Prosocial behavior refers to intentional actions that benefit someone else, whether or not the person helping receives an external reward. In school settings, it can include cooperating with classmates, offering support, sharing resources, defending someone who is being mistreated, or performing small favors for friends and family. Empathy is not a single ability. It includes cognitive processes, such as taking another person’s perspective and understanding what they may be feeling, as well as affective processes involving emotional responsiveness to another person’s condition. The distinction matters because recognizing distress does not automatically lead to assistance. In some circumstances, another person’s suffering can generate self-focused personal distress and avoidance instead of constructive action. Gratitude may help redirect attention outward by highlighting the benefits people receive from others and the value of their relationships. In that sense, the emotion could provide a motivational bridge between noticing another person’s needs and choosing to respond.

To investigate this proposed pathway, the researchers used a quantitative, cross-sectional, correlational design. The sample included 159 students from public schools and 159 from private schools, all between 12 and 16 years old. The average age was 13.2 years, with a standard deviation of 1.5 years. The public-school participants were classified within a low socioeconomic group, while the private-school participants were classified within a middle socioeconomic group using information that included residential stratum, family income, parental education, and occupational stability. Students completed questionnaires in their classrooms during four consecutive weeks of the 2024 academic calendar. Trained research assistants administered the instruments to groups of approximately 20 to 30 students, using standardized instructions and emphasizing voluntary participation, anonymity, and honest responses. The complete session lasted about 25 to 30 minutes. Participation required student assent and written consent from parents or legal guardians, and the fieldwork was reviewed as a no-risk project by Corporación Universitaria Rafael Núñez in Colombia.

The measures were designed to capture different parts of the proposed model. Prosocial behavior was assessed with a 27-item scale covering actions directed toward strangers, friends, and family members. Each category contained nine items rated from one, meaning “not at all like me,” to five, meaning “very much like me.” Empathy was measured with a 15-item Spanish questionnaire for children and early adolescents. Its dimensions included empathic action, perspective taking, emotional contagion, awareness of others, and emotional regulation, with responses recorded on a four-point scale from never to always. Gratitude was assessed with a six-item scale measuring a general tendency to recognize and feel thankful for benefits received from others, using responses from strongly disagree to strongly agree on a seven-point scale. Earlier validation work cited in the study reported acceptable reliability for these instruments in Latin American and Colombian youth, including McDonald’s omega values of .70 to .78 for the empathy dimensions and .75 to .91 for the prosocial behavior dimensions.

The central analysis used structural equation modeling, a statistical technique that allows researchers to estimate relationships among latent constructs that cannot be observed directly. Instead of treating empathy, gratitude, or prosociality as single raw scores, the approach uses patterns across questionnaire items to estimate the underlying variables and then tests pathways between them. The researchers examined whether empathy predicted gratitude, whether both were associated with prosocial behavior, and whether gratitude mediated the relationship between empathy and helping actions. They also conducted multigroup analyses to determine whether the measurement instruments and proposed relationships operated similarly in public and private schools. Measurement invariance is important in this context: before comparing groups, researchers must establish that students in each setting interpret the scales in sufficiently comparable ways. The study reported configural, metric, and scalar invariance for the instruments, indicating that the basic factor structure, factor loadings, and item intercepts were comparable across the two school groups.

The results supported the broad proposed relationship, but its strength varied according to whom students were helping. The model for prosocial behavior toward family members explained 12 percent of the variance, while the model for behavior toward friends explained 42 percent and the model for behavior toward strangers explained 23 percent. These values indicate that empathy and gratitude accounted for a meaningful, but incomplete, share of differences in students’ reported behavior. The model involving friends showed acceptable fit for both groups, with a comparative fit index of .93 in private schools and .84 in public schools, although the root mean square error of approximation was higher for public-school students. The family model showed weaker fit in the public-school group, including a comparative fit index of .73 and an RMSEA of .11. The stranger model also showed weaker fit for public-school students, with a comparative fit index of .77 and an RMSEA of .13. Such values caution against treating the proposed model as a complete explanation of adolescent prosociality.

One of the clearest group differences concerned behavior toward unfamiliar people. Students in public schools scored lower than private-school students on perspective taking, with a small effect size of Cohen’s d = 0.32, and on prosocial behavior toward friends, with a moderate effect size of d = 0.55. The study reported that the empathy–gratitude relationship did not predict helping strangers in the same way in the two groups, and that the public-school model produced a negative predictive value for this outcome. The researchers interpret this pattern in light of the social environments represented in the sample, including socioeconomic vulnerability, insecurity, distrust, and stronger orientation toward close relational networks. In circumstances where social risk is perceived as high, helping a stranger may carry different meanings or costs than helping a family member or friend. Empathy and gratitude may still encourage solidarity, but that solidarity could be directed primarily toward people regarded as trusted or familiar. The finding therefore does not show that public-school students lack empathy or gratitude, nor that they are generally less prosocial.

The study’s cross-sectional design also limits what can be concluded. Because all measures were collected at one point in time, the results demonstrate associations rather than causation. They cannot establish that empathy produces gratitude, that gratitude produces helping, or that a school program designed around either quality would necessarily increase prosocial behavior. It is also possible that students who regularly help others develop greater empathy and gratitude through those experiences, creating a reciprocal developmental process. The authors note that some structural models had fit indices below conventional recommendations and call for more flexible models and additional contextual variables. Future studies could examine school climate, perceived safety, parenting practices, social support, sense of belonging, emotion regulation, and community conditions. Longitudinal research would be particularly valuable because it could track how emotional skills and prosocial actions change across adolescence and whether improvements in one precede changes in the other.

Despite these qualifications, the findings offer a practical direction for education systems seeking to promote supportive school climates. Programs could combine perspective-taking exercises with opportunities for students to recognize assistance, express appreciation, and connect gratitude with concrete cooperative actions. The results suggest that such efforts may be relevant in both public and private schools, while also indicating that the social context must shape how activities are designed. In schools serving communities affected by insecurity or economic strain, building trust and safety may be necessary before encouraging students to extend helping behavior beyond immediate relationships. The researchers conclude that empathy and gratitude are consistent predictors of prosociality across the school contexts studied, especially toward family and friends. Their work does not reduce kindness to two psychological traits, but it identifies a potentially important mechanism through which emotional understanding can become social action—and shows why that mechanism must be examined within the real environments where young people live and learn.

The study’s comparison across school types is scientifically important because socioeconomic context can affect not only behavior itself but also how students interpret questionnaire items. Configural invariance indicates that the same broad pattern of dimensions was present in both groups; metric invariance supports comparing associations among those dimensions; and scalar invariance permits comparisons of average latent scores. Together, these tests strengthen the basis for group comparisons, although they do not eliminate differences in lived experience or guarantee that every item carries precisely the same practical meaning for every student.

The mediation result is best understood as a proposed statistical pathway rather than a confirmed sequence of psychological events. In a cross-sectional model, students who report greater empathy may also report greater gratitude and prosociality, but the data cannot determine whether gratitude develops afterward, whether helping experiences cultivate both qualities, or whether another factor influences all three. This distinction matters for intervention design. School programs can reasonably use the findings to test activities that connect perspective-taking and appreciation with cooperative behavior, while evaluating outcomes prospectively and monitoring whether effects differ by target of assistance, classroom climate, and perceived safety. Such testing could clarify whether gratitude is a modifiable mechanism or primarily a marker of broader supportive relationships.

Subject of Research: Empathy, gratitude, and prosocial behavior among Colombian school students

Article Title: Study on the prediction of prosociality through empathy and gratitude in the school context of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia

Article References: Tezón, M. I. (2026). Study on the prediction of prosociality through empathy and gratitude in the school context of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, 15(1), Article 24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44322-026-00054-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44322-026-00054-3

Keywords: empathy, gratitude, prosocial behavior, adolescent development, school psychology, Colombia, structural equation modeling, social-emotional learning, prediction, prosociality, school, context