{
  "abstract": "Background: Parent–child attachment is assumed to support adolescent prosocial behaviour through empathy and gratitude, but most evidence is cross-sectional and rarely separates stable between-person differences from within-person change. This study examined whether longitudinal associations among these constructs match the proposed sequential account and whether they hold within persons.\n\nMethods: Chinese junior secondary students (N = 557 linked across three waves) completed an identical self-report battery on all four constructs. Longitudinal measurement invariance was tested for each construct. A random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) separated between-person from within-person variance, and a latent sequential indirect-effect model with autoregressive controls was estimated by full-information maximum likelihood with 5,000 bias-corrected bootstrap resamples. Two prespecified robustness analyses varied the placement of gratitude and excluded outliers.\n\nResults: Metric invariance held for all constructs; full scalar invariance failed for prosocial behaviour (ΔRMSEA = 0.021). Random intercepts held 64.5 to 70.9% of total variance, and no hypothesised within-person cross-lagged path was significant (attachment to empathy β = 0.076, p = 0.561; empathy to gratitude β = 0.140, p = 0.160; gratitude to prosocial behaviour β = −0.043, p = 0.694). In the latent model (CFI = 0.974, RMSEA = 0.046), attachment predicted empathy (B = 0.100, 95% CI [0.032, 0.163]), empathy predicted gratitude (B = 0.171 [0.015, 0.329]) and gratitude predicted prosocial behaviour (B = 0.376 [0.241, 0.545]). The sequential indirect association was small (B = 0.0064 [0.0010, 0.0202]; 5.8% of the total indirect association), was not reproduced when gratitude was placed at Wave 2, and its empathy-to-gratitude component lost significance after outliers were excluded. The two prospective two-link within-person indirect products identifiable in the RI-CLPM were also not distinguishable from zero.\n\nConclusion: The data support stable longitudinal associations, particularly those involving gratitude, but only tentative evidence for a sequential pathway and none for a within-person developmental chain. A four-wave design placing each construct on a separate occasion is needed to test the mechanism.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "School of Education and Psychology, Shaoxing University , ,",
    "Shaoxing Changcheng Middle School , ,"
  ],
  "article_type": "research article",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Xiaoxue Chen"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Jia Xu"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Anni Chen"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Leigang Zhang"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/204me2mfw62wj.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1970907",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13730822/?tool=EBI",
  "id": "204me2mfw62wj",
  "issns": [
    "1664-1078"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13730822",
  "language": "eng",
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "heading",
      "Original Research"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3203|Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7223126424",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13730822/pdf/?tool=EBI",
  "pmcid": "PMC13730822",
  "pmid": "42979441",
  "published": "2026-10-21",
  "publisher": "Frontiers Media SA",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/204me2mfw62wj.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-04T15:20:45Z",
      "native_id": "PMC:PMC13730822",
      "source": "europepmc",
      "url": "https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13730822"
    },
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-07T12:23:18Z",
      "native_id": "PMC13730822",
      "source": "pmc",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1970907"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "medicine",
      "origin": "openalex:3203|Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development",
      "subfield": "psychiatry"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Longitudinal associations between parent–child attachment and prosocial behaviour: the roles of empathy and gratitude",
  "title_text": "Longitudinal associations between parent–child attachment and prosocial behaviour: the roles of empathy and gratitude",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-07T12:23:18Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/204me2mfw62wj",
  "venue": "Frontiers in psychology",
  "versions": []
}