PROTOCOL: Practices and Program Components for Enhancing Prosocial Behavior in Children and Youth: A Systematic Review
Year: 2015
Type: review
Abstract: What prompts a child to provide comfort to an injured schoolmate? Why does a kindergartener stand up for peer who is being bullied? What impels a teenage girl to spend her weekends volunteering at a homeless shelter? Prosocial behaviors or voluntary acts intended to help or promote the wellbeing of others (Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989) are learned skills that accumulating research suggests have implications not only for constructively navigating interactions, relationships, and school and other group contexts but also for life in a civil society. Yet, strikingly, there is limited knowledge of the factors that affect the degree to which prosocial behavior is learned and enhanced. The focus of this quantitative review will be to clarify the types of instructional practices and programs that show evidence of effectively prompting children and youth to act in ways that help others. The benefits of prosocial behavior to lives of children and youth have been highlighted in the last few decades, and this quantitative synthesis of the research is designed to provide evidence-based directions for supporting these constructive, caring, and helpful behaviors in interactions, relationships, schools, homes, and communities. For children from preschool to high school, prosocial behavior has been linked to individual and interpersonal benefits including greater empathy, self-confidence, and antisocial impulse regulation, higher grades and educational aspirations, and more supportive relationships (Caprara, Barbaranelli, Pastorelli, Bandura, & Zimbardo, 2000; Eccles & Barber, 1999; Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006; Johnson, Beebe, Mortimer, & Snyder, 1998; Larrieu & Mussen, 1986; Markiewicz, Doyle, & Brendgen, 2001). There is also evidence that prosocial behavior may serve as a protective factor against behaviors that pose a risk for adverse health and educational outcomes. For example, studies show that youth involved in interventions that engage them in volunteer service activities have lower rates of problem behavior, teen pregnancy, course failure, and suspension from school as compared to controls (Allen, Philliber, Herrling, & Kuperminc, 1997; Allen, Philliber, & Hoggson, 1990). The need to build prosocial competencies is underscored by studies that suggest high percentages of students lack skills to get along with others, work as part of a group, or cooperatively resolve interpersonal disputes (Johnson & Johnson, 1996; Rimm-Kaufman, Pianta, & Cox, 2000). A large-scale international survey of 6th through 10th grade students (predominately in Europe and North America) found that over 30% of students did not report that they agreed or strongly agreed that most of their classmates are kind and helpful. Notably, in many countries, there was a decline with age in students reporting that classmates are kind and helpful (Currie et al., 2008; Iannotti, 2012). Of further concern, children from low-income households appear to enter kindergarten significantly behind their economically advantaged peers in socioemotional competence (Wertheimer, Croan, Moore, & Hair, 2003). This is particularly worrisome considering the pervasive school-related disadvantages associated with poverty (Lee & Burkam, 2002). Collectively, this research signifies that more work needs to be done to better understand the educational supports that provide a springboard for prosocial development. Enhancing prosocial behavior in schools is a topic highly relevant to current educational reform initiatives. According to a recent report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's Center for Child Well-being, education should offer opportunities for children and youth to cultivate social competencies and moral values (LMTF, 2013). Ministries and agencies with responsibility for education in various countries have proposed or mandated that schools introduce action plans and curricula to support students' prosocial behavior (e.g., Ministry of Education, Ontario, Canada; Ministry of Education, New Zealand; Mulyavardhan program, Maharashtra, India). Several U.S. states (e.g., Pennsylvania, Washington) have also recently adopted learning standards for teaching prosocial competencies in early childhood and elementary education. However, inevitably, inefficient progress and failures in school reform will result with the current absence of clear evidence on the instructional practices and types of programs that lead to prosocial behavior. As Bergin (2014) points out, “Currently, there is a huge gap between research and practice [in the field of prosocial development], with many schools implementing interventions with small or unknown effects” (p. 296). The scope of this review will focus on instructional practices or programs with behavioral or psychological content that are evaluated with respect to their impact on the prosocial behavior of children and/or youth. Particular emphasis will be on synthesizing aspects of content and delivery methods of interventions to better understand the active ingredients that appear to characterize more or less effective interventions. Our approaches to identifying which treatment components may be effective processes for change will be similar to those taken by prior reviews conducted by Chorpita and Daleiden (2009), Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, and Schellinger (2011), Kaminski, Valle & Filene and Boyle (2008), and Lipsey (2009a). The social science literature has operationalized prosocial behavior in various ways. Many studies use the term “prosocial behavior” interchangeably with indices of social and/or emotional competence (e.g., positive social behavior, empathy, on-task behavior, lack of maladaptive behavior). Although prosocial behavior is at times included as one of the behavioral dimensions measuring social and emotional competence, research suggests that prosocial behavior and other indices of social and emotional competence are related but still not conceptually or empirically redundant constructs (Cassidy, Werner, Rourke, Zubernis, & Balaraman, 2003; Eisenberg et al., 1996; Eisenberg et al., 2006). It is important to specify that this review will focus on only those interventions tested for impact on outcomes of prosocial behavior, including sharing resources, assisting others in need, comforting, cooperating, protecting someone from harm or bullying, and other acts intended to benefit others. In the literature, there have been a variety of instructional practices and multi-component universal and targeted interventions evaluated for influence on prosocial development. Examples of tested instructional practices include, but are not limited to, positive behavioral reinforcement, induction, empathy arousal techniques, modelling, practice or rehearsal of prosocial behavior, external reward, socializer nurturance or emotional warmth, assignment of social responsibility, and engagement in volunteering activity. Multi-component programs evaluated for impact on prosocial responses reflect a varying focus on program content such as cooperative learning activities and games (Johnson, Johnson, Johnson, & Anderson, 1996; Street, Hoppe, Kingsbury & Ma, 2004), prosocial models in media (Mares & Woodard, 2005), positive behavioral reinforcement (Flannery et al., 2003), emotion understanding (Malti, Ribeaud, & Eisner, 2012), relaxation practices (Lozada, D'Adamo & Carro, 2014) and community building in classrooms or schools (Solomon, Watson, Battistich, Schaps, & Delucchi, 1996). This review seeks to make sense of this diverse literature in order to provide insights about whether practices and intervention programs are effective and to reduce the ambiguity about which components of intervention actually influence prosocial behavior. Eligible treatments can vary in any permutation of duration and intensity. Implementation of treatment can occur in classrooms, afterschool programs, home settings, and other natural contexts. Laboratory, institutional, or inpatient settings are ineligible. Only interventions that are implemented by adults will be included in the review: this review is focused on evaluating whether adults' practices, dissemination of programs, organization of learning contexts (e.g., organizing cooperative learning groups), and delivery of media interventions can induce changes in the prosocial behavior of children and youth. Many theoretical and conceptual perspectives come to bear on understanding how the delivery method and content of different instructional practices and programs may function to enhance prosocial behavior in children and youth. SAFE is one framework for examining intervention delivery method that has been shown in prior meta-analytic review to delineate those programs that are associated with a host of positive outcomes (e.g., positive social behavior) for children and youth (Durlak, Weissberg, & Pachan, 2010; Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). SAFE is comprised of four practices identified by whether or not intervention staff used “sequenced step-by-step training approach (S), emphasized active forms of learning by having youth practice new skills (A), focused specific time and attention on skill development (F) and were explicit in defining the skills they were attempting to promote (E)” (Durlak & Weissberg, 2012, p. 2-3). This review will examine whether interventions that meet SAFE criteria are associated with significant improvements in prosocial behavior. Particularly relevant to the current review is that although there is general consensus that the learning and enactment of prosocial behaviors are supported through guiding adults' socialization practices and behavioral expectations, there is divergence among theoretical explanations as to the major mechanisms responsible for influencing the production of prosocial behavior (e.g., Batson, 2012; Eisenberg et al., 2006; Hastings et al., 2007). Briefly, we describe many of the primary socialization mechanisms theorized to influence children's prosociability and how these mechanisms have been investigated with respect to their impacts on prosocial behavior. These mechanisms include learning by doing, social learning, emotional literacy, other-orientation, moral instruction, mindfulness, behavioral/cognitive self-regulation, bystander-intervention training, friendship-making skills, caring community, diversity inclusion, civic and political participation, and adult responsiveness, emotional warmth, and nurturance as well as the development of socializers' own social and emotional competence and knowledge of children's social and emotional growth. These mechanisms will comprise the overarching categories of the content of practices and programs that will be coded in this review, and they are described more fully in Appendix A. This list is tentative and will be refined prior to the full-texting coding process. The role of learning by doing is underscored in many theories of prosocial development. Through experiences of providing help, care, and other prosocial actions, children are expected to learn prosocial skills, receive intrinsic rewards (e.g., feeling good about oneself) and social rewards (e.g., social approval), develop self-efficacy for prosocial conduct, and learn about others' feelings and perspectives, which, in turn, are predicted to motivate children's future prosociability (Eisenberg et al., 2006; Staub, 2003). Intervention studies that examine outcomes of prosocial behavior have examined learning by doing activities such as assigning children the responsibility for others and engaging children in cooperative learning activities (Eisenberg et al., 2006; Johnson, Johnson, Johnson, & Anderson, 1976; Staub, 1975; 1992). The influences of learning by doing activities that involve practice, rehearsal, or role-play of prosocial behavior have also been examined in the literature (Rosenhan & White, 1967; Staub, 1971a; White, 1972). According to social learning theory, social behavior is learned and shaped primarily through processes of observational learning (e.g., provision of positive models of behavior), positive behavioral reinforcement, behavioral expectations, and direction instruction. In these ways, socializers are theorized to provide important information regarding behavioral expectations and serve as resources and guides for learning and adopting behavior (Bandura, 1986). Studies have examined the impact on prosocial behaviors of social learning influences including provision of prosocial adult models (Staub, 1971b; Grusec & Skubiski, 1970; Rushton, 1975), praise, punishment, external rewards (Bénabou & Tirole, 2006; Bryan & Brickman, 1973; Gelfand, Hartmann, Cromer, Smith, & Page, 1975; Fabes, Fultz, Eisenberg, Plumlee, & Christopher, 1989; Ramaswamy & Bergin, 2009; Szynal-Brown & Morgan, 1983), and instructional prompts (Gelfand et al., 1975; Israel & Brown, 1979). Prosocial models in media (e.g., prosocial stories or television of programs) have also been studied (Mares & Woodard, 2005). Emotional literacy refers to the capacity to accurately recognize and label emotions in oneself and others as well as in stories, music, etc., to understand the causes and consequences of emotions, and to express and regulate emotions in socially adaptive ways (Brackett & Rivers, 2014). According to many theoretical accounts, emotional literacy underlies prosocial behavior and other social and emotional competencies (Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000; Mayer & Salovey, 1997). With reference to prosocial behavior, if a peer is in distress, the potential enactor of help needs to be able to make sense of the peer's emotional cues, self-regulate emotional responses (e.g., distress might block helping responses), and show appropriate emotions when helping the child (e.g., expression of happiness would be inappropriate). Activities like socializers drawing attention to the feelings of a peer or storybook character, showing and labeling pictures of faces with different emotional expressions, and reading books about different feelings are examples of emotional literacy training (Joseph & Strain, 2003). Some interventions targeted at enhancement of prosocial behavior include teaching emotional literacy. For example, an evaluation by Ornaghi, Grazzani, Cherubin, Conte, and Piralli (2015) demonstrated that a conversational intervention concentrated on the nature, causes, and regulation of emotion had positive effects on the prosocial orientation of children in the treatment group versus control at post-test and the four-month follow-up. Perspective-taking, empathy, and sympathy are frequently posited sources of other-oriented motivation for prosocial behavior. These other-oriented mechanisms are theorized to enable understanding of others' thoughts, feelings, desires, motivations, and intentions, which, in turn, may lead to prosocial action if an individual is in distress or need of help (or help would result in alleviating the distress or guilt of the potential helper) (Batson, 1991; Eisenberg et al., 2006; Feshbach, 1978; Hoffman, 2000; Staub, 1979). An array of adults' techniques aimed at increasing children's consideration for others have been tested for influence upon prosocial behavior in, for example, experiments on empathic arousal (Howard & Barnett, 1981; Eisenberg-Berg & Geisheker, 1979; Ladd, Lange, & Stremmel, 1983), other-oriented inductive techniques (i.e., discipline techniques that include pointing out the consequences of children's actions on others) (Ramaswamy & Bergin, 2009; Staub, 1971b), and other-oriented preaching (Eisenberg, 1983; Eisenberg-Berg & Geisheker, 1979; Midlarsky & Bryan, 1972). It should be clarified that theoretically and empirically other-orientation and emotional literacy are related but also distinct and separable constructs. In essence, skills of emotional literacy (e.g., decoding, understanding, and regulating emotion) lay the foundation for perspective-taking, empathy, and sympathy. Although the literature on moral instruction has been confounded by definitional debate, moral reasoning is commonly referred to as evaluations adhering to principles of fairness, justice, and/or concern for the welfare of others or society (Turiel, 1983). The underlying theoretical expectation is that the development of moral reasoning contributes significantly to prosocial behavior by having an impact on social sensitivity and responsibility, internalization of moral obligations, and guilt for wrongdoing (Eisenberg, 2000; Krebs & Van Hesteren, 1994). Interventions designed to move children to higher levels of moral development predominantly center on group discussions of real-life or hypothetical moral dilemmas or on moral exhortations (e.g., socializer remarks on the merits or virtues of prosocial behavior such as “It is good to help others”). Although the potential impact of moral instruction on prosocial behavior is largely theoretical with comparatively little empirical work, a few evaluations of interventions have investigated this impact (e.g., Krivel-Zacks, 1995; Grusec, Saas-Kortsaak, & Simutis, 1978). There, as yet, is no consensus on a definition of mindfulness (Chiesa, 2013). Mindfulness is characterized herein by an ability to concentrate on and attend to sensations, thoughts, feelings, and objects; describe and label feelings and thoughts with words; bear nonreactivity to inner experiences; and approach moment-to-moment experiences with awareness, openness, acceptance, and non-judgment (Baer, 2007; Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006). Processes by which mindfulness training is thought to influence prosocial behavior include self-regulation of emotions and behavior and transcendence of the self to focus on the broader context (e.g., other people) (Roeser & Pinela, 2014). Mindfulness interventions include components of meditation, relaxation, and concentration practices; acceptance-based strategies; yoga and other movement practices; sense, breath, and body awareness; optimism training; and cultivation of present awareness of feelings, thoughts and sensations. Control group evaluations that include mindfulness training are relatively recent; however, a few have investigated effects on prosocial behavior in children (e.g., Flook, Goldberg, Pinger, & Davidson, 2015). It should be noted that mindfulness interventions often embed features of emotional literacy training (e.g., emotional self-regulation), but there is a focus on self-referential emotion or the inner experience. Such intervention features will be captured under the coding category of emotional literacy. Increasingly, cognitive and behavioral self-regulatory capacities are viewed as core processes relevant to the learning and initiation of prosocial behavior (e.g., Hay & Cook, 2010). Although definitions vary, cognitive and behavioral self-regulation broadly refer to skills to inhibit impulsivity, maintain focus and attention, retain information, delay gratification, generate adaptive cognitive appraisals, and control behavior in service of externally imposed or personal goals or social acceptance (Baumeister, Schmeichel, & Vohs, 2007; Blair, 2009). A variety of interventions will be coded under this category, including those with a focus on improving goal-directed behavior; modifying dysfunctional thinking; inhibiting inappropriate behaviors; and regulating behavior in accordance with contextual coding Appendix Interventions that features to self-regulatory skills are but are evaluated for their impact on prosocial behavior, with (e.g., 2013). and youth often they of and to they out and a peer from they are a of prosocial behavior. research suggests that interventions that support are & 2001). However, through increasing positive empathy, moral evaluations of bullying, of the harm of bullying, self-efficacy for and interventions are thought to helpful in et al., 2012; & 2011). Although few control group interventions have been evaluated with respect to their effects on increasing help or of & 2012; & there have been a (e.g., et al., 2009; et al., 2011). interventions include components such as peer support for increasing children's feeling and empathy for teaching to and support the and to when awareness about the consequences of and the social responsibility to help and how to effectively and a to peer skills include teaching children how to in and suggest and have a and peers to make and and engage in prosocial behavior According to the of children's peer a context for children to learn prosocial behaviors as compared to social such as those which more behavior. Interventions aimed at skills occur predominantly in social and emotional learning The is an of one such program that to help children learn skills and has been investigated for influence on prosocial behavior (e.g., et al., Interventions that to caring (or to the school, and/or are those that work to caring social positive values and and sense of to others and of being and and to relationships to others. There are various through which caring might prosocial behavior. A pervasive by the is that when of a community strongly to the community and positive and they are to in accordance with those positive behavioral standards & 1996). It has also been that social that of meet psychological needs for and competence, which, in turn, caring and behavior & The Child is an of a program in which a major intervention is to build caring in classrooms and This program has been evaluated for impacts on prosocial behavior (e.g., Battistich, Watson, Schaps, & 2000; Watson, Delucchi, Schaps, & Battistich, the most theoretical framework that guides research the effects of diversity is the & 2000; & 2009). This that experiences that sense of to more or among diverse to of as of a more community (e.g., With and the of positive group with of the broader community are expected to more particularly of other this Enhancing the between of the self and other is also a major thought to prosocial behavior (Batson, & 1997). Interventions with a focus on diversity include activities that focus on positive and and awareness of and individual and at be similar to increasing social that is targeted at sense of by children to be of others of different (e.g., or group (e.g., The program is an of a intervention focused on increasing and respect for and has been evaluated for influence on children's sharing with of similar and different and body Johnson, & volunteering at a homeless to a political on civic and political refer to the many ways in which in, or a community and/or & & 2009). This is For example, & four forms of individual and civic and political social (e.g., attention on political or social civic engagement (e.g., volunteering actions in a political (e.g., and (e.g., in perspectives suggest that civic and political enhance social and support a in values greater social concern and prosocial which prosocial (e.g., & 1996). to that voluntary civic and political prosocial This a problem for who civic and political activities may be more will be important to the of studies (e.g., et al., & that whether interventions that such have an impact on prosocial behavior. Although that and with adults can children's prosocial behavior (e.g., Staub, there is about how these types of influence mechanisms have been proposed such as socializers' emotional and nurturance a that a to for others et al., providing a to that opportunities for children to develop social skills & increasing an to the needs of others children as if their own emotional needs are being or of prosocial behavior to of (Staub, It has also been that emotional and nurturance not influence prosocial behavior but enhance children's to influence by adults' other practices However, empirical studies provide evidence this with experiments showing support for adults' nurturance and emotional and not but only through to adults who also use instructional practices such as increasing children's prosocial behavior & Skubiski, 1970; Midlarsky & Bryan, 1967; Staub, 1971a; & and a of the prosocial that the of social and emotional competence and the the of providing with training in emotional awareness and mindfulness to promote and reduce and knowledge on how children develop socially and This is a in reference to training, as many social and emotional learning interventions provide adults with the to children's development. interventions are more to focus on the social and emotional competence of The is an intervention that in targeted to support wellbeing through teaching acceptance-based The program has been shown to have positive effects on prosocial behavior & 2012). The of this review is to generate evidence-based insights to help and understand the evidence on the practices and types of programs that appear to have impacts on prosocial behavior in childhood and the practices that are a good for different child is also a of this review and has implications for the of the review and What is an of prior research and reviews that examine influences on prosocial behavior in order to and in the current of the experiments have been by the most for influences on prosocial behavior. The of most research on prosocial behavior in the when there was in
Source: Campbell Systematic Reviews
DOI: 10.1002/cl2.145
Institutions: Vanderbilt University, Peabody
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W240412345