Citation

Caprara GV, Barbaranelli C, Pastorelli C, Bandura A, Zimbardo PG. Psychol. Sci. 2000; 11(4): 302-306.

Affiliation

Dipartimento di Psicologia, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185 Roma, Italy. caprara@uniroma1.it

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

11273389

Abstract

The present longitudinal research demonstrates robust contributions of early prosocial behavior to children's developmental trajectories in academic and social domains. Both prosocial and aggressive behaviors in early childhood were tested as predictors of academic achievement and peer relations in adolescence 5 years later. Prosocialness included cooperating, helping, sharing, and consoling, and the measure of antisocial aspects included proneness to verbal and physical aggression. Prosocialness had a strong positive impact on later academic achievement and social preferences, but early aggression had no significant effect on either outcome. The conceptual model accounted for 35% of variance in later academic achievement, and 37% of variance in social preferences. Additional analysis revealed that early academic achievement did not contribute to later academic achievement after controlling for effects of early prosocialness. Possible mediating processes by which prosocialness may affect academic achievement and other socially desirable developmental outcomes are proposed.

Language: en