The Developmental Relations between Perspective Taking and Prosocial Behaviors: A Meta-Analytic Examination of the Task-Specificity Hypothesis

Abstract

Given the multidimensional nature of both perspective taking and prosocial behaviors, the authors advance an information processing position that attending to characteristics of tasks used to assess these constructs will clarify the nature of their associations. A meta-analysis is presented to address the task specificity hypothesis such that perspective taking and prosocial behavior are more strongly related with greater similarity in the task dimensions of emotionality, target protagonist, and context specificity. Results support this hypothesis; the magnitude of relations between perspective taking and prosocial behavior was independently predicted by each dimension, and higher task similarity on two dimensions substantially increased explained variance. Age differences in links between perspective taking and prosocial behavior were also found suggesting that effects are strongest in middle-childhood and adolescence. Implications are discussed for the study of social cognitions and moral behaviors.

Longitudinal Change in Adolescents’ Prosocial Behavior Toward Strangers, Friends, and Family

“…However, this is likely explained because predictors were only measured at the initial time point in this study. Another possibility is that sympathy and perspective taking help account for change in prosocial behavior in earlier childhood; there is evidence that such traits are relatively well developed by early adolescence (see Carlo, Knight, McGinley, Goodvin, & Roesch, ). Alternatively, the lack of significant links between dispositional characteristics and prosocial behaviors over time might be due to the relative stability of traits (e.g., sympathy) across adolescence.…”

“…Given the important and unique role of the friend relationship on prosocial behavior toward friends found in this study and others (e.g., Padilla‐Walker, Fraser, et al., ; Wentzel & McNamara, ), this finding suggests the need to consider the specific characteristics (e.g., gender, relationship status, age) of friends or other targets in relation to the characteristics of the helper. Consistent with this notion, in a meta‐analytic review researchers reported a significant increase in the amount of systematic variance between perspective taking and prosocial behaviors when the characteristics of the targets in the helping and the perspective taking task were more similarly matched (Carlo et al., ). Taken together, the overall pattern of findings suggests the need to integrate a relational theoretical perspective to that of traditional dispositional theories of prosocial development, and future research should consider additional aspects of relationships (beyond quality) such as rules, norms, and expectations for behavior.…”

Considering economic stress and empathic traits in predicting prosocial behaviors among U.S. Latino adolescents

“…Perspective taking is often viewed as a trait among older adolescents because such skills are relatively well developed by this age, yet individual differences persist (Carlo, Knight, McGinley, Goodvin, & Roesch, 2010). Therefore, in adolescence, we might expect individual differences in perspective taking (Carlo, Knight, McGinley, Goodvin, et al, 2010;Eisenberg, 1986), which could result in differential effects of economic stress on empathic concern. The moderation hypothesis suggests that economic stress might not be directly associated with perspective taking; rather perspective taking tendencies might interact with economic stress to predict empathic concern, which ultimately may predict prosocial behaviors.…”

Prosocial Behavior in Adolescence: Gender Differences in Development and Links with Empathy

“…That is, individuals who tend to take others’ perspectives become more likely to experience feelings of concern for those others and may subsequently show prosocial behavior (Batson et al 1989 ; Eisenberg et al 2001 ), although a previous study (using latent variables) showed that perspective taking did not predict empathic concern between ages 14 and 17 years (Van Lissa et al 2014 ). Results of previous empirical studies on the link between perspective taking and prosocial behavior are indeed mixed (see Carlo et al 2010a , for a meta-analytic review). For instance, whereas a cross-sectional study revealed no significant association between perspective taking and defending bully victims (Caravita et al 2009 ), a longitudinal study revealed that higher levels of perspective taking did predict a higher willingness to intervene in bullying (Espelage et al 2012 ).…”