Study of Compassion and Gratitude related to prosocial behaviour in Argentinian sample

REGNER, EVANGELINA

San Diego - EEUU

Congreso; APA 118th Anual Convention; 2010

I) INTRODUCTION Within the theory of the emotions of Lazarus (Lazarus & Lazarus, 2000) the compassion and the gratitude, they are considered like the emphatetic emotions. The compassion refers to understanding of the other people´s emotional state, associated with a desire to alleviate or to reduce the suffering of the other (Lazarus & Lazarus, 2000). On the other hand, the gratitude is a positive emotion that usually is experienced in situations in which the person perceives and recognizes that she has received a gift or benefit, aid, stimulus or recognition; and it tries to correspond in something what received. II) Objetive The objective of the present investigation was to study the influence of the compassion and the gratitude on the development of prosocial behaviour. III) MATERIAL AND METHODOLOGY The sample was composed by a total of 475 adult people of both sexes of 18 to 35 years old from Argentina. It was administered the questionnaire of Positive Emotions (Regner, 2008) and the Scale of Prosocial Behaviour of Caprara (Caprara et al., 2005; Caprara, Steca, Zelli, & Capanna, 2005). In first instance a descriptive study was made to study if the mentioned positive emotions influence in the prosocial behaviour; and in second instance a predictive study by means of multiple regressions analysis. V) CONCLUSION According to the studied sample, it concludes that the positive emotions compassion and gratitude positively predict the prosocial behaviour. key words: gratitude - compassion - prosocial behaviour - adults