Abstract
Filial piety is a traditional Chinese virtue that has deeply influenced Chinese people for generations. To examine whether traditional Chinese filial piety is related to prosocial behavior, and explore the potential mechanism between them, the present study investigated the relationships between filial piety, self-esteem, peer attachment, and prosocial behavior among Chinese children. A total of 922 Chinese children in middle and late childhood aged 7 to 11 participated in this study, and data were collected at three-time points in a year. The results from the structural equation model (SEM) suggested that reciprocal filial piety and authoritarian filial piety had different effects on children’s prosocial behavior. Moreover, self-esteem and peer attachment played a significant chain mediating role between reciprocal filial piety and children’s prosocial behavior, and also played a significant chain mediating role between authoritarian filial piety and children’s prosocial behavior. The present study combined traditional Chinese values with contemporary children’s development, which provided an understanding of how different types of filial piety affected children’s prosocial behavior.
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The dataset analyzed during the current study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The study described in this report was Funded by National Social Science Foundation of China (BBA220198). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of National Social Science Foundation of China. We are appreciative of the parents, adolescents, and teachers who participated in our study and the people who assisted in data collection.
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Weijian Li and Ruibo Xie contributed equally to this study and share corresponding authorship.
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Zhu, C., Li, Y., Li, Z. et al. The longitudinal relationship between filial piety and prosocial behavior of children: the chain mediating effect of self-esteem and peer attachment. Curr Psychol 42, 24078–24087 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03751-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03751-2