Contemporaneous and 1-Year Longitudinal Prediction of Children's Prosocial Behavior From Sympathy and Moral Motivation

The authors investigated the contemporaneous and longitudinal relations of children's (M age = 6.4 years) prosocial behavior to sympathy and moral motivation. Mothers and kindergarten teachers rated children's prosocial behavior. The authors measured sympathy via self- and adult reports. Moral motivation was assessed by children's attribution of emotions to hypothetical victimizers and self-as-victimizers and by moral reasoning after rule violations. Mother-rated prosocial behavior was contemporaneously and longitudinally related to sympathy. Moral motivation moderated the relation of sympathy to mother-rated prosocial behavior. Furthermore, boys' level of mother-rated prosocial behavior increased with level of moral motivation, whereas girls were high in mother-rated prosocial behavior, regardless of their level of moral motivation. Sympathy contemporaneously predicted kindergarten teacher-rated prosocial behavior.