ore at age 12 as the objective variable and being praised for prosocial behavior as the main explanatory variable, and the SMFQ score at age 10 and the objective prosocial behavior at age 10 were included as confounders.
Results: Depressive symptoms (SMFQ scores) in the “prosocial praise group” were significantly lower than those in the other group both at age 10 (4.3 ± 4.4 vs. 4.9 ± 4.6, p < 0.001) and at age (3.4 ± 4.2 vs. 4.0 ± 4.6, p < 0.01). In the single regression analysis, the children who reported being praised for prosocial behavior at age 10 had significantly lower depressive symptoms at age 12 (partial regression variable: −0.57, 95% confidence interval (CI) [−0.96, −0.17]). This association remained significant after adjusting for confounders, including baseline depressive symptoms (partial regression variable: −0.44, 95% CI [−0.80, −0.08]). Prosocial behavior alone was not associated with depressive symptoms.
Conclusions: Being praised for prosocial behavior rather than objective prosocial behavior at 10 years of age predicted lower depressive symptoms 2 years later. Praise for adolescents' prosocial behavior can be encouraged to prevent depression.
Depression is highly prevalent and causes a heavy burden in adolescent life (1); depression is the 8th cause of global years lived with disability (YLDs) in 10–14 years of age, 2nd in 15–19 years of age and 1st in 20–24 years of age. Thus, prevention strategies are required at all levels, including the individual, family, school, and society levels. Since praise influences self-esteem (2, 3), which is associated with depression (4), praising could prevent depressive symptoms in adolescents. An empirical research showed that parental verbal affection associated with well-being in late adolescence (5). Further, perceived praise from parents was associated with lower levels of depression in adolescents (6).
The manner and content of praise influences the self-esteem and positive attitude of adolescents. Overly positive and inflated praise has been suggested to lower self-esteem in children (3). It was also suggested that person-focused but not process-focused praise leads children to avoid challenges in school (7). Furthermore, praise for behavior (process) was better than praise for personal qualities in terms of the effect on the self-esteem of children (2). Taken together, praise for behavior may be important in preventing depressive symptoms in adolescents, but it is still unknown which behaviors of children should be praised.
A negative correlation between prosocial behavior and depressive symptoms has been noted (8). Further, since prosocial behavior predicted future decreased depressive symptoms in adolescents (9), praise for prosocial behavior is a candidate preventive strategy against depressive symptoms in adolescents. However, no study has investigated the association between recognition of being praised for prosocial behavior and depressive symptoms in adolescents. Furthermore, no study has examined whether being praised for prosocial behavior has a preventive effect on depressive symptoms in adolescents. We hypothesized that being praised for prosocial behavior would be longitudinally associated with decreased depressive symptoms in adolescents. This study aimed to examine the longitudinal relationship between being praised for prosocial behaviors and depressive symptoms using a large-scale cohort of adolescents sampled from the general population.
Study Design and Survey Participants
The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that being praised for prosocial behavior would be longitudinally associated with decreased depressive symptoms in adolescents. We adopted 10–24 years as the definition of the age of adolescence according to the recent review (10), thus called the study participants as early adolescents. This study used data from the Tokyo Teen Cohort study (TTC), a prospective population-based cohort study that is currently underway and aims to investigate the developmental trajectory of adolescents (11). Children born between Septembe