Abstract
We investigated the development of individual differences in prosocial behavior among adolescents from the perspective of positive psychology. Specifically, derived from the engine model of well-being (Jayawickreme et al., 2012), we examined a social-cognitive-motivational (chain) mediation model of adolescents’ prosocial behavior, in which social support was hypothesized to relate to self-esteem, which in turn was hypothesized to relate to hope, which in turn was hypothesized to relate to prosocial behavior. A total of 1681 adolescents (802 boys and 879 girls; ages = 12–19 years, M = 15.86, SD = 1.72) from Mainland China completed the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale, Children’s Hope Scale and the Prosocial Behavior subscale of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Social support was associated positively with the adolescents’ self-esteem, hope and prosocial behavior, and prosocial behavior was associated positively with self-esteem and hope. Structural equation modeling analyses showed that self-esteem and hope fully mediated the relation between social support and prosocial behavior, with hope accounting for 45.12% and the path from self-esteem to hope accounting for 54.88% of the relation between social support and adolescents’ prosocial behavior, providing support for the chain mediation model. The limitations of the study and the significance of the findings for promoting adolescents’ prosocial behavior are discussed.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the support and grant funding contributed by Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2019JJ40131) and Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (Grant No. 19A315). We also thank all participants for their kind support.
Funding
This research was supported by Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2019JJ40131) and Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (Grant No. 19A315) awarded to Dr. Yu Ling.
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Huinan Hu and Yuji You are the co-first authors.
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Hu, H., You, Y., Ling, Y. et al. The development of prosocial behavior among adolescents: A positive psychology perspective. Curr Psychol 42, 9734–9742 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02255-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02255-9