The Relationship Between Children 's Prosocial Behavior, Attacking Behavior And Psychological Adaptation: The Role Of Peer Circle

As an important social and cultural context, peer group plays a significant and particular role in children’s individual development. In the process of children’s socialization, the significance of the prosocial behavior, aggressive behavior for their psychological adjustment has been inadequately supported. However, when children are in the different peer groups, groups’ prosocial behavior or aggressive behavior may enhance or constrain the individual-level relations between social behaviors and psychological developmental outcomes. Moreover, more and more children moving to urban areas with their parents in recent years, migrant children has already became a special population under the peculiar Chinese social and cultural environments. They have more opportunities to interact with urban children. Therefore, the purpose in the current study was to explore the formation of children’s peer group and the effects of peer group on the relation between their prosocial, aggressive behavior and psychological adjustment.Participants were a sample of 645 children from Shanghai. Data were collected from multiple sources in the study. Class play procedure was used to assess children’s prosocial, aggressive behavior. Self-reports were used to measure children’s self-perceptions, depression, loneliness, and well-being. The Social Cognitive Map procedure was used to identify children’s peer group membership. Using hierarchical linear modeling(HLM) to analyze data.The results indicated: 1) Boys had significantly higher scores than girls on loneliness. Girls had significantly higher scores than boys on self-esteem and well-being. Children in fourth grade had significantly higher scores than children in sixth grade on self-esteem and well-being, while sixth grade children were morelikely to feel depressed than fourth grade children. In fourth grade, urban children had significantly higher scores than migrant children on self-esteem, while migrant children were more likely to feel lonely and depression. 2) Boys had significantly higher scores than girls on aggressive behavior and lower scores on prosocial behavior.Migrant children had significantly higher scores than urban children on prosocial behavior. 3) Most of peer groups consisted of the same gender and only a few were mixed groups. Children were willing to choose others who have the same background to form peer groups. 4) Girl groups had significantly higher scores than boy groups on prosocial behavior and lower scores on aggressive behavior. Boy groups were more likely to feel lonely than girl groups, while girl groups had significantly higher scores on well-being. 5) Group’s prosocial behavior had direct effect on children’s psychological adjustment. Group’s prosocial behavior was positively associated with self-esteem and well-being, and was negatively associated with depression and loneliness. In addition, the relationship between individual-level prosocial behavior and loneliness was moderated by group-level prosocial behavior. 6) Group’s aggressive behavior had direct effect on children’s psychological adjustment. Group’s aggressive behavior was positively associated with depression and loneliness. In addition, the relationship between individual-level aggressive behavior and depression was moderated by group-level prosocial behavior.