Empathy, positive emotions and prosocial tendencies and behaviors.

LUCAS MARCELO RODRIGUEZ; BELÉN MESURADO; EDUARDO MORENO

Minnesota

Conferencia; 2018 Society for Research on Adolescence Biennial Meeting; 2018

Society for Research on Adolescence

Prosocial behaviors are voluntary actions intended to help or benefit another individual or group of individuals. Carlo and Randall (2002) assert prosocial behaviors are based on different types of motivations such as an intrinsic motivation or primary desire to benefit others. In contrast, other types of prosocial behaviors might be motivated by extrinsic processes or concerns (e.g., social approval). Other measurements of prosociallity approach this variable as an overall aid measure, without making any distinction in the motivation that causes it (Caprara, Steca, Zelli & Capanna, 2005). Eisenberg and Strayer (1992) state that empathy involves sharing the emotion that is perceived in the other, that is to say, feeling with the other. Empathic distress is a motive for prosocial action (Hoffman, 2000, Mestre, Samper & Frías, 2002, Richaud & Mesurado, 2016). On the other hand, positive emotions are those emotional experiences in which pleasure and well-being predominate, provided a positive personal interpretation of the event is added (Lucas, Diener & Larsen, 2003; Fredrickson 2000). Several positive emotions have shown high correlations with prosociality or have been predictors of prosociality in empirical studies (Caprara & Steca, 2005; Bartlett & DeSteco, 2006 Regner, 2009; Richaud & Mesurado, 2016). The study aims to analyze the phenomena to find out if empathy, optimism, joy and humor sense, serenity, gratitude, interest enthusiasm and life satisfaction may foster or thwart different prosocial behavior types and tendencies. The Empathy Assessment Questionnaire (Garaigodobil, 2000), Positive Emotions Questionnaire (Schmidt, 2008), Prosocialness Scale (Caprara et al., 2005) and Argentinean adaptation for Prosocial Tendencies Measure (Richaud, et al. 2012) were used to measure the variables. The sample was conformed of 818 adolescent, male and female: 35.1% boys and 64.9% girls, with an age range fluctuating between 15 and 21 years old (M=16.92 DS=0.95). Hierarchical multiple regression were used to analyze data. The results have shown that empathy is an important predictor for prosocial behavior and anonymous responsive prosocial tendencies. On the other hand, joy and sense of humor are good predictors of global prosocial behavior and public and responsive prosocial tendency. In turn this emotion negatively predicts the altruistic prosocial tendency. Optimism negatively predicts the altruistic prosocial tendency. Gratitude positively predicts global prosocial behavior and altruistic, anonymous and sensitive prosocial tendencies. This emotion, in turn, predicts negatively the public prosocial tendency. Interest, enthusiasm, positively predicts global prosocial behavior and prosocial anonymous, public and responsive tendency. Finally, on one hand satisfaction with life positively predicts the prosocial altruistic tendency and on the other negatively predicts public and responsive prosocial tendencies (see Table 1). For their part, happiness and humor sense are good predictors for global prosocial behavior and responsive public prosocial tendency. At the same time this emotion predicts negatively public prosocial tendency. Enthusiasm predicts positively global prosocial behavior and prosocial anonymous, public and responsive tendencies. Finally, life satisfaction predicts positively prosocial altruist tendency and it predicts negatively public responsive prosocial tendencies.