Early adolescence, between the age of 10 to 13, is characterized by gaining more autonomy and an increase in complex social relationships. To engage in these social relations, prosocial giving...Show moreEarly adolescence, between the age of 10 to 13, is characterized by gaining more autonomy and an increase in complex social relationships. To engage in these social relations, prosocial giving behaviour and self-concept play an important role. Within gifted adolescents the social development is different from non-gifted adolescents, which might affect the development of prosocial giving behaviour and self-concept. In the current research we were interested in prosocial giving behaviour towards different targets and academic/non-academic self-concept within and between non-gifted and gifted adolescents. We recruited 112 children in the 7th and 8th grade from schools with regular and full-time gifted education. The Standard Progressive Raven Matrices was used to assess IQ, the Prosocial Giving Task to measure giving behaviour towards different targets and the Competentiebelevingsschaal voor Kinderen to measure self-concept on six areas. The results showed that adolescents gave more to in-group targets than to out-group targets. We also found that within non-gifted adolescents the academic self-concept was lower than the non-academic self-concept. Within gifted adolescents, there was no difference between the academic and non-academic self-concept. For both prosocial giving behaviour and self-concept, we did not find a difference between non-gifted and gifted adolescents. Furthermore, there was not an association between prosocial giving behaviour and self-concept for both non-gifted and gifted adolescents. Future research could consider to take the transition to high school into account. This transition might influence the development of both prosocial giving behaviour and self-concept during early adolescence within both non-gifted and gifted adolescents.Show less
