Not more harm, but less help: Dynamic associations among childhood emotional maltreatment, prosocial behavior, and bullying involvement in Chinese adolescents.

Background

Although studies have revealed the association between childhood emotional maltreatment and adolescents' social behavior, there remains a lack of integrative examination of both relationship-enhancing and relationship-damaging behavioral orientations, namely prosocial behavior and bullying involvement, particularly within the Chinese context. The potential dynamic relationships among them remain insufficiently understood.

Objective

This study aims to examine dynamic associations among childhood emotional maltreatment, prosocial behavior, and bullying involvement, and to explore their developmental patterns.

Participants

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Setting

A total of 1214 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 15.46 ± 0.71; 60.71% male) were followed across three waves.

Methods

Cross-lagged panel network analysis was conducted using R version 4.5.2.

Results

The results showed that: (1) a stable cascading structure emerged within the prosocial behavior cluster, with altruistic prosocial behavior exerting stronger influence and relational prosocial behavior showing higher predictability; (2) The bullying involvement cluster exhibited a diffusion pattern, in which multiple early bullying behaviors promoted the development of bullying perpetration, while later bullying victimization further activated other forms of bullying and ultimately converged into cyberbullying victimization; (3) In cross-cluster associations, early emotional neglect weakened the development of multiple forms of prosocial behavior, common-weal-social rule prosocial behavior showed a buffering effect, whereas cyberbullying victimization amplified the negative effects of emotional abuse and emotional neglect; (4) In later development, trait-based prosocial behavior gradually demonstrated a protective effect against various adverse experiences.

Conclusions

Childhood emotional maltreatment undermines the development of prosocial behavior, while prosocial behavior and bullying involvement follow distinct developmental patterns across adolescence.