The influence of personality in the results of an intervention program to promote prosociality

LEMOS, VIVIANA

París

Congreso; 28° Congress International of Applied Psychology.; 2014

International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP)

Prosocial behaviours refer to voluntary actions undertaken to benefit others. They include a variety of behaviours such as sharing, donating, caring, comforting and helping. According to the principles of positive psychology, the promotion of prosocial behavior involves strengthening a repertoire of alternative behaviors that inhibit negative and antisocial behaviors in children while providing an adequate remedy to the expression of aggressiveness, violence, and indifference towards others. Although there are research that links prosocial behavior with certain aspects of the personality (Barbaranelli & Fida, 2006) and specifically with the dimension of Agreeableness (Caprara, Alessandri, Di Giunta, Paneral, & Eisenberg, 2009), there are no studies analyzing the modulator role of personality in the results of intervention programs designed to promote prosocial behavior. The objective of this study is precisely analyzing this issue. The sample consisted of 56 children in social vulnerability to poverty in the city of Parana, Entre Rios, Argentina, who participated in the said program, (male = 27 and female = 29) from 4th grade of elementary school (M = 10.43 , SD =1.16). Prosociality was evaluated before and after the intervention, through a longitudinal research design. To assessed prosocial behavior, we used the Prosocial Behavior Scale (CP) (Caprara and Pastorelli, 1993) translated and adapted to Spanish by Del Barrio, Moreno and Lopez (2001) and PBQ (Weiner and Duveen 1981), the personality was assessed with the Children's personality Questionnaire Argentine (CAPI, Lemos, 2004), based on the model of the Big Five personality factors. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical and empirical developments found so far, finding a general consistency between them.