Poster #225 - Links between daily prosocial overtures and mood in early adolescents.

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

Prosocial behaviors – actions that benefit another person – play an important role in the socioemotional adjustment of adolescents (Wentzel, 2014). Many studies have looked at predictors of which adolescents will act prosocially (e.g., Carlo, Padilla-Walker, & Nielson, 2015); however, very little is known about the types of prosocial overtures that characterize youths’ everyday interactions, nor about the associations between receiving prosocial overtures and adolescents’ emotional well-being. In the current study, we examined (a) the types of prosocial overtures early adolescents receive in their everyday lives, (b) the associations between receipt of prosocial overtures and daily positive and negative affect, and (c) whether the associations between prosocial behavior and affect vary as a function of (i) adolescents’ evaluation of the actors’ intention, and (ii) whether or not the actor is a friend. Previous studies show that on days when adolescents report more positive events, they report higher positive affect (Weinstein et al., 2006; Flook, 2011), leading us to expect that a greater number of prosocial overtures would be linked to higher positive and lower negative affect. We also hypothesized that perceived intention of prosocial events would be associated with higher positive affect, as sociocognitive variables, such as youths’ positive rumination about peer interactions, are associated with increases in positive affect (Gentzler et al., 2013). Lastly, we investigated if the identity of the actor moderated the association between receipt of prosocial events and daily mood, because emotional responses to events may vary as a function of the relational context (e.g., Whitesell & Hater, 1996). 
 257 early adolescents (M age=12.84 years, SD=0.35, 60.3% female; 83.3% non-Hispanic white) participated in a daily-diary phone study for ten consecutive school days. During each call, the 10-item PANAS was administered to assess daily negative and positive affect. Next, RAs asked if anyone had done anything nice for the participant that day. If participants reported yes, they provided a detailed description about each event. They also rated their perception of the actor’s intention to be nice from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very). 
 To date, coding has been completed for 170 participants who reported 1278 prosocial events that coded reliably into one of seven categories (see Table 1). Results from multilevel modelling indicated that the associations between receipt of prosocial events and daily mood varied by the type of event (see Table 2). Further, perceived intention of how nice the actor meant to be was associated with greater positive and less negative daily affect, βs = .18, -.11, ps < .01. Whether the actor was a friend was not associated with daily mood. 
 These findings advance our understanding of the link between prosocial behaviour and socioemotional adjustment in adolescence, suggesting that the links between prosocial events and daily mood are less straightforward than associations between positive events – which are typically defined by the mood they elicit – and affect. Although prosocial behaviours benefit the recipient, some of these events (e.g., sharing) may be elicited by negative affect, and may not confer enough benefit to change an adolescents’ affective state.

Authors

• Alison Farrell-Reeves, McGill University
  Presenting Author

• Melanie Dirks, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristina McDonald, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristen Dunfield, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carolyn E. Gibson, Drury University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Joo Young Yang, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author