Study On Relations Among Students' Prosocial Behavior, Peer Relationships, Interpersonal Trust, Social Desirability And Self-esteem In The Elementary And Middle Schools

Since 1970s,with the development of our society and enlargement of the research into children's socialization, it has been widely recognized that children's prosocial behavior has become an important field in terms of development psychology and social psychology. And a lot of research has been conducted centered on the initial mechanism, development trends and effecting factors of children's prosocial behavior. Based on existing theories and researches, this thesis aims to explore the coherence among some prosocial behavior patterns (helping, sharing, co-operation and modestly declination) .outline the trends of children's prosocial behavior, probe into the relationships among students' prosocial behavior, peer relationships, interpersonal trust, social desirability and self-esteem in the elementary and middle schools, so that it can give a psychological explanation on the cultivation and education of children's prosocial behavior.The study rested on the prosocial behavior evaluation questionnaire, the peer relationships evaluation questionnaire, the self-esteem scale, the children's machiavellianism scale and the Children's social desirability scale is to try a test paper for 519 students in the elementary and middle schools. It can be concluded as follows by analyzing the outcome of the investigation.First, the development of students' prosocial behavior is charactered by coherence. That is, a student who is willing to offer a helping hand also tends to share, cooperate, and compromise with others. This research infers that the reason is students' behavior is consistent and stable in a particular circumstance, and there is some altruistic personality. Also, different levels of different prosocial behavior patterns can be seen through the survey. Helping and modestly declination are in the highest level, sharing is the next and co-operation is the lowest. The level of students' psychology development and the nature of different prosocial behavior may account for the phenomenon.Second, students' prosocial behavior has the following characteristics: elementary school students in grade three have prosocial behavior in the highest level. Then thelevel of prosocial behavior drops as the grade increases. However, it increases again in Grade Two, senior Middle School. This can be explained by the development of students' Peer relationships, interpersonal trust, social desirability and self-esteem as well as incentive system of prosocial behavior and prosocial reasoning.Third, there is marked difference between the development of prosocial behavior of schoolgirls and schoolboys. On the one hand, schoolgirls has much more prosocial behavior than schoolboys. On the other hand, there is difference between the development trends of prosocial behavior of schoolgirls and schoolboys. To explain this, the thesis concludes that there are probably two reasons. One is that schoolgirls and schoolboys are educated differently in the aspect of sexual distinction in the process of children' socialization, and the other is that the time for boys and girls in the adolescent stage to mature physically is different.Fourth, regression analysis indicates that these factors: peer relationships, interpersonal trust, social desirability and self-esteem, etc, have noticeable regression effect. Among these factors, peer relationships have the greatest influence on students' prosocial behavior, and self-esteem has an indirect influence on students' prosocial behavior. According to the results of the regression analysis, the thesis builds a path model of influences of peer relationships, interpersonal trust, social desirability and self-esteem on students' prosocial behavior.Based on the above conclusion, some suggestions are mentioned about how to improve the level of students' prosocial behavior in the thesis.