Prosocial self-schemas, self-awareness, and children's prosocial behavior

Employee's lying behavior and the role of self-awareness

Purpose

Employee’s lying behavior has become ubiquitous at work, and managers are keen to know what can be done to curb such behavior. Managers often apply anti-lying strategies in their management and, in particular, the role of self-awareness on lying intervention has drawn academic attention recently. Drawing on multi-disciplinary literature, this study aims to investigate the efficacy of self-awareness in reducing lying behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

Following the perspectives of positivism and deductive reasoning, a quasi-experimental research approach was adopted. Employees from Dijon, France were recruited as research participants. Based on the literature, different conditions (scenario manipulation) were designed and implemented in the laboratory, in which participants were exposed to pre-set lying opportunities and their responses were analyzed accordingly.

Findings

Unlike prior studies which praised the merits of self-awareness, the authors found that self-awareness did not decrease lying behavior, not encouraging the confession of lying either. Employees actually lied more when they believed other employees were lying.

Practical implications

This study suggests managers not to rely on employee’s self-awareness; rather, the concept of self-awareness should be incorporated into the work ethics, and managers should schedule regular workshops to keep employees informed of the importance of ethics. When employees are regularly reminded of the ethics and appreciate its importance, their intention of lying is more likely to decrease.

Originality/value

To the best of the atuhors’ knowledge, the current research is the first in its kind to investigate lying intervention of employees in the laboratory setting. Research findings have brought new insights into the lying intervention literature, which has important implication on the implementation of anti-lying strategies.

Objective Self-Awareness Theory: Recent Progress and Enduring Problems

Objective self-awareness theory has undergone fundamental changes in the 3 decades since Duval and Wicklund's (1972) original formulation. We review new evidence that bears on the basic tenets of the theory. Many of the assumptions of self-awareness theory require revision, particularly how expectancies influence approach and avoidance of self-standard discrepancies; the nature of standards, especially when they are changed; and the role of causal attribution in directing discrepancy reduction. However, several unresolved conceptual issues remain; future theoretical and empirical directions are discussed.

Effects of Person- and Process-Focused Feedback on Prosocial Behavior in Middle Childhood

Effects of person- and process-focused feedback, parental lay theories, and prosocial self-concept on children's prosocial behavior were investigated with 143 9- and 10-year-old children who participated in a single session. Parents reported entity (person-focused) and incremental (process-focused) beliefs related to prosocial behavior. Children completed measures of prosocial self-concept, then participated in a virtual online chat with child actors who asked for help with service projects. After completing the chat, children could assist with the service projects. In the first cohort, children were randomly assigned to receive person-focused, process-focused, or control feedback about sympathy. In the second cohort, with newly-recruited families, children received no feedback. When given process-focused feedback, children spent less time spent helping and worked on fewer service projects. When given no feedback, children spent less time helping when parents held incremental (process-focused) beliefs. Children with higher prosocial self-concept who received no feedback worked on more service projects.

The Helping Behavior Motivation in the Context of Everyday and Professional Help

The article analyzes and compares the approaches to the study of helping motivation in everyday situations and in the activities of helping professions specialists. A detailed review of studies of factors affecting the motivation of non-professional help is introduced. The main features of the professional helping activities, which define the specifics of professional help, compared with everyday life situations, are highlighted. Factors, affecting the development of professional motivation, are analyzed and problematized in connection with the specific goals and conditions of professional helping activity. Author views the distortions and difficulties of professional motivation formation, including dis- tortions, which lead to the development of emotional burnout. The conclusion concerning the importance of the professionalization of helping motivation as a condition for successful professional development and prevention of burnout is drawn.

A randomized clinical trial of an identity intervention programme for women with eating disorders

OBJECTIVE

Findings of a randomized trial of an identity intervention programme (IIP) designed to build new positive self-schemas that are separate from other conceptions of the self in memory as the means to promote improved health in women diagnosed with eating disorders are reported.

METHOD

After baseline data collection, women with anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa were randomly assigned to IIP (n = 34) or supportive psychotherapy (SPI) (n = 35) and followed at 1, 6, and 12 months post-intervention.

RESULTS

The IIP and supportive psychotherapy were equally effective in reducing eating disorder symptoms at 1 month post-intervention, and changes were stable through the 12-month follow-up period. The IIP tended to be more effective in fostering development of positive self-schemas, and the increase was stable over time. Regardless of baseline level, an increase in the number of positive self-schemas between pre-intervention and 1-month post-intervention predicted a decrease in desire for thinness and an increase in psychological well-being and functional health over the same period.

DISCUSSION

A cognitive behavioural intervention that focuses on increasing the number of positive self-schemas may be central to improving emotional health in women with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

Personal identities and disordered eating behaviors in Mexican American women

Eating disorder behaviors are prevalent in Latina populations. This study tested Schwartz's (2006) theoretical view that a broad array of personal identities serves as an internal resource during acculturation and prevents internalization of dysfunctional weight related beliefs. Sixty-six Mexican American women completed measures of personal identities, fat self-definition, eating disorder symptoms and acculturation. Results show that few positive and many negative personal identities predict higher eating disorder scores and effects are mediated through the fat self-definition. Characteristics of personal identities may influence internalization of cultural values related to weight. Interventions focused on overall identity may prevent eating disorders in Latinas.

Neuroticism and the architecture of the self: exploring neuroticism as a moderator of the impact of ideal self-discrepancies on emotion

Two studies examined the moderating role of neuroticism in discrepancy-emotion relations. In Study 1, neuroticism, self-discrepancies, and depression were measured. Multiple regression analyses revealed a significant interaction between neuroticism and ideal self-discrepancies such that the magnitude of ideal self-discrepancies was a stronger predictor of depression for people high in neuroticism than people low in neuroticism. Study 2 used an experimental paradigm to test the same hypothesis. Participants were randomly assigned to an ideal self-discrepancy salience condition or a control condition in which ideal self-discrepancies were not made salient. A significant interaction between self-discrepancy condition and neuroticism emerged such that the ideal self-discrepancy condition produced higher dejection-related affect relative to the control condition for people high in neuroticism compared to people low in neuroticism.

Mothers' expressive style and emotional responses to children's behavior predict children's prosocial and achievement-related self-ratings

In this study we investigated whether mothers' typical expressive style and specific emotional responses to children's behaviors are linked to children's prosocial and competence self-ratings. Eight-to 12-year-old children and their mothers rated how mothers had felt when children behaved pro-socially and antisocially, achieved and failed to achieve. Children rated self-descriptiveness of prosocial and achievement-related traits. Mothers' positive expressiveness was associated with children's higher achievement-related self-ratings. Mothers' positive- and negative-dominant expressiveness was associated with children's lower prosocial self-ratings. Mothers' happiness about both children's prosocial and achievement-related behavior was associated with children's higher self-ratings for both domains. Mothers' anger about children's antisocial behavior was related to children's lower self-ratings for both domains. When mothers were higher in negative-submissive expressiveness, and responded with more sadness to children's failure to achieve, children reported lower achievement self-ratings. Results support the importance of multidimensional assessment of self-concept and suggest that parents' typical expressive style moderates the influence of parents' specific emotional responses on children's self-ratings.

Self-concept disturbances: cognitive vulnerability for early drinking and early drunkenness in adolescents at high risk for alcohol problems

We tested the hypotheses that adolescents with few positive and many negative self-schemas would drink and get drunk earlier than adolescents with many positive and few negative self-schemas. Adolescents (N=264) from an ongoing prospective family study of alcoholism [Zucker, R. A., Fitzgerald, H., Refior, S., Puttler, L., Pallas, D., Ellis, D. (2000). The clinical and social ecology of childhood for children of alcoholics: Description of a study and implications for a differentiated social policy. In H. Fitzgerald, B. Lester, B. Zuckerman (Eds.), Children of addiction: Research, health, and policy issues (pp. 109-141). New York, NY: Routledge Falmer] were assessed at ages 12 to 14 and again at ages 15 to 17. When considering the combined effects of the number of positive and negative self-schemas, antisociality, and parental alcoholism on drinking outcomes, the number of negative self-schemas directly predicted early drinking onset, whereas the number of positive self-schemas moderated the effects of antisociality on early drunkenness. Moreover, although self-concept properties at baseline did not differentiate level of alcohol involvement at follow-up in mid-adolescence, they did distinguish earlier from later age of onset among those who initiated, with effects tending to be somewhat stronger for boys than girls. Self-schemas appear to be an additional risk factor in the pathway to problem alcohol involvement in adolescence, above and beyond the contributions of such known risk factors as antisocial behavior and parental alcoholism.

The identity impairment model: a longitudinal study of self-schemas as predictors of disordered eating behaviors

BACKGROUND

There is broad consensus that the eating disorders of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa stem from fundamental disturbances in identity development, but theoretically based empirical support is lacking.

OBJECTIVE

To extend work on the identity impairment model by investigating the relationship between organizational properties of the self-concept and change in disordered eating behaviors (DEB) in an at-risk sample of college women transitioning between freshman and sophomore years.

METHODS

The number, valence, and organization of self-schemas; availability of a fat body weight self-schema; and DEB were measured at baseline in the freshman year and 6 and 12 months later in a community-based sample of college women engaged in subthreshold DEB (n = 77; control: n = 41). Repeated-measures analyses of variances were used to examine group differences, and hierarchical regression analyses were used to predict disordered eating behaviors.

RESULTS

Women in the DEB group had more negative self-schemas at baseline and showed information-processing evidence of a fat self-schema compared with the controls. The groups did not differ in the number of positive self-schemas or interrelatedness. The number of negative self-schemas predicted increases in the level of DEB at 6- and 12-month follow-up, and these effects were mediated through the fat self-schema. The number of positive self-schemas predicted the fat self-schema score but was not predictive of increases in DEB. Interrelatedness of the self-concept was not a significant predictor in this model.

DISCUSSION

Impairments in overall collection of identities are predictive of the availability in memory of a fat self-schema, which in turn is predictive of increases in DEB during the transition to college in a sample of women at risk for an eating disorder. Therefore, organizational properties of the self-concept may be an important focus for effective primary and secondary prevention.

Self-cognitions in antisocial alcohol dependence and recovery

Cross-sectional relationships between content and structural properties of the self-concept and alcohol use in young adults with antisocial alcohol dependence (AAD) (n = 24), those in recovery from AAD (n = 18), and controls (n = 23) were examined using the schema model of the self-concept. Persons with AAD had a trend toward fewer positive self-schemas than did controls, and had more negative self-schemas and a trend toward higher interrelatedness than did those in recovery and controls. They also showed evidence of a drinking-related self-schema, whereas those in recovery showed evidence of a recovery-related self-schema. Finally, evidence to support a model using properties of the self-concept to predict high levels of alcohol use was found. These findings provide a beginning empirical foundation for the development of nursing interventions aimed at altering self-structure to prevent the development of and promote recovery from antisocial alcohol dependence.

Prosocial behaviours of young adolescents: a focus group study

This study investigated young adolescents' perceptions of their peers' prosocial behaviours. In eight focus groups, 53 11- to 13-year olds described specific prosocial acts of their peers. Results suggest that traditional research has not addressed the diversity of prosocial behaviours that youth enact, nor emphasized behaviours that are salient to young adolescents. Such behaviours included standing up for others, encouraging others, helping others develop skills, including others who are left out, and being humorous. Facilitating emotional regulation of others emerged as an important component of prosocial behaviour. These data can help guide future research on prosocial development to include a broader array of authentic behaviours of young adolescents.

Committed compliance, moral self, and internalization: a mediational model

Previous research has established that children's committed, eager, willing compliance with maternal control promotes moral internalization, whereas their opposition interferes with internalization; but the causal mechanism responsible for those links is unknown. A mediational model is tested in which committed compliance and opposition are seen as influencing the child's emerging view of self on moral dimensions, and this "moral self," in turn, regulates moral conduct. Committed compliance and opposition were observed in naturalistic mother-child discipline contexts involving "do" and "don't" demands at 14, 22, 33, and 45 months. An interactive interview and observations were used to measure the moral self and internalization at 56 months (N = 74). The mediational model, involving committed compliance and opposition in the "don't" demand context, was supported, but only for boys.