Are adolescent leaders prosocial and aggressive?

Abstract

This longitudinal study was initiated to assess the predictors of peer- and teacher-identified Chinese adolescent leaders. Participants were 764 8th grade (14.42 years, 348 girls) and 783 11th grade (17.67 years, 427 girls) students that completed two waves of data collection separated by 1 year. Prosocial behavior, aggression, and the interaction between aggression and effortful control concurrently and longitudinally predicted peer- and teacher-identified leadership. A person-centered analysis revealed that 56.8% of the peer-identified and 37.6% of the teacher-identified leaders exhibited both prosocial and aggressive behavior. Consistent with Confucian ideas, prosocial behavior was strongly associated with leadership in both the variable- and person-centered analyses. These results suggest that the bistrategic model in conjunction with effortful control may be useful for understanding youth leadership contextualized within cultural norms.