The Effects of Effortful Control and Empathy of Children on Their Prosocial Behavior
AUTHOR : 조은주,정윤경
INFORMATION : page. 129~147 / 2014 Vol.21 No.4
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between a child’s effortful control, empathy
and prosocial behavior. Self-report data were collected from 342 elementary school students in the fifth
and sixth grades in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. The results were as follows: first, no significant gender
difference was found in the effortful control of the children. Empathy and prosocial behavior, on the other
hand, were found to be significantly different according to gender. Second, the effortful control, empathy
and prosocial behavior of the children were found to exhibit a high degree of relevance with one another.
Higher levels of effortful control and empathy were associated with higher level of prosocial behavior.
Finally, the results revealed that the relationship between effortful control and prosocial behavior of
children was mediated by empathy. This result implied that empathy is a variable that can be influenced
by effortful control, thereby proposing a possibility of an indirect developmental path for prosocial behavior
through effortful control and empathy. This suggests the importance of other-oriented empathy in
increasing prosocial behavior.