From August 30 – September 1 the XVI Reunión Nacional V Encuentro Internacional de la Asociación Argentina de Ciencias del Comportamiento, took place in San Luis (Argentina). María Belén Mesurado presented a paper with the title “Adaptación argentina de la escala de prosocialidad hacia los distintos destinatarios y su relación con la empatia y los estilos parentales” [Argentinean adaptation of the scale of prosocial behavior to different targets and its relation with empathy and parental styles], co-authored with Carina Hess and Paulina Guerra.
Here you may find an introduction to the presentation:
Pro-social behaviors are “voluntary actions that are intended to help or benefit another person or group of individuals” (Eisenberg and Mussen, 1989, p.3). Most studies on prosocial behavior have focused on prosocial behavior towards strangers, leaving aside other types of recipients such as friends or family. Previous research has consistently shown that prosociality is related to empathy. Empathy is the ability to put oneself in the place of the other (cognitive aspect) and feel the same as other person (emotional aspect). On the other hand, studies show that prosociality is also associated with parental styles, for example authoritative or democratic parental styles (parents who exercise control and support for their children) promote prosocial behaviors in adolescents and young people. The first objective of this study is to validate the prosociality by Padilla-Walker and colleagues (2011), which evaluates the prosociality towards family, friends and strangers. Secondly, it is to study the convergent validity of this scale studying its relationship with empathy and the authoritative parental style. The third objective is to study the internal consistency of the instrument. The sample was conformed by 422 university students of a private university of Cordoba. The Parental Authority Questionaire (PAQ) by Buri (1991) was used to measure the parental styles; the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis 1980) was used to measure empathy; and the Scale of prosociality towards the different target by Padilla-Walker and Christensen (2011) was used to measure prosocial behaviors. An EFC was carried out to study the validity of the Spanish version of the scale, finding good indexes of adjustment to the theoretical model proposed by Padilla-Walker et al. (2011) (Chi squared = 1599.8, fd = 321, chi / fd = 4.98, GFI = .95, AGFI = .94, NFI = .94, RMR = .04). Regarding the second objective, Pearson’s r correlation analyzes were performed, finding moderate correlations between authoritative parental style and prosocial behaviors (towards stranger r = .21, p ≤.001, toward friend r = .29, p ≤.001 and toward the family r = .37, p ≤.001). In relation to the dimensions of empathy, the following correlations were found: Taking perspective (toward stranger r = .36, p ≤.001, toward friend r = .31, p ≤.001 and toward family r = .28 , p ≤.001) and empathic concern (toward stranger r = .27, p ≤.001, toward friend r = .41, p ≤.001 and toward the family r = .30, p ≤.001). In relation to the third objective, the internal consistency of the new Argentine validation of the instrument was studied, obtaining good results (prosocial behavior toward stranger α. = .77, toward friend α. = .83 and toward family α. = .87).
Key words: adaptation; prosocial behavior; empathy; parental styles
