(p = 0.22).
Table 2. The association between being praised for prosocial behaviors at age 10 and depressive symptoms at age 12.
This is the first study that investigated the longitudinal relationship between the perceived experience of being praised for prosocial behaviors and depressive symptoms using a large-scale cohort of early adolescents from the general population. Based on the multiple linear regression analyses, the self-report of being praised for prosocial behaviors at 10 years old, but not objective prosocial behavior, predicted lower depressive symptoms 2 years later even after adjusting for baseline depressive symptoms.
Self-report of being praised for prosocial behavior predicted lower depressive symptoms 2 years later in adolescents. Being praised for prosocial behavior means being praised for behavior (process) and being praised for altruism, both of which can be preventive against depression. According to the theory about praise, process praise maintains self-esteem (2). Additionally, prosociality can be preventive against depression. A previous study suggested that helping others may increase self-acceptance and self-confidence and consequently improve depression (21).
Furthermore, rather than objective prosocial behavior alone, being praised for prosocial behavior decreased future depressive symptoms in adolescents. There may be several explanations for the findings of the present study. First, being praised might be an important process of fostering self-acceptance and self-confidence as a result of prosocial behaviors. Being praised might strengthen the recognition of adolescents' prosocial behaviors, which then leads to self-acceptance. Second, being praised might prompt further prosocial behavior and attitudes, which then leads to self-acceptance. Third, this study results may reflect the relatively strong relationship between interdependent self-construal and depressive symptoms in the Japanese culture (22). Being praised for prosocial behavior might affect self-construal stronger than the prosocial behavior itself, then lead to decrease of depressive symptoms. In any case, the present study further added that the recognition of being praised for prosocial behavior might decrease depressive symptoms more than the prosocial behavior itself.
This result would not necessarily be contrary to a previous study which showed that prosocial behavior served as a protective factor against depressive symptoms in adolescents (9) because the previous study did not assess being praised for prosocial behavior. It should also be noted that the previous study targeted a social minority (Latino immigrants to the United States) with a mean age of 14.5 years, so it was not entirely consistent with the population of interest in this study.
There are several strengths of this study. First, this study revealed a longitudinal relationship between recognition of being praised for prosocial behavior and depressive symptoms with the 2 year follow-up period. Second, since this study used a large-scale (n = 3,007) general population sample of adolescents, a certain generalizability of the results would be assured. This is significant because it provides suggestions for intervention methods for adolescents, who are at high risk of developing depression. Third, the follow-up rate was very high (94.8%). Fourth, we conducted the analyses while including several confounders, such as depressive symptoms at baseline, estimated IQ, and number of siblings.
There are several limitations to this study related to the fact that we assessed praise for prosocial behavior by asking the children. First, we cannot determine whether the children were actually praised. There may be children who did not describe the experience of being praised for prosocial behaviors in the questionnaire but actually had an experience of being praised for such behaviors. However, on the other hand, we could assess the importance of children's recognition of being praised for their prosocial behavior in preventing depression, which would conversely be a strength o