The Bidirectional Longitudinal Relationships between Self-Compassion, Peer Attachment, and Prosocial Behavior in Chinese Children.

Prior research has highlighted the promoting effects of self-compassion and peer attachment on prosocial behavior. However, it has overlooked the shaping influence of prosocial behavior on these two factors, as well as the underlying mechanisms among the three. Examining the reciprocal links between self-compassion, peer attachment, and prosocial behavior, along with their mediating mechanisms, constitutes the core objective of this investigation, which leverages both a traditional CLPM and a within-person RI-CLPM for analysis. A total of 1037 children with M_T1age = 9.65 ± 0.73 participated in the study, including 427 girls (41.17%) and 610 boys (58.83%). The results indicated that the bidirectional relation among self-compassion, peer attachment, and prosocial behavior in the CLPM, while the RI-CLPM revealed more temporally predictive relationships: early peer attachment positively predicted later prosocial behavior, which in turn significantly predicted subsequent levels of self-compassion and peer attachment. Furthermore, in CLPM, self-compassion influenced prosocial behavior through peer attachment, while secure peer attachment affected prosocial behavior via self-compassion. Simultaneously, self-compassion and secure peer attachment mutually influenced each other through prosocial behavior. The CLPM analysis identified four self-reinforcing cycles. These findings reveal that mutual influence among self-compassion, secure peer attachment, and prosocial behavior drives a virtuous cycle.These findings construct a comprehensive "internal resources-external support-behavioral expression" dynamic cyclical framework, suggesting the need for differentiated intervention strategies at different developmental stages of childhood: early-stage interventions should focus on fostering secure peer attachment relationships to lay the foundation for subsequent development, while later-stage efforts should emphasize prosocial behavior training to shape both internal and external resources, thereby promoting the holistic enhancement of children's social adaptability.