Temperament and Prosocial Behavior

In this chapter, we review the work that has been done on children’s temperament and prosocial behavior in childhood and adolescence, highlighting the importance of taking a nuanced and multidimensional approach to examining the links between temperament and children’s prosocial behavior. Thus, in addition to examining the higher-order temperamental factors (such as negative emotionality), we also examine how the specific dimensions of temperament (e.g., anger proneness) predict different types of prosocial behaviors (e.g., sharing). Finally, we consider how the links between prosocial behaviors and temperament are likely complicated by the fact that temperamental variables interact both with each other and with environmental factors, such as parenting, to predict different types of prosocial behaviors.