Stressed and helping: the relations among acculturative stress, gender, and prosocial tendencies in Mexican Americans

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.