Longitudinal and Daily Links Between Impulsivity and Prosocial Behavior: The Moderating Role of Positive Risk-Taking

There is a growing interest in positive risk-taking (PRT) during adolescence and young adulthood. Emerging evidence has documented positive associations of PRT with multiple positive adolescent socioemotional developmental outcomes, including prosocial behavior. Impulsivity, despite its link with PRT, has shown mixed relations with prosocial behavior. The joint association between PRT and impulsivity with prosocial behavior remains underexplored, especially their prospective associations in longitudinal designs and daily contexts.

Participants were 177 Canadian university students (M_age = 20.3, 74.6% female, 69.7% non-White), who first completed a baseline survey in 2022, followed by a month-long daily diary report and a follow-up survey 6 months later. Multiple linear regression examined the longitudinal associations of PRT, impulsivity, and their interaction with prosocial behavior over a 6-month period. Dynamic structural equation modeling investigated the daily associations between impulsivity and same-day prosocial behavior and whether these daily links varied by participants' levels of PRT.

There was minimal evidence for the longitudinal associations between PRT, impulsivity, and prosocial behavior over a 6-month period. However, higher daily impulsivity was associated with lower same-day prosocial behavior. The negative association was less salient among participants with higher levels of PRT, such that high levels of PRT could buffer the negative influences of young adults' daily impulsive tendencies that deter them from engaging in daily prosocial behavior.

Findings highlight the importance of distinguishing short- and long-term developmental processes and underscore PRT as a context-sensitive construct relevant in youth's social functioning in daily life.