Poster #55 - Familism and Empathy-Related Mediating Relations Between Parental Support and U.S. Latinx Youth Prosocial Behaviors

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

Scholars assert that parents who engage in supportive parenting practices have youth who exhibit empathic concern, perspective taking, and helping behaviors (Pastorelli et al., 2016). Latinx parents who use traditional cultural parenting practices foster higher levels of familism, sympathy, and prosocial behaviors in their children (Calderón-Tena, Knight & Carlo, 2011). Moreover, traditional models of prosocial development reveal that social understanding (perspective taking) and feeling sorrow for others (empathic concern) also facilitate prosocial behaviors (Eisenberg et al., 2015). Work is needed to investigate the links among parent influences, culture-specific, and empathy-related mechanisms of prosocial behaviors in U.S. Latinx adolescents. We hypothesize that familism and sympathy will fully mediate the relations between parental support and U.S. Latinx youth care-based, altruistic, and public prosocial behaviors. In turn, familism, empathic concern, and perspective taking will be significantly linked to U.S. Latinx adolescents' prosocial behaviors.
Participants were 305 Latinx youth ages 14-18 years old (54% males; M age = 15.4) who completed self-report measures of parental support (Barber et al., 2005), familism (Knight, 2010), prosocial behaviors (five helping types; Carlo et al., 2003), empathic concern and perspective taking (Davis, 1983). The hypothesized model (see Figure 1) was tested using the maximum likelihood robust standard error (MLR) estimation in Mplus 8.3 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2017). The model included the direct relations between family ethnic socialization and prosocial behaviors (five helping types). Family ethnic socialization was also predicted to be related to high levels of perspective taking, familism, and empathic concern. The model included the direct relations between parental support, care-based (e.g., complaint, emotional, and dire prosocial behaviors), altruistic, and public prosocial behaviors. Parental support was also set to predict familism and sympathy, which in turn, predicted care-based, altruistic, and public prosocial behaviors.
The model fit was adequate (χ2 (2) = 13.356, p < .001, RMSEA (90% CI) = 0.14 (0.07, 0.21), CFI = 1.000, TLI = 0.731, SRMR = 0.04). Multigroup analyses showed the model was robust across gender. Path analyses revealed that the relation between parental support and prosocial behaviors (five helping types) was serially mediated by familism and sympathy, and familism had direct relations to sympathy (e.g., empathic concern and perspective taking). In turn, familism and sympathy were significantly linked to care-based, altruistic, and public prosocial behaviors. Furthermore, familism was also positively linked to care-based and public prosocial behaviors and negatively linked to altruistic prosocial behaviors. Last, sympathy was positively related to care-based and altruistic prosocial behaviors but negatively linked to public prosocial behaviors. Discussion will focus on how the findings support culturally-integrated and multidimensional models of prosocial behaviors and the central roles of culture-specific and empathy-related mechanisms in accounting for U.S. Latinx adolescents' prosocial behaviors.

Authors

• Alysia Cruz, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author

• Gustavo Carlo, University of California, Irvine

• Marixza Torres, University of California - Irvine

• Roushanac Partovi, University of California - Irvine

• Lina Brodsky, University of California - Irvine

• Lisa J Crockett, University of Nebraska - Lincoln