engleski

Personality and peer-group correlates of adolescent helping behaviour

The relationship od empathy and moral reasoning to prosocial behaviour was examined in this study. The subjects included 311 adolescents (174 females and 137 males) with the mean age of fourteen years. In the forst part of the study, subjects were administered the Emotional Empathy Scale (Raboteg-Šarić, 1991), Kohlberg's Moral Judgement Interview and an intelligence test during the regular procedure of their vocational counselling. Peer ratings of subjects' helping behaviour at school and sociometric nominations of their popularity in the class were obtained in the second part of the study. A positive relationship between maturity of moral reasoning, intelligence and sociometric status with adolescent helping behaviour at school was found. The relationship between emotional empathy scores and peer ratings of helping behaviour was not significant. Significant sex differences were also found. Girls were rated as being more helpful than boys. The validity of the measurement of helping behaviour is discussed in accordance with the results obtained in this study. It seems that peer ratings are partly based on adolescent popularity in a group as well as on their competence to perform school tasks. It is suggested that the relationshio of empathy and moral reasoning with prosocial behaviour may vary depending on the salience of factors associated with the social context in which ratings of prosocial behaviour are obtained.

empathy; moral reasoning; prosocial behaviour; sociometric status

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