Using the Caregiving System Scale to assess individual differences in prosocial orientation

The caregiving system provides support, protection, care and encouragement. It is a cognitive-motivational system that is activated in a variety of circumstances to establish secure, intimate, emotional bonds, one of the major characteristics of an optimally functioning personality. There are two major dimensions relating to attachment-system functioning and there are also probably two caregiving behaviour dimensions (hyperactivation, HY and deactivation, DE) based on previous social experiences and character shaping relationships. However, individual differences may also be affected by, for example, prosocial behaviour. Differences in the activation of the system are measured by the Caregiving System Scale (CSS) by means of two separate subscales. The Italian version of the CSS (previously validated by our team: Meneghini et al., 2015) was administrated to 714 students (females=93.3%). Volunteering was used as an indicator of prosocial behaviour. Some of the participants had never engaged in voluntary service (group 1=26.7%), had engaged in voluntary service in the past and then abandoned it (group 2=46.7%) and some were doing voluntary work at the time of the assessment (group 3=26.6%). The aim was to investigate whether volunteers had higher scores in the CSS. The results showed that those who were volunteers or had done voluntary service in the past had similar scores for DE. A comparison showed significant differences between group 1 and groups 2 and 3 (p<.001). Those who had never engaged in voluntary service or had engaged in the past had similar scores for HY. The comparison between the groups showed significant differences in HY between group 3 and groups 1 and 2 (p<.05 and p<.01). The results suggest that the degree of DE of the system affects people’s intention to engage in voluntary service. Conversely, it appears that the degree of HY increases when people engage in voluntary service.