School-age Children’s Intergroup Prosocial Behavior: Longitudinal Predictions from Cross-gender Friendships and Gender Identity

• In Event: Diverse prosocial behavior and the correlates: Contextualized examinations from childhood to young adulthood

Abstract

Despite increasing research interest in children’s intergroup relations, to date, there is little research focusing on children’s intergroup prosocial behavior (i.e., voluntary behavior benefits recipients depending on their social groups). Because there is less moral pressure to engage in prosocial behavior than to disengage from harmful behaviors, people are more likely to show biases in their prosocial behavior toward others as compared to showing biases that involve harmful behaviors toward others. Thus, there is a need to understand positive forms of prejudice. In this study, we focused on gender as a grouping category due to its salience and importance for children. Our first goal was to examine the development of children’s gender-based prosocial behavior. Specifically, we examined both mean-level differences across three age groups and within-person rate of change over two assessment across one academic year. The second goal was to examine the predictors of children’s gender-based prosocial behavior. Guided by theories in intergroup relations that have been traditionally applied to social categories other than gender (e.g., race/ethnicity, nationality; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006), we examined how gender-based friendships, and perceived gender similarity, are related to children’s gender-based prosocial behavior.
Participants were 515 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders (263, 51.1% boys, Mage = 9.08 years, SD = 1.00, 47% non-Hispanic White, 42.9% Hispanic/Latino, and 10.1%, unknown ethnicity). At both T1 and T2, children participated in peer nominations about their intergroup prosocial behavior and intergroup friendships. Proportion scores were calculated to reflect children’s gender-based prosocial behavior and friendships. Children reported their perceived gender similarity to same- and other-gender peers (Martin et al., 2017).
Both girls and boys exhibited biased intergroup prosociality, and yet the patterns of change over time differed in that boys showed increasing tendencies toward bias whereas girls’ levels remained more biased but stable. As for the predictors of intergroup prosocial behavior, consistent with intergroup contact hypothesis, children’s cross-gender friendships were positively associated with their other-gender prosocial behavior. Gender identity (i.e., perceived similarity) was not directly related to children’s other-gender prosocial behavior, instead, gender identity may facilitate children’s (particularly girls’) other-gender friendships, which in turn, positively predict their intergroup gender prosocial behavior. This finding may be due to the salience of gender in real-life situations versus controlled environment.
As children’s worlds become more diverse, it is increasingly important to understand the pathways that foster their positive intergroup behaviors and relationships. Although additional research is needed to explicate the dynamics of this pattern of findings, the present research has the potential to inform interventions that promote positive behavior in diverse peer environments. Promoting children’s positive cross-gender interactions that facilitate cross-gender friendships may not only reduce the changes of bias, discrimination, and victimization towards outgroup members, but our findings suggest that this may also enhance the likelihood of prosocial actions, behaviors, and attitudes towards the outgroup. Further research on this possibility seems warranted. Moreover, our findings suggest that the context of intergroup relations may be crucial for understanding prosocial behavior and represents an important direction for future research.

Authors

• Sonya Xinyue Xiao, Northern Arizona Univeristy
  Presenting Author

• Carol Lynn Martin, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tracy L Spinrad, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nancy Eisenberg, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dawn DeLay, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura D Hanish, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Richard A Fabes, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author