Prosocial Behavior
I first became interested in personal
interactions in high school. As the group
psychologist for my circle of
friends, I was exposed to many different type of
people and how those people
dealt with situations. Also, I was fascinated by why
some people(like myself)
feel compelled to do nice things for other people like
picking up a dropped
pencil to bringing an ill person hot soup. I noticed that
the same guys were
always asking me the same questions. Usually the questions
revolved around
girls, such as how to get them, what to do once you got them,
and how to keep
them. It mesmerized me that these guys were completely
uninformed about women
while many of my other friends were having no trouble in
the same area. Over
time I saw that the guys that were asking all the questions
had not had much
interaction with the opposite sex except during school. I
wondered if there
was some correlation, and so I am proposing this study. My
first article
involving prosocial behavior was done in Norway by Moncrieff
Cochran and
Inge Bo. Their focus was to evaluate the influences of parents,
peers, and
other network members on the pro- and antisocial behavior of
antisocial
behavior of antisocial boys. The Stavanger study was set in the city
of
Stavanger for several reasons. A recent population spurt has triggered
an
increase in the amount of negative youth behaviors, and so it seemed to be
a
prime opportunity. The two junior high schools used in the study were
selected
because they contained a exemplary mix of lower middle-, middle-,
and upper
middle-class families. Cochran and Bo found that " . . .time spent
by
parents with their boys as central to maintaining low levels of
antisocial
behavior." They also saw that the neighborhood environment that
the boys
resided in was at least as powerful a predictor of antisocial
behavior. My
Hypothesis is that if adolescents participate in coed
extracurricular
activities, then they will be more likely to show prosocial
behavior to both
genders. I then propose the following correlational study to
test my hypothesis.
The population of interest is male and female
adolescents, age 12 to 17. The
selection process of the subjects would be to
pick several single gender groups
in a specific area, such as Private schools
and Boy Scouts Troops. Next would be
to select some coed groups in the same
area such as bible study groups and
school clubs like biology club and drama
club. The independent variable in my
study is whether or not the subject
participates in coed or single gender
extracurricular activities. This
variable would be operationalized by In this
study the dependent variable is
amount of prosocial behavior exhibited by the
subject. It would be
operationalized by With the permission of the adult leaders
of the groups,
the adolescents involved, and their parents we would proceed by
observing the
groups at their respective meetings. After observing how There is
some
evidence for closer relationships between same-sex as opposed to opposite
sex
siblings.