Does Being Prosocial Pay Off? Testing Positive Developmental Cascades of Prosocial Behavior, Social Preference, and Subjective Well-Being in Chinese Adolescents.

Positive aspects of adolescent development recently have raised researchers' interests; however, studies examining reciprocal links between prosocial behavior, social preference, and subjective well-being are lacking. The present longitudinal study investigated the bidirectional relations between pr...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Journal of Youth & Adolescence Vol. 52; no. 9; pp. 1983 - 1995
Autores principales: Xiong, Yuke, Chen, Jiahui, Yang, Liu, Guo, Xiaolin, Ren, Ping
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Sep2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:Positive aspects of adolescent development recently have raised researchers' interests; however, studies examining reciprocal links between prosocial behavior, social preference, and subjective well-being are lacking. The present longitudinal study investigated the bidirectional relations between prosocial behavior, social preference, and subjective well-being within a theoretical framework of the developmental cascade model. A total of 1248 Chinese adolescents (M = 13.44, SD = 0.65; 47.0% girls) were surveyed across three waves with 6-month intervals. The results of analyses utilizing the random-intercept cross-lagged panel model demonstrated that prosocial behavior was positively associated with both social preference and subjective well-being, and social preference was not associated with subjective well-being at the between-person level. At the within-person level, prosocial behavior was positively reciprocally associated with social preference, while no significant relations between prosocial behavior and subjective well-being and between social preference and subjective well-being were found. The findings highlight adolescents' prosocial behavior and social preference could mutually facilitate each other over time, which can be used to guide adolescents' positive development.