioeconomic Status (SES), only child status, and children's age, sex, and social desirability). Results from correlations and structural equation modeling suggested that different measures of prosocial tendencies related differently to children's psychological adjustment. Parent‐ and teacher‐rated sympathy were associated with higher child social competence and lower externalizing problems within, but not across, reporter. By contrast, child‐rated sympathy was associated with higher teacher‐rated social competence, and observed prize donation was associated with lower teacher‐rated externalizing problems. Different measures of prosocial tendencies also showed different relations to cultural and socio‐demographic factors. These findings suggest that prosocial tendencies are not a unitary construct in Chinese American immigrant children: the manifestations of prosocial tendencies and their adjustment implications might depend on the context and/or targets of these tendencies.     

Longitudinal Relations Among Parental Emotional Expressivity and Sympathy and Prosocial Behavior in Adolescence

Concurrent and longitudinal relations among parental emotional expressivity, children's sympathy and children's prosocial behavior were assessed with correlations and structural equation modeling when the children were 55–97 months old (N = 214; M age = 73 months, SD = 9.59) and eight years later (N = 130; ages 150–195 months old, M = 171 months, SD = 10.01). Parent emotional expressivity (positive and negative) and children's sympathy were stable across time and early parent‐reported sympathy predicted adolescents' sympathy and prosocial behavior. Parents' positive expressivity was positively related to sympathy and prosocial behavior, but in adolescence, this was likely primarily because of consistency over time. Early observed parental negative expressivity was negatively related to adolescents' prosocial behavior. Reported negative expressivity in childhood was negatively related to boys' sympathy in childhood and positively related to girls' sympathy behavior in adolescence. The later relation remained significant when controlling for the stability of parental expressivity and sympathy, suggesting an emerging positive relation between the variables for girls.     

Longitudinal relations of preschoolers’ dispositional and situational anger to their prosocial behavior: The moderating role of shyness

Generally, research on children’s anger and prosocial outcomes has been inconsistent, perhaps because researchers have overlooked nuances in children’s anger, such as whether the emotion is situational versus dispositional or is in response to blocked goals versus violations of moral principles (e.g., unfairness). Additionally, mixed findings may be due to potential moderators such as shyness. In this study, we investigated the unique relations of children’s (n = 192, 54.7% boys; M_age = 41.75 months) dispositional and situational anger in response to unfairness at 42 months old to their prosocial behavior toward strangers a year later. Further, we examined whether children’s shyness moderated the relations. Longitudinal models controlling for stability of the constructs showed that dispositional anger was unrelated to prosocial behavior whereas situational anger positively predicted later prosocial behavior. Further, children’s shyness moderated the relation between situational anger (but not dispositional anger) and prosocial behavior. For shy children, prosocial behavior toward strangers was low, regardless of anger; for those who were low or average in shyness, situational anger positively predicted prosocial behavior. The findings suggest that when children are not too shy to approach strangers, anger in response to unfairness may be an important precursor for later other‐oriented moral tendencies.     

Executive function and theory of mind as predictors of aggressive and prosocial behavior and peer acceptance in early childhood

Executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) are related to children's social interactions, such as aggression and prosocial behavior, as well as their peer acceptance. However, limited research has examined different forms of aggression and the moderating role of gender. This study investigated links between EF, ToM, physical and relational aggression, prosocial behavior and peer acceptance and explored whether these relations are gender specific. Children (N = 106) between 46‐ and 80‐months‐old completed tasks assessing cool and hot EF and ToM. Teaching staff rated children's aggression, prosocial behavior, and peer acceptance. EF and ToM predicted physical, but not relational, aggression. Poor inhibition and delay of gratification were uniquely associated with greater physical aggression. EF and ToM did not predict prosocial behavior or peer acceptance. Added to this, gender did not moderate the relation between either EF or ToM and social outcomes. The correlates of aggression may therefore differ across forms of aggression but not between genders in early childhood.     

Predicting Children's Prosocial and Co‐operative Behavior from Their Temperamental Profiles: A Person‐centered Approach

The goal of this study was to examine how aspects of self‐regulation and negative emotionality predicted children's co‐operative and prosocial behavior concurrently and longitudinally using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Mothers completed measures of children's temperamental proneness to negative emotionality and self‐regulation at 54 months. Teachers and parents completed measures of children's co‐operative and prosocial behavior at 54 months, first grade, and third grade. A latent profile analysis of the temperamental variables revealed four profiles of children: those high in regulation and low in negative emotionality, those moderate in regulation and moderate in negative emotionality, those low in regulation and high in negative emotionality, and finally those who were very low in regulation but high in anger emotionality. Generally, children with profiles that were high or moderate in terms of regulation and low or moderate in terms of negative emotionality were rated as the most prosocial and co‐operative. Children with profiles that were less well regulated and who were high in negative emotionality (particularly anger proneness) were rated as less co‐operative and prosocial by parents and teachers.     

Affiliation motivates children’s prosocial behaviors: Relating helping and comforting to imitation

The current study focuses on the motivation that drives children's prosocial behavior by analyzing the association between prosocial behavior and children's imitative tendencies, which is a well‐established indicator of the motivation to affiliate with others. Therefore, we tested 30‐month‐old children (N = 59) in an imitation task and two domains of prosocial behavior, namely helping and comforting. Using a confirmatory factor analysis, we demonstrated that the two prosocial domains were explained by a common factor, which was in turn significantly related to children's imitation. Overall, our findings suggest that affiliative motives should be considered in order to better understand children's motivations to engage in prosocial behaviors.     

Children's Perceptions of Family Relationships as Assessed in a Doll Story Completion Task: Links to Parenting, Social Competence, and Externalizing Behavior

This study was designed to examine the links between parenting, children's perceptions of family relationships, and children's social behavior. Seventy‐four children (M age=6.01 years; 39 boys; 35 girls) and their parents took part in the study. Children completed relationship‐oriented doll stories that were coded for coherence, prosocial themes, and aggressive themes. Parents completed a report of their child's social behavior, a parenting scale, and a number of demographic items. Teachers also completed measures of children's social competence and externalizing behavior. Warm parenting predicted both a child's representation of prosocial themes in the doll stories and social competence, whereas harsh parenting predicted both a child's use of aggressive themes in the doll stories and a child's externalizing behavior. These findings support the idea that children are constructing models of relationships out of the early interactions with caregivers, and that they use these representations to guide their social behavior.     

Relations over Time among Children's Shyness,Emotionality, and Internalizing Problems

Data regarding children's shyness and emotionality were collected at three time points, two years apart (T1: N = 214, M = 6.12 years; T2: N = 185, M = 7.67 years; T3: N = 185, M = 9.70 years), and internalizing data were collected at T1 and T3. Relations among parent‐rated shyness, emotionality [parent‐ and teacher‐rated anger, sadness, and positive emotional intensity (EI)], and mother‐rated internalizing were examined in panel models. In some cases, shyness predicted emotionality two years later (teacher‐rated anger, parent‐rated sadness, and teacher‐rated positive EI) and emotionality sometimes predicted shyness two years later (teacher‐rated sadness, parent‐rated positive EI, and teacher‐rated positive EI). Parent‐rated shyness and/or emotionality (parent‐rated anger and parent‐rated sadness) predicted internalizing at T3. Results shed light on developmental relations between emotionality and shyness, as well as processes of risk for, or protection against, the development of internalizing problems.     

Emotional Climate in Families Experiencing Homelessness: Associations with Child Affect and Socioemotional Adjustment in School

This study examined associations among family‐level risks, emotional climate, and child adjustment in families experiencing homelessness. Emotional climate, an indirect aspect of emotion socialization, was indexed by parents’ expressed emotion while describing their children. Sociodemographic risk and parent internalizing distress were hypothesized to predict more negativity and less warmth in the emotional climate. Emotional climate was expected to predict observer‐rated child affect and teacher‐reported socioemotional adjustment, mediating effects of risk. Participants were 138 homeless parents (64 percent African‐American) and their four‐ to six‐year‐old children (43.5 percent male). During semi‐structured interviews, parents reported demographic risks and internalizing distress and completed a Five Minute Speech Sample about their child, later rated for warmth and negativity. Children's positive and negative affect were coded from videotapes of structured parent‐child interaction tasks. Socioemotional adjustment (externalizing behavior, peer acceptance, and prosocial behavior) was reported by teachers a few months later. Hypotheses were partially supported. Parent internalizing distress was associated with higher parent negativity, which was linked to more negative affect in children, and parent warmth was associated with children's positive affect. Neither emotional climate nor child affect predicted teacher‐reported externalizing behavior or peer acceptance, but parental negativity and male sex predicted lower prosocial behavior in the classroom. Future research directions and clinical implications are discussed.     

Prosocial Behavior: Long‐term Trajectories and Psychosocial Outcomes

This study investigated developmental trajectories for prosocial behavior for a sample followed from the age of 10–18 and examined possible adjustment outcomes associated with membership in different trajectory groups. Participants were 136 boys and 148 girls, their teachers, and their parents (19.4 percent African‐American, 2.4 percent Asian, 51.9 percent Caucasian, 19.5 percent Hispanic, and 5.8 percent other). Teachers rated children's prosocial behavior yearly in grades 4–12. At the end of the 12th grade year, teachers, parents, and participants reported externalizing behaviors and participants reported internalizing symptoms, narcissism, and features of borderline personality disorder. Results suggested that prosocial behavior remained stable from middle childhood through late adolescence. Group‐based mixture modeling revealed three prosocial trajectory groups: low (18.7 percent), medium (52.8 percent), and high (29.6 percent). Membership in the high prosocial trajectory group predicted lower levels of externalizing behavior as compared with the low prosocial trajectory group, and for girls, lower levels of internalizing symptoms. Membership in the medium prosocial trajectory group also predicted being lower on externalizing behaviors. Membership in the high prosocial trajectory group predicted lower levels of borderline personality features for girls only.     

Maternal and paternal reactions to child sadness predict children's psychosocial outcomes: A family‐centered approach

Parents' reactions to children's emotions shape their psychosocial outcomes. Extant research on emotion socialization primarily uses variable‐centered approaches. This study explores family patterns of maternal and paternal responses to children's sadness in relation to psychosocial outcomes in middle childhood. Fifty‐one families with 8‐ to 12‐year‐old children participated. Mothers and fathers reported their reactions to children's sadness and children's social competence and psychological adjustment. Cluster analyses revealed three family patterns: Supportive (high supportive and low non‐supportive reactions from both parents), Not Supportive (low supportive reactions from both parents), and Father Dominant (high paternal supportive and non‐supportive reactions, low maternal supportive and non‐supportive reactions). Supportive families had children with higher social competence and more internalizing symptoms whereas Father Dominant families had children with lower social competence and fewer internalizing symptoms. Not Supportive families had children with average social competence and fewer internalizing symptoms. Findings are discussed in relation to the “divergence model” which proposes that a diverse range of parental responses to children's sadness, rather than a uniformly supportive approach, may facilitate children's psychosocial adjustment.     

An Integrative Examination of Peer Conflict: Children's Reported Goals, Emotions, and Behaviors

The primary purpose of the present study was to examine the interrelations among children's typical emotions, goals, and behavior during peer conflict and to examine emotions and goals as joint predictors of behavior. Children (7 to 11 years old) described recent conflicts with peers and were questioned about their emotions, goals, and behaviors. The friendliness of children's reported goals during conflict was associated with low anger intensity and with high intensity of sadness. Children who tended to report nonconstructive behavior also tended to report relatively intense anger and relatively unfriendly goals. Furthermore, in regression analyses, the friendliness of goals uniquely predicted the constructiveness of children's behavior after controlling for the effects of anger intensity, age, gender, provoking event, and friendship with the peer. Although boys and girls reported similar levels of anger and sadness, girls reported friendlier goals and more constructive behavior than did boys. The use of self‐reports of actual events to examine peer conflict during middle childhood is also discussed.     

Children's Anger, Emotional Expressiveness, and Empathy: Relations with Parents' Empathy, Emotional Expressiveness, and Parenting Practices

In Roberts and Strayer (1996 ) we described how emotional factors were strongly related to children's empathy, which in turn strongly predicted prosocial behavior. This paper focuses on how these child emotional factors, assessed across methods and sources, related to parental factors (empathy, emotional expressiveness, encouragement of children's emotional expressiveness, warmth and control) for a subset of 50 two‐parent families from our earlier sample. Parents reported on their emotional characteristics and parenting; children (5 to 13 years old; 42% girls) also described parenting practices. Children's age and parenting factors accounted for an average of 32% of the variance in child emotional factors, which, with role‐taking, strongly predicted children's empathy. In contrast to earlier, less comprehensive studies, we found important paths between parents’ and children's empathy, mediated by children's anger. These countervailing pathways largely neutralized each other, resulting in the low correlations usually seen when parents’ and children's empathy are examined in isolation. Thus our findings are an important confirmation and extension of the theoretically expected link between parents’ and children's empathy.     

Maternal disclosure and adolescent prosocial behavior: The mediating roles of adolescent disclosure and coping

In this study, we considered the impact of mothers' willingness to disclose about distressing events and rule transgressions on their adolescent children's willingness to disclose about similar events, as well as adolescents' ability to cope and to show concern for others. Mothers and their 12‐ to 14‐year‐old children (N = 125) were asked to say how likely they would be to talk about moderately distressing concerns as well as minor rule transgressions. Adolescent positive coping skills were also assessed. Teachers (N = 92) rated the adolescents' prosocial behaviors in the classroom. Adolescents' disclosure about distressing events and positive coping mediated the relation between maternal disclosure about distressing events and adolescent prosocial behavior. Further, maternal disclosure alone about both distressing events and rule transgressions was related to adolescent prosocial behavior through positive coping. These results suggest that mothers' willingness to talk about their own negative experiences can help children cope better and, ultimately, to show greater empathy and concern for others.     

Influence of Gender on Parental Socialization of Children's Sadness Regulation

Mothers' (N = 60) and fathers' (N = 53) perceptions of and desire for change in their 6‐ to 11‐year‐old daughters' (N = 59) and sons' (N = 54) sadness regulation behaviors (i.e., inhibition, dysregulation, coping) were examined in addition to parental responses to children's hypothetical sadness displays. Results of multivariate analyses of variance and regression analyses suggest that parental perceptions of and desired change in children's sadness behavior differ as a function of parent gender, child gender and child age (younger (grades 1, 2), older (grades 4, 5)), and predict the likelihood of contingent responses to children's sadness behavior. Overall, fathers reported being likely to respond to sadness with minimization whereas mothers reported being likely to respond with expressive encouragement and problem‐focused strategies. These parent‐reported socialization response tendencies, however, were more fully explained by the interaction between perceptions of children's sadness regulation behaviors and satisfaction with these behaviors. These findings highlight the need to include parent gender and parental cognitions as important variables in emotion socialization research.     

Preschoolers' Beliefs About the Stability of Antisocial Behavior: Implications for Navigating Social Challenges

The relation between 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children's beliefs about sociomoral stability (the tendency for antisocial behavior to remain stable over time) and their reasoning about peer interactions was examined. Participants were 100 preschoolers enrolled in a Head Start program. Children who endorsed sociomoral stability beliefs were less likely than their peers to make prosocial inferences, were rated by their teachers as less likely to engage in prosocial behavior, and were more likely to endorse the use of aggression to solve conflict with peers. These findings suggest that as early as preschool, children have general patterns of beliefs about the stability of antisocial behavior that predict a tendency to de‐emphasize prosocial strategies that can mediate social challenges.     

Mother–Child Conversations about Emotions: Linkages to Child Aggression and Prosocial Behavior

We examined associations of maternal and child emotional discourse and child emotion knowledge with children's behavioral competence. Eighty‐five upper middle‐income, mostly White preschoolers and mothers completed a home‐based bookreading task to assess discourse about emotions. Children's anger perception bias and emotion situation knowledge were assessed in a separate interview. Children's prosocial behavior, relational aggression, and physical aggression were observed during a preschool‐based triadic play task. Mothers' emotion explanations were correlated with children's emotion situation knowledge and relational aggression. Both mothers' and children's emotion explanations predicted prosocial behavior whereas mothers' use of positive emotional themes was negatively associated with children's anger perception bias. Physical aggression was predicted by mothers' emotion comments, children's anger perception bias, and lack of emotion situation knowledge. Maternal emotion socialization variables were less strongly related to children's behavioral competence after accounting for demographics and child emotional competence. Implications of these findings for future research on emotion socialization are discussed.     

Young Children's Prosocial and Aggressive Behaviors and Their Experiences of Being Targeted for Similar Behaviors by Peers

Children's target experiences (as recipients of prosocial peer acts and victims of peer aggression) were investigated for their concurrent and longitudinal associations with prosocial and aggressive behavior. Forty‐four children (initially 22–40 months) were observed in naturalistic interactions with peers during a two‐month period for each of three consecutive years. Results revealed no consistency over time in children's experiences as targets for aggressive or prosocial peer acts, although there was some indication that altruistic target experiences may be stable from the end of the preschool period. Early behavior appeared to affect the way children were later treated by peers, but no support was found for the idea that early target experiences influence later behavior. Prosocial behavior was concurrently and longitudinally associated with prosocial target experiences. Aggressive behavior reduced the likelihood of children being targets of prosocial peer behavior and, over time, also of their being targets of peers’ aggression.     

Aggressive and Prosocial Peer Group Functioning: Effects on Children's Social,School, and Psychological Adjustment

This study examined the effects of aggressive and prosocial contexts of peer groups on children's socioemotional and school adjustment. Data on informal peer groups, social functioning, and different aspects of adjustment were collected from multiple sources in a sample of elementary school children (149 boys, 181 girls; M age = 10 years). Multilevel analyses indicated that group aggressive and prosocial orientations made direct contributions to children's social, school, and psychological functioning. Group contexts also moderated the individual‐level relations between social behavior and self‐perceptions; prosocial behavior was associated with social or scholastic self‐perceptions more evidently in low prosocial and high aggressive groups. The results suggest that the peer group is an important context for children's performance and adjustment in various domains.     

Effects of Person‐ and Process‐focused Feedback on Prosocial Behavior in Middle Childhood

The effects of person‐ and process‐focused feedback, parental lay theories, and prosocial self‐concept on children's prosocial behavior were investigated with 143 9‐ and 10‐year‐old children who participated in a single session. Parents reported entity (person‐focused) and incremental (process‐focused) beliefs related to prosocial behavior. Children completed measures of prosocial self‐concept, then participated in a virtual online chat with child actors who asked for help with service projects. After completing the chat, children could assist with the service projects. In the first cohort, children were randomly assigned to receive person‐focused, process‐focused, or control feedback about sympathy. In the second cohort, with newly recruited families, children received no feedback. When given process‐focused feedback, children spent less time helping and worked on fewer service projects. When given no feedback, children spent less time helping when parents held incremental (process‐focused) beliefs. Children with higher prosocial self‐concept who received no feedback worked on more service projects.