Adolescents’ Empathy, Parental Expectation and Flow in Prosocial Behavior

MESURADO, B.; RICHAUD, M.C.; KOHAN CORTADA, A.

Cape Town

Congreso; CP 2012 Ciudad del Cabo, Congreso Internacional de Sicología, Sudáfrica; 2012

ICP 2012

The optimal experience or flow is a concept developed by Csikszentmihalyi (1997, 2000), who defines it as the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Although the concept of flow has been applied to the study of subjective  experience in work, sport, leisure, daily life, and study (Salanova, Martínez, Cifre, & Schaufeli, 2005; Jackson & Eklund, 2002; Delle-Fave & Massimini, 2003; Rathunde & Csikszentmihalyi, 2005), the existing evidence for the subjective quality of prosocial activities (behaviors intended to benefit others) in childhood and adolescence is quite scarce (Mesurado, 2011). Several researchers have demonstrated that empathy is associated with prosocial behavior (Carlo & Randall, 2002). On other hand, recent reports have demonstrated that adolescents who expected more appropriate reactions from parents for prosocial behaviors reported higher levels of prosocial behaviors (Wyatt & Carlo, 2002; Padilla-Walker & Carlo, 2007). The purpose of this research was to study if adolescents’ empathy would have an influence on parental expectation on adolescents’ prosocial behaviors, and if these both variables - adolescents’ empathy and parental expectation- would have an influence on flow experience in prosocial behavior. The sample included 430 participants, both sexes, aged 10 to 15 (M = 12.19; SD = 1.74), of middle socioeconomic level, from Argentina. Structural equation modeling was run to test the model proposed. The results showed that the theoretical model fit the data very well, χ2 (6) = 4, p = n.s.; GFI = .99; AGFI = .99, NFI = .99, RMR = .007, RMSEA = .001.