The Influence Of Interpersonal Intimacy On Adolescents' Prosocial Risk-taking Behavior: Analysis Of Mediation And Moderation

Adolescent risk-taking behavior,especially those with negative consequences,can cause certain harm to teenagers themselves and society,which arouse attention of a large number of psychological researchers.They conducted a thorough examination in many aspects including Smoking,drinking,gambling,fighting,and unprotected sex and so on.They also construct theoretical models of the influential factors of risk behavior from the aspects of physiology,personality,cognition,society and environment.However,in real life,adolescents may not only participate in the risky behaviors which may hurt themselves or others,but also engage in the risky behaviors in order to help and benefit others,that is prosocial risk taking.This kind of risky behavior may bring risks to teenagers themselves,but it has positive significance for social development.So far,however,The discussion of the prosocial risk-taking behavior is still theoretical.Few studies have systematically explored the performance characteristics of adolescent prosocial risk taking.Considering the important role of prosocial risk behaviors in individual development and social harmony,it is necessary to explore the influencing factors of the prosocial risk behaviors and discuss their mechanism.Based on the above analysis,we designed two different prosocial risk taking tasks of financial and social domains to explore the characteristics of adolescent prosocial risk-taking behavior and investigate the impact factors and their mechanism from behavioral,social,personality,and motivational aspects.This study include two experiments,experiment 1 uses the financial prosocial risk taking task to investigate the role of behavior(risky behavior and prosocial behavior),personality(empathy and sensation seeking),motivation(expected effect and expected benefit)and social factor(interpersonal closeness)on prosocial risk taking.On this basis,we discuss how the interpersonal closeness has an impact on prosocial risk taking,Specifically,experiment 1 examined whether interpersonal closeness is indirectly related to prosocial risk taking through expected impact and expected benefit,and whether the indirect association is moderated by empathy and sensation seeking,324 junior high school students participated in this part.On account of adolescent risk-taking behavior and prosocial behavior are affected by the activity domains,we adopt a social prosocial risk taking task in experiment 2 to examine the influencing factors of prosocial risky behavior and the mediating role of expected effect and expected benefit and the moderate role of empathy and sensation seeking,520 junior high school students participated in this experiment 2.The results were as followings:(1)Risky behavior and prosocial behavior had a positive effect on prosocial risky behavior,they can positively predict prosocial risky behavior;There was a significant correlation between sensation seeking and prosocial risk-taking behavior,sensation seeking predict prosocial risk-taking behavior significantly,the correlation coefficients of expected effect,expected benefit and prosocial risky behavior are significant,expected effect and expected benefit significantly exerted direct effect on prosocial risk-taking behavior.Interpersonal closeness also was a predictor of prosocial risk taking behavior.(2)In financial domain,the positive impact of interpersonal closeness on prosocial risk taking behavior was mediated by expected benefit and the mediating effect of expected benefit was moderated by sensation seeking.The indirect effect was stronger for adolescents with high sensation seeking than for those with low sensation seeking.(3)In social domain,interpersonal closeness significantly exerted direct effect on prosocial risk taking behavior and indirect effect on prosocial risk-taking behavior through the mediation of expected effect and expected benefit.The indirect effect of expected benefit were still moderated by sensation seeking.The indirect effect of expected effect were not moderated by empathy.Taken together,the present study demonstrates that(1)just as risk-taking behaviors and prosocial behaviors,prosocial risk taking was also affected by personality,motivation and social relationship.(2)The closer the relationship,the more expected benefit people perceived,and expected benefit plays an important role in the association between interpersonal closeness and prosocial risk taking;this mediation effect was more prominent for adolescence with higher sensation seeking.This moderated mediation effect was steady,it exists in both financial and social domains.(3)In addition to expected benefit,expected effect also played a mediation role in the relationship between interpersonal closeness and prosocial risk taking,but this effect was only emerged in social domain.This may be caused by money priming in financial field,which will decrease individual's sensitivity to the effect of helping others.In addition,the mediating effect of the expected effect is not affected by the level of empathy.This study verified the combined role of behavioral,personality,motivational and social factors on prosocial risk taking,which has certain instructional significance to the guidance of the prosocial risky behaviors of teenagers.