Stressed and helping: the relations among acculturative stress, gender, and prosocial tendencies in Mexican Americans
McGinley, Meredith ; Carlo, Gustavo ; Crockett, Lisa J. ; Raffaelli, Marcela ; Torres Stone, Rosalie A. ; Iturbide, Maria I.
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Keywords
Adolescent
Adult
Altruism
Emigrants and Immigrants
Empathy
Female
*Gender Identity
*Helping Behavior
Humans
Male
Mexican Americans
Questionnaires
*Social Behavior
Social Identification
Stress, Psychological
Students
Young Adult
Health Services Research
Mental and Social Health
Psychiatric and Mental Health
Psychiatry
Psychiatry and Psychology
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Abstract
Available evidence suggests that stress is not necessarily linked to negative outcomes and, in fact, may lead to increases in sympathy and helping. In this study, we examined whether acculturative stress was associated with prosocial tendencies in a sample of 148 Mexican American college students (M age = 23.05 years; 99 women). Participants completed measures of acculturative stress, sympathy, and prosocial tendencies. The relations between acculturative stress and prosocial tendencies were generally positive but varied by the type of helping and gender. Higher levels of acculturative stress were linked to greater emotional, dire, compliant, and anonymous prosocial tendencies, as well as with fewer costly (altruistic) prosocial tendencies. Sympathy mediated the relations between acculturative stress and prosocial tendencies for men only.
Source
J Soc Psychol. 2010 Jan-Feb;150(1):34-56. Link to article on publisher's site