Prosocial behaviour and altruistic Behaviour Determinants
1. Dr Neeta Gupta
Associate Professor
Department of psychology
Certified Practitioner of EFT &
REBT (London) & CBT
(Scotland)
DAV PG College
Dehradun
Prosocial Behaviour
2. Prosocial behaviors are those intended to
help other people. Behaviors that can be
described as prosocial include feeling
empathy and concern
for others. Prosocial
behaviour includes a
wide range of actions
such as helping,
sharing, comforting,
and cooperating.
3. Examples of prosocial behavior might
include: A person donating money to
charity, even though he/she receives no
tangible benefit from doing so.
4. Why is prosocial behavior important?
The researchers found that on a given day
prosocial behaviors decreased the
otherwise harmful effects of stress on
positive affect, and overall mental health.
In other words, by helping others during
times of stress, we may actually be helping
ourselves.
So, within the general domain of prosocial
behavior, other-oriented actions can be
categorized into three distinct types
Helping, Sharing, and Comforting.
5. Benefits of Prosocial Behaviour:
In addition to the obvious good that prosocial
actions do for their recipients, these behaviors
can have a range of beneficial effects for the
"helper":
Mood-boosting effects: Research has also
shown that people who engage in prosocial
behaviors are more likely to experience better
moods.
Not only that, people who help others tend to
experience negative moods less frequently.
6. Social support benefits:. Research has shown
that social support can have a powerful impact
on many aspects of wellness, including reducing
the risk of loneliness, alcohol use, and
depression.
Stress-reducing effects: Research has also
found that engaging in prosocial behaviors helps
mitigate the negative emotional effects of
stress.
7. Types of Prosocial Behaviour:
Proactive: These are prosocial actions that
serve self-benefitting purposes.
Reactive: These are actions that are performed
in response to individual needs.
Altruistic: These include actions that are meant
to help others without any expectations of
personal gain.
8. Prosocial Behaviour vs Altruism
Prosocial behaviour includes any act that helps
or is designed to help others, regardless of the
helpers motives.
Altruism means an unselfish concern for the
benefit and welfare of others, altruism means
performing an act walantarily to help someone
else when there is no expectation of reward in
any form, accept the feeling of having done a
good work.
9. Many Prosocial acts are not altruistic. If a young
person volunteers to work without salary for building
up his resume for future job opportunity, this
behaviour is not altruistic. It is prosocial behaviour
because he is extending help without any salary but
behind this there is an internal motive to make his
resume stronger.
10. Determinants of prosocial behaviour
1.Situational Factors:
1.The Bystander Effect:
Characteristics of the situation can also have a
powerful impact on whether or not people engage in
prosocial actions. The bystander effect is one of the
most notable examples of how the situation can
impact helping behaviors.
The bystander effect refers to the tendency for
people to become less likely to assist a person in
distress when there are a number of other people
also present.
For example, if you drop your purse and several items
fall out on the ground, the likelihood that someone
will stop and help you decreases if there are many
other people present.
11. 1.Diffusion of Responsibilities
2.Interpreting the situation
3.Evaluation Apprehension
2. Modelling:
Pro-social modelling is a simple and effective technique that
can contribute to behaviour change in clients. It refers to
the ways in which individuals working with involuntary
clients can model and reinforce pro-social values to elicit
similar values in their clients.
3. Similarity
People are more likely to help others if they like them. To like
someone, you must feel as if you share things in common.
Thus, it is as if people are more likely to help when they can
see themselves in the person needing help.
Outside of personally knowing someone, we are more likely to
help others that appear similar to ourselves.
12. This human instinct to help based on similarity can be used to
elicit help through mimicry. When a person needing help
imitates another's actions (or speech patterns), it increases the
probability of that person helping. Again, this goes back to the
idea that we are more willing to help those who are similar to
us.
4. Reward and Prosocial Behaviour:
Frequency of doing prosocial behaviour
May depend on the way in which similar
Similar helping has been rewarded in
The past.
5.Norms and Prosocial behaviour:
Prosocial can be increased when the
Rules or norms of the situation allow
the activity, which is consistent with helping victim.
13. 2.Personal Determinants:
a. Personal benefits: Prosocial behaviors are often seen as
being compelled by a number of factors including : doing
things to improve one's self-image, reciprocal benefits (doing
something nice for someone so that they may one day return
the favor), and more altruistic reasons (performing actions
purely out of empathy for another individual).
b.Reciprocal behavior: The norm of reciprocity suggests that
when people do something helpful for someone else, that
person feels compelled to help out in return.
c.Socialization: In many cases, such behaviors are fostered
during childhood and adolescence as adults encourage
children to share, act kindly, and help others.
14. d.Emotional States: Emotional states of the potential
helper may be positive or negative. Positive emotional
state creates good mood and negative emotional
states create bad moods. People in good mood tend
to display higher level of prosocial behaviour.
15. e. Personality Factors:
Empathy: Person engaged in prosocial
behaviour are high on the dimension
of empathy. Such persons are self-controlled,
tolerant and motivated to make a good
impression before others.
Social- Responsibilities: People engaged in
prosocial behaviour believe that each and
every person has responsibilities for doing
his best to help others in need.
Belief in Just World: Prosocial people perceive the world as a
fair and predictable place in which good
behaviour is rewarded and bad behaviour is punished. Such
belief leads to the conclusion that helping those who are in
need is a good deed and it will actually benefit the people
who help.
16. Low Egocentrism:
Prosocial behaviour do have
Lower degree of egocentrism
and are less self-absorbed
and competitive
Self-Efficacy:
is the belief that
one’s actions are likely
to be successful. Once empathetic feelings are
aroused, the belief that one can effectively help
become crucial in
setting helping behaviour in motion.
17. Other Factors:
1.Some People Are More Helpful Than Others: The
Altruistic Personality
2. Gender Differences in Helping. Although believed that
females are more but no real gender differences.
3. Are the Religious More Altruistic? There is support, based
on surveys and questionnaires, that religious people do
indeed report being more helpful than the less religious
(Penner, 2002). There are plenty of reasons to think that this
might be so. After all, every major religion preaches the
importance of compassion and helpfulness
4. Attribution & Prosocial Behaviour
Our perception of the amount of the need is important. We
tend to provide less help to people who seem to have
brought on their own problems or who don’t seem to be
working very hard to solve them on their own.
