Prosocial Behavior and Aggression in the Daily School Lives of Early Adolescents.

Research has not adequately addressed a possible mutual co-regulatory influence of prosocial and aggressive behaviors in adolescents' daily lives. This study explored bidirectional within-person associations between prosocial and aggressive behaviors in the daily school lives of early adolescents. T...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of Youth & Adolescence Vol. 51; no. 8; pp. 1636 - 1653
Main Authors:	Arbel, Reout, Maciejewski, Dominique F., Ben-Yehuda, Mor, Shnaider, Sandra, Benari, Bar, Benita, Moti
Format:	Article
Published:	Springer Nature Aug2022
Subjects:	Israel Self-evaluation Child behavior Activities of daily living Teenagers' conduct of life Social skills Aggression (Psychology) Children Adolescence Risk assessment
Online Access:	View this record in EBSCOhost

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Summary:	Research has not adequately addressed a possible mutual co-regulatory influence of prosocial and aggressive behaviors in adolescents' daily lives. This study explored bidirectional within-person associations between prosocial and aggressive behaviors in the daily school lives of early adolescents. The sample included 242 sixth-graders [M = 11.96 (SD = 0.18), 50% girls] and their teachers. Adolescents reported on daily prosocial behavior and reactive and proactive aggression for ten consecutive days. Teachers and adolescents reported on adolescents' overall prosocial behaviors. Across-day prosocial behaviors increased after days when adolescents exhibited more reactive aggression but not among self-reported low-prosocial adolescents. Increased prosocial behaviors did not mitigate aggression the next day. The findings suggest prosocial behaviors are a plausible compensatory strategy after daily aggressive reactions.