Role of moral and culture-related correlates in the relations between family ethnic socialization and U.S. Latine youth's prosocial behaviors
Year: 2026
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Background Prosocial developmental scholars suggest that perspective taking (e.g., social understanding) and empathic concern (e.g., feeling sorrow for others) facilitate prosocial behaviors. At the same time, cultural scholars have posited and shown that cultural processes, including familism values and ethnic socialization practices, can also predict prosocial behaviors among ethnic and racial minority youth. These approaches underscore the need for integrative research that examines the links among family influences, culture-specific, and empathy-related mechanisms of prosocial behaviors in U.S. Latine youth. The present study examined whether family ethnic socialization practices were positively related to familism values, sympathy (a composite of perspective taking and empathic concern), and prosocial behaviors in U.S. Latine youth. Methods A national sample of 450 U.S. Latine youth (78% girls; M age = 19.7 years) completed measures of family ethnic socialization, familism, empathic concern and perspective taking, and care-based prosocial behaviors (emotional, compliant, dire). Results Path analyses indicated significant indirect effects such that family ethnic socialization was positively associated with familism, which was positively related to sympathy. In turn, sympathy was positively associated with care-based prosocial behaviors. Family ethnic socialization was also directly positively associated with care-based prosocial behaviors. There were no other significant effects. Multigroup analyses by gender indicated no significant differences. Conclusions These findings align with ecocultural strengths-based models and highlight how family and person culture-based and socioemotional mechanisms jointly shape prosocial development in U.S. Latine youth.
Institutions: University of California, Irvine, Texas A&M University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,353
OpenAlex ID: W7170615521