Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-669899f699-8p65j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-04T09:13:30.897Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - A friend in need is a friend indeed: Exploring the relations among trust beliefs, prosocial tendencies, and friendships

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2010

By
Gustavo Carlo ,
Brandy A. Randall ,
Ken J. Rotenberg  and
Brian E. Armenta
Edited by
Ken J. Rotenberg
Gustavo Carlo
Affiliation:
(University of Nebraska-Lincoln),
Brandy A. Randall
Affiliation:
(North Dakota State University),
Ken J. Rotenberg
Affiliation:
(Keele University), and
Brian E. Armenta
Affiliation:
(University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Ken J. Rotenberg
Affiliation:
Keele University
Get access

Summary

Caring, as helping another grow and actualize himself, is a process, a way of relating to someone that involves development, in the same way that friendship can only emerge in time through mutual trust and a deepening and qualitative transformation of the relationship.

(Mayeroff, 1971, p. 1)

The recent movement in positive psychology has beckoned a call for more attention to the strengths and positive aspects of human functioning (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Much of the intellectual basis for this recent movement in psychology stems from a reemergence of an interest in philosophical perspectives on what constitutes a good and moral life. Not surprisingly, scholars have long noted that prosocial tendencies (e.g., kindness, caring, helping) and trust are basic elements of persons with strong moral and good character (e.g., Aristotle, 1980; Blum, 1980; Mayeroff, 1971; Noddings, 2003; Rotter, 1980). The belief that trust and prosocial tendencies are basic elements of moral character also extends the notion that these are markers of close, interpersonal relationships. As Bukowski and Sippola (1996) noted, “particular qualities are essential for ‘morally excellent’ friendships. These qualities include: (a) a deep concern for the other for his or her own sake … (c) high levels of trust and commitment to the relationship” (p. 245). These authors further assert that there are conceptual reasons to expect ties between trust and prosocial tendencies – that, indeed, friendship requires goodness.

In his classic essay, On caring, Milton Mayeroff (1971) eloquently introduces to us the intricate links between caring, helping, trust, and interpersonal relationships.

Type
Chapter
Information
Interpersonal Trust during Childhood and Adolescence , pp. 270 - 294
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1973). The development of infant–mother attachment. In Caldwell, B. M. and Ricciuti, H. N. (eds.), Review of child development research:Vol. 3 (pp. 1–91). University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Aristotle, (1980). The Nicomachean ethics (trans. Ross, D.). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Armsden, G. and Greenberg, M. (1987). The Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment: Individual differences and their relationship to psychological well-being in adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 16 (5), 427–454.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baron, R. M. and Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173–1182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Batson, C. D. (1991). The altruism question: Toward a social psychological answer. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Batson, C. D. (1998). Altruism and prosocial behavior. In Gilbert, D. T., Fiske, S. T., and Lindzey, G. (eds.), The handbook of social psychology:Vol. 2 (4th edn.) (pp. 282–316). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Bernath, M. and Feshbach, N. (1995). Children's trust: Theory, assessment, development, and research directions. Applied & Preventive Psychology, 4 (1), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bierhoff, H. (2002). Prosocial behaviour. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Blum, L. A. (1980). Friendship, altruism, and morality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Bukowski, W. M. and Sippola, L. K. (1996). Friendship and morality. In Bukowski, W. M. and Newcomb, A. F. (eds.), The company they keep: Friendship in childhood and adolescence (pp. 238–261). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Carlo, G. (2006). Care-based and altruistically-based morality. In Killen, M. and Smetana, J. G. (eds.), Handbook of moral development (pp. 551–579). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Carlo, G. and Randall, B. (2001). Are all prosocial behaviors equal? A socio­ecological developmental conception of prosocial behavior. In Columbus, F. (ed.), Advances in psychology research: Vol. 2 (pp. 151–170). Huntington, NY: Nova Science Publishers.Google Scholar
Carlo, G. and Randall, B. (2002). The development of a measure of prosocial behaviors for late adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 31, 31–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlo, G., Allen, J. B., and Buhman, D. C. (1999). Facilitating and disinhibiting prosocial behaviors: The nonlinear interaction of trait perspective taking and trait personal distress on volunteering. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 21, 189–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlo, G., Crockett, L. J., Randall, B. A., and Roesch, S. C. (2007). Parent and peer correlates of prosocial development in rural adolescents: A longitudinal study. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 17, 301–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlo, G., Eisenberg, N., Troyer, D., Switzer, G., and Speer, A. L. (1991). The altruistic personality: In what contexts is it apparent?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 450–458.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carlo, G., Hausmann, A., Christiansen, S., and Randall, B. A. (2003). Sociocognitive and behavioral correlates of a measure of prosocial tendencies for adolescents. Journal of Early Adolescence, 23, 107–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlo, G., Knight, G. P., McGinley, M., Zamboanga, B. L., and Jarvis, L. (in press). The multidimensionality of prosocial behaviors: Evidence of measurement invariance in early Mexican American and European American adolescents. Journal of Research on Adolescence.
Carlo, G., McGinley, M., Hayes, R., Batenhorst, C., and Wilkinson, J. (2007). Parenting styles or practices? Parenting, sympathy, and prosocial behaviors among adolescents. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 168, 147–176.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colby, A. and Damon, W. (1992). Some do care: Contemporary lives of moral commitment. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 113–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, M. H. and Franzoi, S. (1991). Stability and change in adolescent self-consciousness and empathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 25, 70–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeNeve, K. and Cooper, H. (1998). The happy personality: A meta-analysis of 137 personality traits and subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 197–229.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Waal, F. (1996). Good natured: The origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dovidio, J. F., Piliavin, J. A., Schroeder, D. A., and Penner, L. A. (2006). The social psychology of prosocial behavior. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N. (1986). Altruistic emotion, cognition and behavior. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N. and Fabes, R. A. (1998). Prosocial development. In W. Damon, R. M. Lerner (series eds.), and Eisenberg, N. (vol. ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (5th edn.) (pp. 701–778). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., Cameron, E., Tryon, K., and Dodez, R. (1981). Socialization of prosocial behavior in the preschool classroom. Developmental Psychology, 71, 773–782.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., Carlo, G., and Karbon, M. (1992). Emotional responsivity to others: Behavioral correlates and socialization antecedents. In Eisenberg, N. and Fabes, R. A. (eds.), Emotion and its regulation in early development (pp. 57–73). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., and Spinrad, T. L. (2006). Prosocial development. In W. Damon, R. M. Lerner (series eds.), and Eisenberg, N. (vol. ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (6th edn.) (pp. 646–718). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., Miller, P. A., Schaller, M., Fabes, R. A., Fultz, J., Shell, R., and Shea, C. L. (1989). The role of sympathy and altruistic personality traits in helping: A reexamination. Journal of Personality, 57, 41–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eisenberg, N., Shea, C. L., Carlo, G., and Knight, G. P. (1991). Empathy-related responding and cognition: A “chicken and the egg” dilemma. In Kurtines, W. M. and Gewirtz, J. L. (eds.), Handbook of moral behavior and development: Vol. 2. Research (pp. 63–88). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd edn.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Green, B., Shirk, S., Hanze, D., and Wanstrath, J. (1994). The Children's Global Assessment Scale in clinical practice: An empirical evaluation. Journal of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 33, 1158–1164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, D. and Fegley, S. (1995). Altruism and caring in adolescence: Relations to self understanding and social judgment. Child Development, 66, 1346–1359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, R. C., Danko, G. P., Darvill, T. J., Bochner, S., Bowers, J. K., Huang, Y.-H., Park, J. Y., Pecjak, V., Rahim, A. R. A., and Pennington, D. (1989). Cross-cultural assessment of altruism and its correlates. Personality and Individual Differences, 10, 855–868.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenny, D. A., Kashy, D. A., and Bolger, N. (1998). Data analysis in social psychology. In Gilbert, D. T., Fiske, S. T., and Lindzey, G. (eds.), The handbook of social psychology:Vol. 1 (4th edn.) (pp. 233–265). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Kerr, M., Stattin, H., and Trost, K. (1999). To know you is to trust you: Parents' trust is rooted in child disclosure of information. Journal of Adolescence, 22, 737–752.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladd, G. W. and Profilet, S. M. (1996). The Child Behavior Scale: A teacher-report measure of young children's aggressive, withdrawn, and prosocial behaviors. Developmental Psychology, 32, 1008–1024.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laible, D., Eye, J., and Carlo, G. (in press). Dimensions of conscience in mid-adolescence: Links with social behavior, parenting, and temperament. Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Lamm, C., Batson, C. D., and Decety, J. (2007). The neural substrate of human empathy: Effects of perspective-taking and cognitive appraisal. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 42–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Latané, B. and Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn't he help?New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, D. P., Lockwood, C. M., Hoffman, J. M., West, S. G., and Sheets, V. (2002). A comparison of methods to test the significance of the mediated effect. Psychological Methods, 7, 83–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maslow, A. (1973). The farther reaches of human nature. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Mayeroff, M. (1971). On caring. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Noddings, N. (2003). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education (2nd edn.). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Oliner, S. P. and Oliner, P. M. (1988). The altruistic personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Rotenberg, K. J. (ed.) (1991). Children's interpersonal trust: Sensitivity to lying, deception, and promise violations. New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRef
Rotenberg, K. J. (1994). Loneliness and interpersonal trust. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 13, 152–173.CrossRef
Rotenberg, K. J. (1995). The socialization of trust: Parents' and their children's interpersonal trust. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 18, 713–726.CrossRef
Rotenberg, K. J. and Cerda, C. (1994). Racially based trust expectancies of Native American and Caucasian children. Journal of Social Psychology, 134, 621–631.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rotenberg, K. and Mann, L. (1986). The development of the norm of the reciprocity of self-disclosure and its function in children's attraction to peers. Child Development, 57, 1349–1357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rotenberg, K. J., Fox, C., Green, S., Ruderman, L., Slater, K., Stevens, K., and Carlo, G. (2005). Construction and validation of a children's interpersonal trust belief scale. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23, 271–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rotenberg, K. J., MacDonald, K. J., and King, E. V. (2004). The relationship between loneliness and interpersonal trust during middle childhood. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 165, 233–249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rotenberg, K. J., Michalik, N., Eisenberg, N., and Betts, L. R. (2008). The relations among young children's peer-reported trustworthiness, inhibitory control, and preschool adjustment. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23, 288–298.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rotter, J. B. (1967). A new scale for the measurement of interpersonal trust. Journal of Personality, 35, 651–665.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rotter, J. B. (1980). Interpersonal trust, trustworthiness and gullibility. American Psychologist, 35, 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rushton, J. P., Chrisjohn, R. D., and Fekken, G. C. (1981). The altruistic personality and the self-report altruism scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 2, 1–11.Google Scholar
Rydell, A. M., Hagekull, B., and Bohlin, G. (1997). Measurement of two social competence aspects in middle childhood. Developmental Psychology, 33, 824–833.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seligman, M. E. P. and Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staub, E. (1978). Positive social behavior and morality: Social and personal influences:Vol. 1. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Staub, E. (2005). The roots of goodness: The fulfillment of basic human needs and the development of inclusive caring, helping and nonaggression, moral courage, active bystandership, and altruism born of suffering. In Carlo, G. and Edwards, C. P. (eds.), The 51st Annual Symposium on Motivation: Moral motivation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Steel, J. L. (1991). Interpersonal correlates of trust and self-disclosure. Psychological Reports, 68, 1319–1320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swisher, J. D., Shute, R. E., and Bibeau, D. (1984). Assessing drug and alcohol abuse: An instrument for planning and evaluation. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 17, 91–97.Google Scholar
Thompson, R. A. (2006). The development of the person: Social understanding, relationships, conscience, self. In W. Damon, R. M. Lerner (series eds.), and Eisenberg, N. (vol. ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (6th edn.) (pp. 24–98). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Tilton-Weaver, L. and Galambos, N. (2003). Adolescents' characteristics and parents' beliefs as predictors of parents' peer management behaviors. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 13 (3), 269–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waters, E., Vaughn, B., Posada, G., and Kondo-Ikemura, K. (1995). Caregiving, cultural, and cognitive perspective on secure-base behavior and working models: New growing points of attachment theory and research. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 60, (2–3, Serial No. 244).Google Scholar
Weir, K. and Duveen, G. (1981). Further development and validation of the Prosocial Behavior Questionnaire for use by teachers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 22, 357–374.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, E. O. (1978). On human nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×