Paulina Guerra and Florencia De Sanctis, doctoral fellows, presented the project "Hero" directed by Dr. Belén Mesurado, Associate Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development The conference, held in Baltimore, USA, from March 21 to 23, brought together psychologists from around the world focused on research into child development. At the conference, the paper “Hero program: a technological application to promote social-emotional variables and prosocial behavior,” authored by Belén Mesurado, M. José Distefano, Paulina Guerra, Florencia De Sanctis, and Lucas M. Rodriguez, was presented.

The following is a summary of the presentation.

One of the most widely used definitions of prosociality is that proposed by Eisenberg, Fabes, and Spinard (2006), who define it as any voluntary, social, and positive act aimed at helping or benefiting another person. The literature indicates that prosocial behaviors are relatively malleable and can be fostered through educational tools (e.g., Bandura, 1997; Eisenberg et al., 2006). Several authors emphasize the importance of promoting prosociality in children and adolescents to contribute to their healthy and positive development (e.g., Bandura, 1997; Eisenberg et al., 2006). The online program "Hero" was developed to promote prosocial behaviors by fostering related socio-emotional variables (empathy, emotional recognition, positive emotions, gratitude, and forgiveness) and by directly promoting prosociality itself. These five socio-emotional variables were chosen because of their relationship with prosociality and because they represent social values ​​shared by different cultures (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). An intervention with these characteristics was developed with the intention of achieving changes not only at the behavioral level but also in underlying aspects, with the goal of obtaining lasting results.

The objective of the project was to study the effectiveness of the “Hero” program in promoting prosocial behaviors and other socio-emotional variables (empathy, emotional recognition, positive emotions, gratitude and forgiveness).

The results showed that the program was effective in promoting empathy, emotional recognition, positive emotions, gratitude, and prosocial behaviors, but was not effective in promoting the forgiveness variable.