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The mediating roles of social support and basic psychological needs in the relationship between gratitude and adolescent prosocial behavior

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Abstract

Prosocial behavior (PSB) is vital for positive social development among adolescents, contributing to improved peer relationships, emotional well-being, and social competence. Gratitude, a positive emotion arising from recognizing and appreciating benefits received from others, has been identified as a potential contributor to adolescent PSB. This study aimed to investigate the mediating roles of social support (SS) and basic psychological needs (BPNs) in the relationship between gratitude and PSB among adolescents. A total of 390 middle school students participated in a longitudinal study, completing questionnaires assessing gratitude, SS, BPNs and PSB at two time points with a six-month interval. The results indicated that gratitude positively correlated with SS, BPNs, and PSB. Structural equation modeling revealed that SS, competence needs and relatedness needs partially mediated the relationship between gratitude and adolescent PSB. Moreover, a chain-like mediation effect was observed, wherein SS influenced autonomy needs and relatedness needs, which in turn predicted PSB. These findings emphasize the importance of gratitude in fostering PSB among adolescents and highlight the mediating roles of SS and BPNs in this relationship. Furthermore, our study elucidated the different roles of the three BPNs and further refine and expand the self-determination theory.

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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We much appreciate the participants and research assistants involved in the present research.

Funding

The current study was supported by “The Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China” (Project No. 22YJC190023).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Normal college, Jingchu University of Technology, Jingmen, China

    Qingyun Yu

  2. Mental Health Education Counseling Center, Jingchu University of Technology, Jingmen, China

    Xiaoyan Xia, Lingling Zhao & Shenghua Zhu

  3. Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Beijing Normal University, No. 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Beijing, 100875, China

    Qingyun Yu, Peizhong Wang & Wenchao Wang

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  1. Qingyun Yu
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Contributions

Conceptualization, Q.Y.; methodology, W.W.; data curation, W.W.; writing—original draft preparation, Q.Y.; writing—review and editing, P.W., X.X., L.Z., S.Z.; visualization, P.W.; supervision, W.W.; project administration, W.W.; funding acquisition, W.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wenchao Wang.

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Institutional review board statement

This study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of Beijing Normal University. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

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Yu, Q., Wang, P., Xia, X. et al. The mediating roles of social support and basic psychological needs in the relationship between gratitude and adolescent prosocial behavior. Curr Psychol 43, 15342–15351 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05515-y

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