Resumo

PAJARES, Rosana Cretendio; AZNAR-FARIAS, Maria; TUCCI, Adriana Marcassa  e  OLIVEIRA-MONTEIRO, Nancy Ramacciotti de. Prosocial behavior among adolescents: use of a brief intervention program. Temas psicol. [online]. 2015, vol.23, n.2, pp. 507-519. ISSN 1413-389X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.9788/TP2015.2-20.

Adolescence is a stage of life with great potential for increasing skills and competencies, among them, the prossocial behaviors. This possibility, as reaffirmed by Positive Psychology, presents itself as an alternative to the negative pole often expressed by antisocial behavior in adolescents. The prossocial behaviors addressed in this research are distributed in categories helping, sharing, empathy, care and attention, and positive mood. They are defined as behaviors that favor other individuals or groups without seeking external reward or material and can generate positive reciprocity in interpersonal and social relationships, configured as protective strategies for mobilizing resources for mental health. This article presents an exploratory and descriptive study that evaluated prossocial behaviors in 21 adolescents (1315 years), students in a public school in the city of Santos (SP), before and after application of a brief intervention program in prossociability. The instrument used was Prossociability Assessment Scale for Adolescents (EAP-A), and the application of the Minimum Prosocial Improvement Program (PMIP). The results were analyzed by qualitative and quantitative method. Quantitative analysis indicated a trend for the average degree in prossocial behaviors investigated, before and after the intervention; qualitative analysis showed indicators of improvement in prossocial behaviors. Further studies are suggested to broadening and deepening the proposed theme in larger samples with adolescents with behavior problems and lower grades of prossociability.

Palavras-chave : Prossocial behaviors; adolescence; human development; positive psychology.

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