Previous research suggests that a child’s temperament has a positive relation to its prosocial behavior. It also suggests temperament has a positive relation to parental stress, which in turn has a...Show morePrevious research suggests that a child’s temperament has a positive relation to its prosocial behavior. It also suggests temperament has a positive relation to parental stress, which in turn has a negative relation to prosocial behavior. In the current study we looked at a possible mediation of parental stress on the relation between a child’s temperament and prosocial behavior. We used a sample of n=114 children aged 8-10 and their parents. We used the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (TMCQ) and the Parenting Daily Hassles (PDH) questionnaire to measure child temperament and parental stress respectively and we used a donating task to measure child prosocial behavior. We ran two different mediation models for two temperament subtypes: Negative Affectivity and Perceptual Sensitivity. We found a significant positive relation between the Negative Affectivity subtype of temperament and parental stress. Contrary to our expectations we found no significant relation between either of the two temperament subtypes and prosocial behavior, between the Perceptual Sensitivity subtype and parental stress, and between parental stress and prosocial behavior. Even though our expectations were not met, this study provides new insights in the relations between these three aspects of child development. The development of prosocial behavior is more resilient than we previously thought. Even when a child has a difficult temperament or a parent who experiences a high amount of stress, this does not necessarily mean a child can not learn to be prosocial.Show less
