How filial piety influences life satisfaction among adolescents: A one-year longitudinal moderated-mediation study

This three-wave longitudinal study ( N = 609; M age = 12.09) tested whether filial piety predicts Chinese adolescents’ life satisfaction through prosocial tendencies and whether socioeconomic status (SES) moderates these links. Reciprocal filial piety (RFP), authoritarian filial piety (AFP), life satisfaction, and SES were assessed at baseline, prosocial tendencies 6 months later, and life satisfaction again 12 months later. Structural models controlling covariates showed that both RFP and AFP predicted greater overall subsequent satisfaction, though only AFP retained a direct effect. Prosocial tendencies partially mediated both associations: higher filial piety fostered greater prosociality, which improved life satisfaction. SES moderated only the RFP pathway, with stronger indirect effects under high SES, whereas AFP effects were stable across groups. These findings suggest that filial piety serves as a culturally grounded resource for adolescent life satisfaction, and that socioeconomic advantages particularly strengthen the translation of reciprocal filial values into prosocial behaviour and, in turn, life satisfaction.