Relationship between Personality Traits and Prosocial Behavior among Adolescents

Abstract

Background: Personality is the inner features of a person which help them in the beliefs, moods and behavior of an individual. Several studies have now tested to find the relationship between personality characteristics and prosocial behavior among adolescents’. These characteristics and prosocial behavior also appear to extend throughout the lifespan: the personality characteristics and prosocial behavior vary from childhood to adolescence, and adolescents to adulthood but prosocial behavior were more in adolescents.

Methods: The present study finds a relationship between Personality Traits and Prosocial Behavior among Adolescents. Convenient sample of 300 Students (Male, n= 150, Female=150) with age range from 16 to 18 years was recruited from different schools and colleges of twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan.  The Big Five Inventory (John & Srivastava, 1999) and Prosocialness scale (Caprara et al., 2003) were used to measure the personality traits and prosocial behavior.

Results: The results showed that Personality Traits (Openness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) had positive relationship with Prosocial Behavior but Neuroticism had negative relationship with Prosocial Behavior. Regression analysis further showed that Personality Traits (Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) were positive predictors of Prosocial Behavior, where Agreeableness was found the strongest predictor among all. However, Neuroticism was the negative predictor of Prosocial Behavior among adolescents.

Conclusions: The current study reveals that there is a significant correlation between personality traits and prosocial behavior. Literature suggested that agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to having significant positive correlations with helping behavior and neuroticism has negative relationship with prosocial behavior.