Prosocial self-schemas, self-awareness, and children's prosocial behavior.
Three studies examined the hypothesis that a child's prosocial self-schema predicts prosocial behavior. In Study 1, only self-aware boys showed a self-schema-behavior relation. Study 2 altered both salience of donating opportunity and relationship of recipient to donor. The hypothesized Self-Awareness x Self-Schema interaction was significant, and there were no gender differences. Study 3 systematically manipulated the salience of the donating opportunity. All participants were self-aware. For boys in high and low salience conditions, prosocial self-schema predicted donating behavior. For girls, prosocial self-schema predicted behavior only in the high salience condition. The findings demonstrate that self-schemas can regulate behavior when participants are self-aware. Girls, however, may require higher salience of the donating opportunity for the self-schema to affect their behavior.
Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, Palo Alto, California 94303-4233, USA. w.froming@pgsp.edu
W J
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Froming
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Nasby
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McManus
D001364:Awareness; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D003463:Cues; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006379:Helping Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D010552:Personality Assessment; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012649:Self Concept; D012737:Sex Factors