The purpose of this study was to find the influence of empathy and perceived social support on prosocial behaviors of adolescents. The data were collected by questionnaire method from 507(male: 249, female: 258) middle school and high school students...
The purpose of this study was to find the influence of empathy and perceived social support on prosocial behaviors of adolescents. The data were collected by questionnaire method from 507(male: 249, female: 258) middle school and high school students in K province. The survey was composed of three scales which were prosocial behavoirs, empathy and perceived social support. T test by gender, correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were applied for data analyses.
The main results of the study were as follows;
First, there is no difference by gender on the perceived social support, but there are significant gender differences on the empathy and the prosocial behaviors, and the female's empathy and prosocial behaviors is higher than male's. Second, there are significant positive correlations among the perceived social support, the empathy and the prosocial behaviors of adolescents. Third, the results of the hierarchical regression analysis show that the empathy has a significant positive influence on the prosocial behaviors and the perceived social support makes a unique contribution to the prosocial behaviors in the controlled empathy in male and female students.