“Attraction of the like”: The influence of peer’s donation choice on prosocial behavior of adolescents and the role of the belief in a just world

Abstract

Social influence refers to the process by which the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are directly or indirectly influenced by others. Adolescents’ social behavior is easily influenced by peers. However, most of the previous studies on peer effects have focused on the negative aspect of peer influence, such as peer influence on adolescent aggressive behavior, antisocial behavior, and risk-taking behavior, whereas the positive effects of peers have received relatively less attention. Existing work has not reached consensus on whether adolescents' prosocial behavior is more likely to be influenced by altruistic peers or egoistic peers, and the underlying mechanism is also unclear. The present study focuses on the positive effects of peers. Furthermore, the impact of different information providers is also an issue examined in this study. Given that children in Chinese culture are more subordinate to authority, Chinese adolescents may be more influenced by adults than peers. The belief in a just world may also play a moderating role in the peer influence, which would be explored in this study. The present study used the adaptive behavioral experimental paradigm and the conflicting source paradigm in developmental research on selective trust to investigate the effects of social information (prosocial, selfish, conflict) provided by peers or adults on adolescents’ donation behavior at real cost, and the role of the belief in a just world in it. The sample included 77 adolescents aged 12-15 years (Mage = 14.06 ± 0.74 years, 32 girls). The specific setting of the adaptive paradigm was as follows: under the condition of prosocial influence, the decision of the peer observed by the participants is always more altruistic than their initial decision; similarly, under the condition of selfish influence, the decision of the peer was more selfish than there initial decision. In other words, the amount of donation that participants observed was determined by their initial donation. The results showed that the secondary donation after viewing the peer’s decision was more altruistic than the initial donation in both the prosocial and the conflict conditions, while the difference between the two rounds of donation was not significant in the selfish condition, which indicates that the prosocial behavior of adolescents was more susceptible to prosocial influence. In addition, compared with the conflict condition and the selfish condition, the second donation of the participants in the prosocial information condition changed the most, which again confirmed the reliability and stability of the results. Moreover, adolescents were more likely to be influenced by information provided by peers than that provided by adults: adolescents changed their donation amount more in the peer influence condition than in the adult influence condition. We further focused on the performance of participants in the conflict condition: when adolescents observed both prosocial information and selfish information, their secondary donations were more likely to change in the direction of altruism, and this transition was more likely to occur in the peer influence condition, which indicates that adolescents are more likely to be influenced by peer role models than by adult role models. The belief in a just world moderated the prosocial influence of adolescents: individuals with high belief in the just world were more likely to be affected by positive social influence. The results indicate that adolescents are more likely to be positively influenced by peers. This study expands the theory of social learning theory, reveals the benefit of peer moral models on adolescents' prosocial behavior, and provides reference for improving the educational practice of adolescents' prosocial behavior.