Prosocial Behaviour at 3 Years of Age Predicts Children’s Socio-Emotional and Behavioural Outcomes at 4.5 Years of Age

Abstract

Thriving in large social groups requires humans to work together prosocially. Research has shown that children engage in various forms of prosocial behaviour from a very young age. However, not much is known about if and what aspects of prosocial behaviour evidenced in the preschool years are associated with later behavioural outcomes. Most of the research conducted on associations between prosocial behaviour and later behavioural outcomes has examined broad indicators of prosocial behaviour or, even more generally, social competence. Using data from an ongoing longitudinal study of prosocial behaviour development, the present study was conducted to examine how two forms of prosocial behaviour (cooperation and helping) and two indicators within each type (ability and quality) measured at 36 months was associated with later behavioural outcomes measured at 53 months. The analyses revealed no association between early cooperative ability (i.e., the speed at which children cooperated) and later behavioural outcomes. However, there were significant associations between cooperative quality (i.e., how affiliative or antagonistic children were towards the social partner), helping, and empathic concern, the other indices of prosocial behaviour, and later behavioural outcomes. The direction of these associations differed depending on the task and the quality measure we examined to look at the behavioural outcomes. For example, affiliation in the complementary roles 2 task (CR2T) at 36 months negatively predicted hyperactivity at 53 months, while affiliation in the peer parallel roles task (PPRT) at 36 months positively predicted hyperactivity at 53 months. Taken together, these findings revealed that prosocial behaviour did predict later behavioural outcomes, but the direction of the associations differed depending on prosocial behaviour and task type. This suggests that it is important to look at specific aspects of prosocial behaviour in order to see how they may affect later functioning and to be able to design interventions for children with behavioural problems.