Foundations and Predictors of Prosocial Behavior Development Across Preschool Years: Empathy, Personality, and Creativity
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Abstract
Prosocial behavior is defined as actions intended to benefit others regardless of potential gains the person performing the actions or behaviors may receive. Prosocial creativity is a new term in the literature and is described as an ability to produce a solution for solving someone's problem in an effective, original, and convenient way. The internalization of prosocial tendencies in early childhood plays a key role in outcomes across the life span, such as influencing social adjustment, peer acceptance, emotional stability, academic achievement, improved attendance, and physical and psychological health. But the mechanisms that underlie young children's prosocial tendencies are unknown. This study investigated predictors of prosocial decision making and prosocial creativity in preschool-age children and examined the links between young children's personality, creativity, empathy, moral development, and prosocial behavior. Participants were 3- to 5-year-old children in English-speaking populations around the world (N=122, mainly USA). The children individually participated in the study via a videotelephony software program through which they completed a creativity game and a series of standardized picture-based assessments to measure their empathy, moral development, prosocial decision making, and prosocial creativity. Parents also reported on their children's prosocial behavior, empathy, and personality. The data were analyzed using binary logistic regression to explore the predictors of prosocial decision making and ordinal logistic regression to examine the predictors of prosocial creativity. To examine differences between study variables, a series of MANOVAs and ANOVAs were also conducted. Finally, Pearson correlations and path analyses were performed to explore direct and indirect relationships between variables. Results indicated that (1) children's age, creativity, and cognitive empathy played an important role in prosocial decision making and prosocial creativity, (2) older children and children with higher empathy made more mature moral judgments, (3) affective empathy, cognitive empathy, prosocial behavior, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were all positively related to each other, and (5) affective empathy mediated prosocial behavior and cognitive empathy. To sum up, the preschool years are important in the development of various elements of morality, empathy, creativity, and personality. These elements are likely to construct the foundation for children's prosocial behavior development across 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds.