IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0227627.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of peer attachment on prosocial behavior, emotional difficulties and conduct problems in adolescence: The mediating role of empathy

Author

Listed:
  • Konstanze Schoeps
  • Estefanía Mónaco
  • Amparo Cotolí
  • Inmaculada Montoya-Castilla

Abstract

Attachment theories postulate that during adolescence, peer relationships become more important as a predictor of positive social, emotional and behavioral outcomes. Adolescents develop the ability to empathize with others, which is related to healthy functioning and positive peer relationships. Empathy has been studied as a potential mechanism that may help to explain how strong and healthy emotional bonds are associated with less emotional disorders and conduct problems in youth. The main purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between peer attachment and strengths and difficulties during adolescence, considering empathy as a potential mediator of this association. A total of 800 Spanish adolescents (56.65% girls), aged between 12 and 15 years (M = 14.02, SD = 1.21), completed measures of peer attachment, empathy, conduct problems, emotional difficulties and prosocial behavior. Structural equation models indicated that peer attachment was negatively associated with conduct problems and emotional difficulties but positively related to prosocial behavior. In general, empathy mediated the link between peer attachment and both emotional and behavioral outcomes, without significant group differences between boys and girls. The discussion focuses on the importance of healthy peer relationships as a powerful predictor of emotional well-being and psychological problems in adolescence.

Suggested Citation

  • Konstanze Schoeps & Estefanía Mónaco & Amparo Cotolí & Inmaculada Montoya-Castilla, 2020. "The impact of peer attachment on prosocial behavior, emotional difficulties and conduct problems in adolescence: The mediating role of empathy," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-18, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0227627
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227627
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227627
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227627&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0227627?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Albert Satorra & Peter Bentler, 2001. "A scaled difference chi-square test statistic for moment structure analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 66(4), pages 507-514, December.
    2. He, Jinbo & Chen, Xinjie & Fan, Xitao & Cai, Zhihui & Hao, Shudan, 2018. "Profiles of parent and peer attachments of adolescents and associations with psychological outcomes," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 163-172.
    3. Belén Mesurado & María Cristina Richaud, 2017. "The Relationship Between Parental Variables, Empathy and Prosocial-Flow with Prosocial Behavior Toward Strangers, Friends, and Family," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 843-860, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Soyoun Kim & JongSerl Chun, 2022. "The Impact of Parental and Peer Attachment on Gaming Addiction among Out-of-School Adolescents in South Korea: The Mediating Role of Social Stigma," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(1), pages 1-13, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laura Vieten & Anne Marit Wöhrmann & Alexandra Michel, 2022. "Work-Time Control and Exhaustion: Internal Work-to-Home Interference and Internal Home-to-Work Interference as Mediators," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(6), pages 1-17, March.
    2. Ruth Hancock & Marcello Morciano & Stephen Pudney & Francesca Zantomio, 2015. "Do household surveys give a coherent view of disability benefit targeting?: a multisurvey latent variable analysis for the older population in Great Britain," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 178(4), pages 815-836, October.
    3. Dara M Wald & Susan K Jacobson, 2014. "A Multivariate Model of Stakeholder Preference for Lethal Cat Management," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(4), pages 1-9, April.
    4. Flore Geukens & Annette Spithoven & Margot Bastin & Janne Vanhalst & Marlies Maes, 2022. "Lonely in Different Relationships: Bidirectional Effects between Parent- and Peer-Related Loneliness in Adolescence," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(12), pages 1-10, June.
    5. Peter Tavel & Bibiana Jozefiakova & Peter Telicak & Jana Furstova & Michal Puza & Natalia Kascakova, 2022. "Psychometric Analysis of the Shortened Version of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale on the Slovak Population (SWBS-Sk)," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-12, January.
    6. Sai-fu Fung & Esther Oi-wah Chow & Chau-kiu Cheung, 2020. "Development and Evaluation of the Psychometric Properties of a Brief Wisdom Development Scale," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(8), pages 1-14, April.
    7. Sohn, Stefanie, 2017. "A contextual perspective on consumers' perceived usefulness: The case of mobile online shopping," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 22-33.
    8. Jose M. Martín-Criado & Jose A. Casas & Rosario Ortega-Ruiz, 2021. "Parental Supervision: Predictive Variables of Positive Involvement in Cyberbullying Prevention," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(4), pages 1-12, February.
    9. Mathilde Sengoelge & Øivind Solberg & Alexander Nissen & Fredrik Saboonchi, 2020. "Exploring Social and Financial Hardship, Mental Health Problems and the Role of Social Support in Asylum Seekers Using Structural Equation Modelling," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(19), pages 1-14, September.
    10. Laura Castro-Schilo & Barbara L. Fredrickson & Dan Mungas, 2019. "Association of Positive Affect with Cognitive Health and Decline for Elder Mexican Americans," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(8), pages 2385-2400, December.
    11. Zi Jia Ng & Eugene Scott Huebner & Alberto Maydeu-Olivares & Kimberly Joy Hills, 2018. "Confirmatory Factor Analytic Structure and Measurement Invariance of the Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS) in a Longitudinal Sample of Adolescents," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 11(4), pages 1237-1247, August.
    12. Junjiao Feng & Liang Zhang & Chunhui Chen & Jintao Sheng & Zhifang Ye & Kanyin Feng & Jing Liu & Ying Cai & Bi Zhu & Zhaoxia Yu & Chuansheng Chen & Qi Dong & Gui Xue, 2022. "A cognitive neurogenetic approach to uncovering the structure of executive functions," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-19, December.
    13. Michael Sheppard, 2020. "The relationship between discretionary slack and growth in small firms," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 195-219, March.
    14. Carmen Berné-Manero & Marta Pedraja-Iglesias & Pilar Ramo-Sáez, 2017. "Socially responsible markets involved in the consumer-organization identification process," International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, Springer;International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing, vol. 14(2), pages 179-196, June.
    15. Calvo Porral, Cristina & Martínez Fernández, Valentín Alejandro & Juanatey Boga, Oscar, 2016. "Influência da assinatura do fabricante na lealdade e intenção de compra de marcas próprias de varejista," RAE - Revista de Administração de Empresas, FGV-EAESP Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo (Brazil), vol. 56(1), January.
    16. Fosso Wamba, Samuel & Queiroz, Maciel M. & Trinchera, Laura, 2024. "The role of artificial intelligence-enabled dynamic capability on environmental performance: The mediation effect of a data-driven culture in France and the USA," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    17. Jorge Sinval & M. Joseph Sirgy & Dong-Jin Lee & João Marôco, 2020. "The Quality of Work Life Scale: Validity Evidence from Brazil and Portugal," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 15(5), pages 1323-1351, November.
    18. Lee, Seunghwan & Kim, Yukyoum & Heere, Bob, 2018. "Sport team emotion: Conceptualization, scale development and validation," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 363-376.
    19. Vaske, Jamie C. & Newsome, Jamie & Boisvert, Danielle L. & Piquero, Alex R. & Paradis, Angela D. & Buka, Stephen L., 2015. "The impact of low birth weight and maternal age on adulthood offending," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 49-56.
    20. Smith, Kenneth J. & Emerson, David J., 2014. "An assessment of the psychometric properties of the Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS10) with a U.S. public accounting sample," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 309-314.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0227627. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.