Psychosocial antecedents of prosocial behavior and its relationship with subjective well-being in adolescents

Prosocial behavior is a collective term covering all activities that are advantageous to other persons or the society in general (Piliavin, Dovidio, Gaertner, and Clark, 1981). It can be divided into three categories of altruism, helping, and cooperation. The notion of why certain people help more willingly than others, and with varied frequencies; and what purpose does it solve in a person's life by extending a helping hand to someone, is what led to the origin of this study. Literature review revealed there is sparse literature available on Indian adolescents. Thus, the research objective is to explore various psychosocial factors that contribute to development of pro-social behaviour in late adolescence, and how they contribute to the experience of an individual's subjective well-being. Sample consisted of 200 college going students in the age group of 17-20 years. A variety of measures were used for the purpose: Prosocial Tendencies measure, Satisfaction with life scale and Positive and Negative affect scale. In addition a semistructured questionnaire was used to get qualitative data from 30 individuals. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlational techniques and t-test. Results indicated majority of students having an average frequency of prosocial behavior, predominantly public and compliant type of prosocial behavior, a low positive correlation between prosocial behavior and well-being, a significant difference between adolescents scoring low on pro-social behavior from those scoring high in terms of their satisfaction with life and no significant difference between males and females in terms of prosocial behavior tendencies.