| A significant amount of past research has attempted to elucidate the relation between social cognition and prosocial behavior. Traditional social-cognitive approaches to this problem, using global constructs, have often produced inconsistent findings. Use of a social information-processing (SIP) paradigm is proposed as a possible remedy. In particular, the present study constitutes a longitudinal attempt to replicate and extend the findings of an earlier concurrent study of SEP patterns and prosocial behavior (Nelson & Crick, 1999). That study found unique SIP patterns for particularly prosocial children in their assessment of hypothetical provocation situations (e.g., benign attributional bias). In contrast to the group-oriented approach of the Nelson and Crick (1999) article and the majority of previous SIP research, a normative, developmental approach was employed.; Accordingly, a normative middle-childhood sample of 127 children (67 boys, 60 girls) participated in the study. Assessments included self-reports of several elements of SIP and peer reports of prosocial behavior at grades three and four. Consistent with past research, there were significant gender differences for many variables and their relative stability (especially prosocial behavior) and, accordingly, a regression-by-gender approach was employed. Results showed that certain response-decision variables were uniquely predictive of prosocial behavior for boys and girls. These significant associations were in regard to children's endorsement of relationally aggressive strategies for handling provocation. Findings for girls were in expected directions, with a tendency to denounce relational aggression (in response to either instrumental or relational provocation) being significantly associated with greater prosocial reputation across time. In contrast, findings for boys showed that endorsement of a relationally aggressive response to relational provocation predicted an increase in peer-rated prosocial behavior one year later. These unique findings are interpreted from a normative perspective and suggestions for further research are given. |
