Introduction

Although empathy has been found to be related to prosocial behaviour, little is known about the longitudinal links between these two concepts during early adolescence, a unique window into developmental changes on empathy and prosocial behaviour considering the physical, cognitive, socio-emotional and contextual changes occurring during this period. Even though changes in adolescent empathy have been associated to changes in adolescent prosocial behaviour, studies examining this link on the within-person level are lacking. The present study investigated the within-adolescents longitudinal relations among empathy and prosocial behaviour.

Methods

383 French adolescents (M_ageT1 = 12.15, 50.4% male) reported on their empathy and prosocial behaviour each year across three years. In order to disentangle between-adolescent differences from within-adolescent processes, Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models were applied.

Results

At the between-person level, there was a strong positive association between empathy and prosocial behaviour. At the within-person level, adolescents who reported more empathy than usual reported higher than usual prosocial behaviour one year later.

Conclusions

Adolescents with higher empathy compared to their peers tended to be those who reported higher prosocial behaviour. Changes in empathy within-adolescents were related to later within-adolescents’ change in prosocial behaviour.

中文翻译：

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解开青春期早期同理心和亲社会行为之间的人与人之间的联系

介绍

尽管已发现同理心与亲社会行为有关，但对这两个概念在青春期早期之间的纵向联系知之甚少，这是考虑到身体、认知、社会情感和环境变化的同理心和亲社会行为发展变化的独特窗口在此期间发生。尽管青少年同理心的变化与青少年亲社会行为的变化有关，但缺乏在人的层面上检验这种联系的研究。本研究调查了青少年内同理心和亲社会行为之间的纵向关系。

方法

383 名法国青少年（M _ageT1  = _12.15，50.4 % 男性）在三年内每年都会报告他们的同理心和亲社会行为。为了从青春期内部的过程中解开青春期之间的差异，应用了随机拦截交叉滞后面板模型。

结果

在人际层面，同理心和亲社会行为之间存在很强的正相关。在人的层面上，比平时更有同理心的青少年在一年后报告的亲社会行为也比平时高。

结论

与同龄人相比，具有更高同理心的青少年往往是那些报告有更高亲社会行为的青少年。青少年同理心的变化与后来青少年亲社会行为的变化有关。