Early life stress moderates the relationship between age and prosocial behaviors.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Several studies suggest that prosocial behaviors gradually increase with age, but others report that prosocial behaviors are fixed traits with only minor fluctuations throughout the lifespan. Early life stress may help explain these inconsistencies, as distinct types of stress have been negatively or positively associated with prosocial behaviors.

Objective

This current investigation used two studies to test whether distinct types of early life stress moderated the association between age and prosocial behavior.

Participants and setting

Study 1 recruited undergraduate students (n = 69) between the ages of 18-35, and Study 2 was conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk responders (n = 499) whose ages ranged from 18-74.

Methods

Study 1 employed behavioral e

SUBMITTER: Jirsaraie RJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6814134 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature