A Latent Profile Analysis of U.S. and Costa Rican College Students’ Prosocial Behaviors

• In Event: 3-230 - Understanding Correlates and Outcomes of Prosocial Behavior Across Adolescence: The Utility of Person-Centered Approaches

Integrative Statement

Recent research on prosocial behavior (e.g., actions intended to benefit others; Eisenberg et al., 2014) has emphasized the importance of studying it as a multidimensional construct in order to tap into the nuanced motivations, contexts, and forms of the behavior (Padilla-Walker & Carlo, 2014). Thus far, much of the research on prosocial behavior has been done using a variable-centered approach. However, measures of multiple dimensions of prosocial behavior, such as the Prosocial Tendencies Measure (PTM; Carlo et al., 2002), provide the opportunity to study prosocial behavior using a person-centered approach. By doing so, it is possible to identify groups of participants who demonstrate similar patterns of prosocial behavior and to see how these patterns relate to correlates that have been established in previous research using a variable-centered approach.
Studying patterns of prosocial behavior in samples from two cultures—Costa Rica (CR) and the United States (US)—provides a unique opportunity to see whether the same patterns of prosocial behavior exist across two different cultural contexts, which is especially important considering much of the research on prosocial behavior has been done within the US. The goals of our study were: a) to investigate patterns of US and CR college students’ prosocial behaviors; b) to see if these findings replicate the four profiles found by McGinley et al. with samples of US early adolescents and high school students; and c) to examine how these patterns are related to a set of sociocognitive, socioemotive, and parenting correlates.
Participants were 245 CR (M age = 21.92 years; 50.6% women) and 324 US (M age = 19.47 years; 79.6% women) college students. Participants completed self-report measures of: a) six forms of prosocial behavior (PTM-R; Carlo et al., 2003); b) empathic concern and perspective taking (IRI; Davis, 1980); c) parent-child conversations (PPM; Carlo et al., 2007); and d) primary caregiver warmth (RCRPBI; Schuldermann & Schuldermann, 1988).
Descriptive statistics and correlations among study variables are shown in Table 1. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted in Mplus (Muthén & Muthén, 2010) to identify profiles. We identified four profiles in each sample—Altruistic Low Helpers, Altruistic High Helpers, Public Helpers, and Altruistic Average Helpers (CR)/Average Helpers (US)—based on the six forms of prosocial behavior from the PTM. Results indicated that for both samples, there were significant group mean differences on all six prosocial behaviors.
Further analyses looked at how each profile differed based on socioemotive, sociocognitive, and parenting variables (see Table 2). For the CR sample, results indicated that there were significant group mean differences on empathic concern and perspective taking. For the US sample, results revealed significant group mean differences on empathic concern, perspective taking, and maternal warmth but not paternal warmth. For the CR sample, differences on caregiver-child conversations and caregiver warmth were not significant across profiles.
Discussion will focus on the importance of how these four profiles have replicated across studies, the study of prosocial behavior as a multidimensional construct, and the role of socioemotive, sociocognitive, and parenting correlates in relation to prosocial behavior.

Authors

• Sarah L. Pierotti, University of Missouri
  Presenting Author

• Meredith McGinley, University of Wisconsin-Parkside
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gustavo Carlo, University of Missouri
  Non-Presenting Author

• L. Diego Conejo, University of Costa Rica
  Non-Presenting Author