Promoting Prosocial Behaviors in Contexts of Inequalities: Friendship Selection in a Prosocial School-based Intervention in Chile

• In Event: Promoting Adolescents’ Prosocial Behaviors From the South America: Evidence From Three Randomized Controlled Interventions

Abstract

Classrooms are not neutral contexts and it is from them that the encounter with diversity and multiculturalism, inequalities, exclusion processes and prejudices, is developed. In particular, considering that the school system is designed reduce the social gaps between people and to promote a sense of equity, training in citizenship would imply promoting a particular way of existing in contexts of inequalities and in a rigidly stratified society, as Chile (COES, 2015). Various studies have highlighted that prosocial behavior, that is, all those voluntary behaviors aimed at benefiting others (Batson, 2011), would improve attitudes towards people from different social groups (see Eisenberg, Spinrad, and Knafo-Noam, 2015).
Chile has one of the most segregated educational systems of the world, resulting in significantly unequal education opportunities (OECD, 2019). Indeed, in the last year, Chile has experienced an extraordinary wave of social mobilizations, which have articulated issues such as educational reforms, employment, and territorial and ethnic conflicts at the urban and regional level. This study is part of a larger project aimed at developing, implementing and evaluating the school-based intervention ProCiviCo (Luengo Kanacri & Jiménez-Moya, 2017; Luengo Kanacri et al., 2019). Based on the CEPIDEA program developed in Italy (Caprara et al., 2015) a novel program was designed and adapted to the Chilean society. In this vein, the ProCiviCo program aimed to provide evidence about the application of a conceptual model focused on the development of prosocial behaviors and school citizen participation for social cohesion and to overcome prejudices by social classes, considering the notorious Chilean social stratification (COES, 2015).
We tested the effects of an intervention on prosocial behavior and civic engagement on peer relationships by examining the extent to which friendship selection based on similarity in socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnicity differs in intervention and control classrooms while controlling for structural network (e.g., reciprocity, transitivity) and individual (gender) effects. The data of the project was composed of 659 seventh graders from Santiago (Chile) from 16 classrooms (Maget1 = 12.32; SD t1= .22, 48% girls) from eight public schools. Schools were randomly assigned to the intervention (nine classrooms from four schools) and control (seven classrooms from four schools) condition. Analyses were conducted using longitudinal social networks (RSiena; Simulation Investigation for Empirical Network Analysis). In terms of befriending classmates of similar SES and ethnicity, as showed in Table 1, whereas we found a tendency of befriending students from different socioeconomic status in intervention classrooms, no effect was found in control classrooms. Furthermore, a significant difference between the two effects’ parameters was found (z =-2.03, p < 0.02). This means that students from different socioeconomic status tended to befriend each other significantly more in intervention than in control classes. Conversely, we did not find a significant same ethnicity effect in neither of the two types of classrooms, indicating that ethnicity did not play a role in befriending classmates. Implications about the role of school socialization processes focused on the promotion of prosocial behaviors in contexts marked by social inequality will be discussed.

Authors

• Bernadette Paula Luengo Kanacri, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
  Presenting Author

• Gloria Jiménez-Moya, Escuela de Psicología
  Non-Presenting Author

• Diego Palacios, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
  Non-Presenting Author

• Christian Berger, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
  Non-Presenting Author