Adolescents’ Aggressive and Prosocial Behaviors: Links With Social Information Processing, Negative Emotionality, Moral Affect, and Moral Cognition

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The goal of this study was to examine whether moral affect, moral cognition, negative emotionality, and attribution biases independently predicted adolescents’ prosocial and aggressive behavior in adolescence. A total of 148 adolescents completed self-report measures of prosocial and aggressive behavior, moral affect, moral cognition, negative emotionality, and attribution biases. Although in general all 3 factors (emotional, moral, and social cognitive) were correlated with adolescent social behavior, the most consistent independent predictors of adolescent social behavior were moral affect and cognition. These findings have important implications for intervention and suggest that programs that promote adolescent perspective taking, moral reasoning, and moral affect are needed to reduce aggressive behavior and promote prosocial behavior.

Keywords:

• moral affect, moral cognition, aggression, prosocial behavior

Notes

After rotation, none of the variables loaded on both factors.

TABLE 1 Descriptive Information on Study Variables