In this article, we report a multicomponent battery of behavioral tasks and self-report measures that examined developmental differences in prosociality between UK-based adolescents (N = 100, aged 11-15) and young adults (N = 1 00, aged 1 8-36). We also assessed how sociocognitive mechanisms—including perspective-taking, working memory, inhibitory control, and social network characteristics—contribute to prosociality, and whether these contributions vary by age. Analyses distinguished between cognitive and social components of working memory and inhibition, identifying their unique predictive roles. Young adults showed significantly greater prosociality and outperformed adolescents across all sociocognitive measures. Multigroup analyses revealed that cognitive and social working memory, and social inhibition predicted prosociality across both groups. However, social networks were more strongly linked to prosociality in adolescents, while perspective-taking played a greater role in young adults. These findings underscore the distinct roles of cognitive and social factors across different developmental stages.
Barzy et al. (Mon,) studied this question.