Feelings or cognitions? Moral cognitions and emotions as longitudinal predictors of prosocial and aggressive behaviors

Abstract

There has been some debate regarding the roles of moral cognitions and emotions in understanding moral development. We examined the short-term longitudinal relations among perspective taking, sympathy, prosocial moral reasoning, prosocial behaviors and aggression in adolescents. The final sample included of 489 students (M age = 12.28 years, SD = .48; 232 boys and 257 girls) in public and private schools from predominantly middle class families in Valencia, Spain. Students completed measures of perspective taking, sympathy, prosocial moral reasoning, prosocial behaviors, and aggressive behaviors twice in a one year interval. In general, path analyses showed that social cognitions and emotions were interrelated and predicted both prosocial behaviors and aggression. Furthermore, residual change analyses revealed that developmental changes in social cognitions and sympathy were linked to developmental changes in prosocial and aggressive behaviors. Discussion focuses on support for cognitive developmental theory and on implications for debate regarding the relevance of cognitions and emotions in moral development.

The codevelopment of sympathy and overt aggression from middle childhood to early adolescence.

“…In line with our inverse co-developmental findings, sympathy and overt aggression were negatively related at each time point. However, in contrast to longitudinal findings reporting bidirectional effects between sympathy and aggression (Carlo et al, 2010;Stavrinides et al, 2010), our ARC model showed that higher sympathy in middle childhood (e.g., at 6 years of age) did not predict lower aggression later in childhood (e.g., at 9 years of age)-and vice versa. This inconsistency between our findings and those of previous studies may stem from different developmental phases studied (i.e., the transition from middle childhood to early adolescence versus within early adolescence) and methodological differences (e.g., adult informants, multi-informant approach, and longer time lags versus self reports, single method approach, and shorter time lags).…”

“…Stavrinides, Georgiou, and Theofanous (2010) found a reciprocal relation between self-reported affective empathy (a construct closely related to sympathy) and bullying in a sample of 11-year-olds: higher initial levels of affective empathy predicted less bullying six months later and vice versa (controlling for their respective stabilities over time). A similar study found that sympathy at age 12 predicted less aggressive behavior one year later, but less so when the auto-regressive prediction of aggression was accounted for (Carlo, Mestre, Samper, Tur, & Armenta, 2010; also see Mößle, Kliem, & Rehbein, 2014). However, none of these studies investigated the extent to which intra-individual, meanlevel increases in sympathy over time were related to intra-individual, mean-level decreases in aggression over the same period.…”

Empatía en la adolescencia. Relaciones con razonamiento moral prosocial, conducta prosocial y agresividad

“…Por otro lado, el razonamiento moral prosocial se ha definido como la toma de decisiones sobre la ayuda hacia el otro en una situación marcada por el conflicto entre las necesidades propias y las necesidades del otro (Carlo, Mestre, Samper, Tur y Armenta, 2010;Eisenberg, 1986). Contempla, por tanto, un juicio moral prosocial y un razonamiento cognitivo, de toma de perspectiva y de toma de decisión, ante una situación marcada por un conflicto de intereses entre personas ajenas a uno mismo (Carlo, 2006).…”

How Adolescents’ Prosocial Behavior Be Influenced by Various Aspects from Family

“…Many studies have illustrated the importance of parenting style in the encouragement of adolescents' prosocial behavior [9]. In fact, parental support leads to positive psychological outcomes for adolescents, such as a sense of self-worth and security [10].…”