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Links Between Adolescents’ Expected Parental Reactions and Prosocial Behavioral Tendencies: The Mediating Role of Prosocial Values

Journal of Youth and Adolescence volume 39, Article number: 84 (2010) Cite this article

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine relations between adolescents’ social cognitions regarding parenting practices and adolescents’ prosocial behavioral tendencies. A mediation model was tested whereby the degree to which adolescents perceived their parents as responding appropriately to their prosocial and antisocial behaviors was hypothesized to predict adolescents’ tendencies toward prosocial behavior indirectly by way of adolescents’ prosocial values. Adolescents (N = 140; M age = 16.76 years, SD = .80; 64% girls; 91% European Americans) completed measures of prosocial values and of the appropriateness with which they expected their parents to react to their prosocial and antisocial behaviors. In addition, teachers and parents rated the adolescents’ tendencies for prosocial behaviors. A structural equation model test showed that the degree to which adolescents expected their parents to respond appropriately to their prosocial behaviors was related positively to their prosocial values, which in turn was positively associated with their tendencies to engage in prosocial behaviors (as reported by parents and teachers). The findings provide evidence for the central role of adolescents’ evaluations and expectancies of parental behaviors and of the role of values in predicting prosocial tendencies. Discussion focuses on the implications for moral socialization theories and on the practical implications of these findings in understanding adolescents’ prosocial development.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. A direct link from the predictor to outcome was necessary for earlier conceptions of mediation (Baron and Kenny 1986). However, more recently MacKinnon et al. (MacKinnon et al. 2002, 2007) have argued that a significant direct link be should not be a necessary criteria for mediation, as long as the indirect path is significant. In fact, they state that such cases of significant indirect but not direct relations between predictors and outcomes are quite common, and demonstrate that most of the links between the predictors and outcomes are mediational. Moreover, requiring a significant direct effect reduces the power to detect true mediation effects.

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Acknowledgments

Funding support was provided by a grant from the Values-In-Action Institute to Gustavo Carlo. The authors would like to thank the teachers, staff, parents, and students at Lincoln Southeast High School for their generous cooperation and assistance. Data for this project was collected while Sam Hardy was at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Correspondence may be addressed to Sam Hardy, Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, sam_hardy@byu.edu.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Sam A. Hardy

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA

    Gustavo Carlo

  3. Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

    Scott C. Roesch

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  1. Sam A. Hardy
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  2. Gustavo Carlo
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  3. Scott C. Roesch
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Correspondence to Sam A. Hardy.

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Hardy, S.A., Carlo, G. & Roesch, S.C. Links Between Adolescents’ Expected Parental Reactions and Prosocial Behavioral Tendencies: The Mediating Role of Prosocial Values. J Youth Adolescence 39, 84 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-008-9383-7

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Keywords

  • Parenting
  • Social cognition
  • Prosocial behavior
  • Values