Poster #66 - Prosocial Behaviors of Children and Adolescents and Parenting Practices in Turkey: Moderating Role of Temperament

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

Prosocial behaviors defined as “voluntary behavior intended to benefit another” (Eisenberg et al., 2006, p. 646) includes behaviors such as helping, sharing, and comforting, and is an important aspect of social and moral development. Being their “socialization agents” and first social relationships in life, parents shape children’s social skills and, more specifically, prosocial behaviors via parenting practices they adopt (Hasting et al., 2007). While scholars have repeatedly found positive parenting practices such as parental warmth and inductive reasoning as promoting prosocial behaviors (Krevans & Gibbs, 1996; Ruiz-Ortiz et al., 2017; Saltalı & Imir, 2018; Zarra-Nezhad et al., 2018), negative parenting practices such as psychological control have been found to be associated with lower levels of prosocial behaviors (Fu & Zhagn, 2020; Rueth et al., 2017). However, according to differential susceptibility hypothesis, some children are more susceptible to the adverse effects of negative environment, more specifically, negative rearing practices and to the beneficial effects of positive environments, more specifically, positive rearing practices; and this susceptibility may be related to various factors including temperamental characteristics of the child (Belsky, 1997; Belsky, 2005). The current study includes negative affect and sensory processing sensitivity as moderators since these traits are widely-studied “plasticity markers” in differential susceptibility literature (Slagt et al., 2018). In the light of these, this study aims to address three research questions: a) whether the level of prosocial behaviors changes from middle childhood to late adolescence; b) whether parenting practices of mothers and fathers perceived by children would predict their levels of prosocial behaviors; c) whether temperamental traits would have a moderating role in the relationship between parenting practices and prosocial behaviors. The study sample consists of 4033 mothers and their children from 61 cities and 185 schools in Turkey. Data have been collected as part of a nationally representative project between January and July 2022 and will be analyzed by conducting hierarchical regression analyses via IBM SPSS Statistics 28. It is hypothesized that while higher levels of inductive reasoning and parental warmth would predict higher levels of prosocial behaviors, higher levels of psychological control would predict lower levels of prosocial behaviors. Moreover, it is hypothesized that negative affect and sensory processing sensitivity would have a moderating role in these relationships with interactions reflecting a differential susceptibility pattern.

Authors

• Beril Kiyak, Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (METU)
  Presenting Author

• Basak Sahin-Acar, Middle East Technical University

• Deniz Tahiroglu, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi (BOUN)

• Aysun Dogan, Ege University

• Sibel KazakBerument, Middle East Technical University