The Relationship Between Emotional Predispositions, Emotional Decoding and Regulation Skills and Children's Prosocial Behavior
Greener, Susan Hayes
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/87814
Description
Title
The Relationship Between Emotional Predispositions, Emotional Decoding and Regulation Skills and Children's Prosocial Behavior
Author(s)
Greener, Susan Hayes
Issue Date
1998
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Nicki R. Crick
Department of Study
Human Resources and Family Studies
Discipline
Human Resources and Family Studies
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Psychology, Social
Language
eng
Abstract
The study was designed to examine 8-12 year-old's emotional predispositions/skills and their relation to peer-assessments of prosocial behavior as predicted by the theories of emotional intelligence (Salovey & Mayer, 1990, 1994) emotional competence (Saarni, 1995). An adequate understanding of these relationships is critical for socializing positive behavior and creating interventions that reduce antisocial behavior and increase prosocial emotional responses. Although prosocial behavior has been studied for many years, it has been narrowly operationalized and research has tended to lack ecological validity. To rectify these weaknesses, in Phase I of the study, child-generated normative prosocial behaviors were used to screen 332 children, using peer nominations to identify groups of high- (n = 56), average- (n = 51), and low-prosocial children (n = 51). Children also filled out self-ratings of social behavior, sociometric nominations, and a measure assessing components of emotional intelligence. During Phase II, children completed self-ratings of dispositional empathy and perspective-taking and an assessment of nonverbal emotion decoding accuracy. Teachers assessed children's social behavior, empathic response, emotion regulation, and dispositional positive affect. High-prosocial children scored significantly higher on self-reports of empathic response, teacher-reports of positive affect, accuracy of decoding emotion in children's faces, and teacher-reports of emotion regulation. High-prosocial children were more accepted by their peers, but were as likely to be sociometrically average as average- and low-prosocial groups. Girls consistently outscored boys on ratings of emotional competence and prosocial behavior. Implications of research findings are discussed.
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