Department of Psychology, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Center for Violence Prevention at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
J Youth Adolesc. 2022 May;51(5):956-966. doi: 10.1007/s10964-021-01501-4. Epub 2021 Sep 29.
Despite empirical findings that prosociality is related to decreased depressive symptoms in children, little is known about the directionality of the relations and the mechanisms that may explain the relations. To address these gaps, this study examined bi-directional associations between prosociality and depressive symptoms and the mediating effects of peer preference on the associations in Chinese children. Multi-wave longitudinal data were collected each year from Grades 3 to 6 in a sample of children in China (initial N = 1012; 51.6% girls; initial M = 8.68 years). The results showed that prosociality and depression negatively contributed to each other over time. Prosociality also predicted increased peer preference, which in turn contributed to fewer depressive symptoms, suggesting that peer preference was a mediator of the contributions of prosociality to depressive symptoms. These findings indicate the temporal ordering of prosociality and depressive symptoms and the processes in the development of depressive symptoms in Chinese children.
尽管有实证研究发现亲社会行为与儿童抑郁症状的减少有关，但对于这些关系的方向性以及可能解释这些关系的机制知之甚少。为了弥补这些空白，本研究考察了亲社会行为和抑郁症状之间的双向关联，以及同伴偏好对这些关联的中介作用在中国儿童中的作用。在中国儿童样本中，从 3 年级到 6 年级每年收集多波纵向数据（初始 N=1012；女生占 51.6%；初始 M=8.68 岁）。结果表明，亲社会行为和抑郁随着时间的推移相互负向贡献。亲社会行为也预测了同伴偏好的增加，而同伴偏好反过来又有助于减少抑郁症状，这表明同伴偏好是亲社会行为对抑郁症状影响的中介。这些发现表明了中国儿童中亲社会行为和抑郁症状的时间顺序以及抑郁症状发展过程。
