Creating mindful heroes: a case study with ninth grade students.

The Heroic Imagination Project (HIP) aims to redefine heroism as a set of habits that anyone can achieve. Research findings on the psychological foundations of negative forms of social influence that can lead to bystander behavior are translated into tools that individuals can use in their daily lives. Habits of wise and effective helping behavior are learned, modeled, and encouraged through the training of the "heroic imagination." According to the literature, practicing mindfulness can increase empathy, compassion, and prosocial behaviors. There is empirical evidence that compassion can act as a mediator between mindfulness and prosocial helping behaviors toward strangers, suggesting that mindfulness promotes this behavior and thus helps to overcome the bystander effect. With this hypothesis in mind, we created a program that combined mindfulness and HIP sessions. Five participants volunteered to participate in the "Creating Mindful Heroes" 9-week program. Throughout the sessions, they filled in a diary, and at the end of the program, they answered two feedback questionnaires. They were then invited to participate in individual interviews. The participants reported a positive overall perspective regarding the program, mentioning several improvements in their relationships with their family, peers, and others in society. Moreover, participants reported that the program promoted prosocial behaviors and aided them in developing empathy.

Prosocial Tendencies Measure Validation for Portuguese Late Adolescents

O Questionário de Tendências Prossociais (MTP) de Carlo e Randall (2002) é amplamente usado para avaliar tendências prossociais. Partindo do pressuposto de que existem diferenças no comportamento pró-social entre adolescentes e adultos, o presente estudo teve como objetivo validar a versão em português do MTP com uma amostra de adolescentes. Este instrumento avalia seis tipos diferentes de tendências prossociais: altruísta, anónima, emergência, emocional, complacente e pública. Desenhado para confirmar esta estrutura fatorial do MTP com adolescentes portugueses, este estudo recolheu as perceções de um total de 1313 adolescentes a frequentar o ensino secundário. A análise fatorial confirmatória corroborou a estrutura de seis fatores da validação original. Além disso, considerando o ano escolar e o género dos alunos, a análise de invariância foi executada e atestou a invariância configural, métrica (parcialmente para género) e escalar (parcialmente para ano escolar e género) do MTP. Estes resultados demonstram ainda que a versão portuguesa MTP é confiável, aumentando a utilidade deste instrumento para avaliar comportamentos prossociais na adolescência.

The Prosocial Tendencies Measure (PTM; Carlo & Randall, 2002) is widely used for assessing prosocial tendencies. Assuming that there are differences in prosocial behavior between adolescents and adults, the current study aimed to further validate the Portuguese version of the PTM for adolescents. This instrument assesses six different types of prosocial tendencies ­ altruism, anonymous, dire, emotional, compliant and public. Designed to confirm this structure with Portuguese adolescents, this study collected a total of 1313 high school students' prosocial behaviors perceptions. Confirmatory factor analysis corroborated the six-factor structure of the original validation. Furthermore, considering the students' school year and gender, invariance analysis was executed and attested the PTM's configural, metric (partially for gender) and scalar (partially for school year and gender) invariance. These findings further demonstrate that the Portuguese version of the PTM is reliable, enhancing the utility of this instrument to assess prosocial behaviors in adolescence.