Original scientific paper
THE ROLE OF EMPATHY AND MORAL REASONINO IN ADOLESCENTS· PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
Zora Raboteg-Šarić
; Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb
Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to determine the relationship
between adolescents' empathy and maturity of moral
reasoning with their self-reported prosocial behaviour. Fourteenyear-
oldadolescents (N=311) were administered scales measuring
emotional empathy, fantasy and prosocial behaviour. Kohlberg's
structured moral dilemmas were used to measure moral
jUdgement maturity. Data were analysed by means of a hierarchical
regression analysis with emotional empathy, fantasy and moral
reasoning and their interactions as predictors and prosocial
behavior as a criterion variable. Intelligence, social desirability tendencies
and sex of subjects were taken as control variables. The
results showed that higher prosocial behaviour could be best explained
by higher emotional empathy. Moral reasoning was not related
to prosocial behaviour. Significant interaction of moral maturity
and emotional empathy was found showing that the correlation
of empathy and prosocial behaviour was stronger at higher
levels of moral reasoning. Significant sex differences in prosocial
behaviour were also found. Additional analysis indicated that girls
were found to be more altruistic than boys due to their higher
emotional empathy. The implications of these findings are discussed
in the context of the current debate on the role of moral
cognitions and moral affects in determining moral behaviour.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
31610
URI
Publication date:
30.6.1997.
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