Stress is an element in our daily lives that influences how we interact with others. In recent years, its association with prosocial behaviour has been researched. The literature, however, presents...Show moreStress is an element in our daily lives that influences how we interact with others. In recent years, its association with prosocial behaviour has been researched. The literature, however, presents inconsistent findings. Given this inconsistency, we aim to test whether acute stress is positively correlated with prosocial behaviour. Additionally, we aim to test whether low and high-perceived stress correlate with prosocial behaviour, to then test if the two groups differed on prosocial behaviour during exams. Therefore, we recruited 510 students from universities in the UK on Prolific. This research was part of a larger study, which involved repeated measurements. Stress was induced in a naturalistic manner: at T1, students had exams so they were expected to be more stressed than at T2, when they did not. Given our interest in the relationship between acute stress and prosocial behaviour, we focused on T1 (N = 236). The Perceived Stress Scale-10 was used to measure acute stress, while the Prosocial Effort Task was used to measure prosocial behaviour. The research questions were investigated using Spearman’s correlations and a Mann-Whitney U-test. The three correlation analyses revealed a non-significant correlation between prosocial behaviour and acute stress, regadless of how stress was categorised. Additionally, the comparison analysis revealed no group difference. Ultimately, these results show how complex the relationship between acute stress and prosocial behaviour is. Prior to this paper, few studies explored the low and high categorisation of acute stress on prosocial behaviour, making it necessary for future research to expand furtherShow less
The relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and prosocial behaviour is a controversial topic in scientific literature. It remains unclear whether SES positively or negatively influences...Show moreThe relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and prosocial behaviour is a controversial topic in scientific literature. It remains unclear whether SES positively or negatively influences prosocial behaviour, as many other factors may be involved. This study introduced stress as a mediation variable between SES and prosocial behaviour, in order to better understand this complicated relationship. Aiming to fill this gap in knowledge, this research objective was to answer the question “Does stress mediate the relationship between SES and prosocial behaviour?”. Specifically, it was hypothesized that low SES would lead to increased stress, which in turn would lead to lower prosocial behaviour. In addition, as a second objective, we investigated whether stress would mediate the relationship between perceived socioeconomic status (PSES) and prosocial behaviour, and hypothesized similar findings as in the first model. 287 participants took part in an online study, where they performed a prosocial behavioural task, and completed several self-report measures. Both mediation analysis revealed non-significant results, except for the relationship between SES and stress. We suggest that this non-significance could have been driven by factors that were unaccounted for in this research. This study adds onto the current literature, suggesting that the relationship between SES, prosocial behaviour and stress may be too complex to be captured by a simple mediation model. It is suggested that future research should focus on expanding the literature on the relationship between SES and stress by looking into other factors that could influence it.Show less
Watching eye cues has been argued to enhance altruistic behavior in humans through reputational mechanisms. However, subsequent replication attempts have failed at reproducing the results on...Show moreWatching eye cues has been argued to enhance altruistic behavior in humans through reputational mechanisms. However, subsequent replication attempts have failed at reproducing the results on increasing prosocial behavior. Procedural differences (namely exposure time) in previous studies could hold the answer of the contradicting findings. Some authors suggest that the longer participants have to process eye-like stimuli, the less prosocial behavior they exhibit. In this online between-subject design, we exposed participants to either short (16ms) or long exposure time (60s) to eye-cues or no exposure to eye-cues. We measured the amount donated by participants from their monetary compensation to an environmental NGO, to measure the effect on prosocial behavior through donations. Our hypothesis was in two-fold: first, we wanted to replicate the findings of prosocial behavior when exposed to eye-like stimuli. Second, that subliminal exposure to eye-like stimuli would enhance donation behavior more than a longer exposure time to the stimuli would. Through binary logistic regressions, we found that exposing participants to eye-cues did not increase donations, nor did subliminal exposure compared to longer exposure. These results has both practical implications for using eye-cues online and theoretical implications for the reputational mechanisms’ theory. Future research should consider using eye-tracking for validation of the short exposure.Show less
This paper examines the psychological factors that influence donation to nonprofit organizations (NPOs) using a social categorization perspective. The present study investigates the role of...Show moreThis paper examines the psychological factors that influence donation to nonprofit organizations (NPOs) using a social categorization perspective. The present study investigates the role of affinity with, and likeability of, the nonprofit organization, altruism and empathy in the willingness to donate time and effort to the nonprofit organization, referred to as different types of volunteerism. In a cross-sectional survey study, a sample of 143 members of the general public completed the self-report questionnaire of the research via the online crowdsourcing service Prolific (N = 143). Results of multiple regression analysis indicated that affinity with the nonprofit organization, when controlled for altruism, predicted likeability of the nonprofit organization and willingness to volunteer for the nonprofit organization. Furthermore, altruism, when controlled for affinity with the nonprofit organization, predicted empathy. Mediation analysis revealed that likeability of the nonprofit organization mediated the relationship between affinity with the nonprofit organization and willingness to volunteer for the nonprofit organization. Unexpectedly, empathy did not significantly mediate the relationship between altruism and willingness to volunteer for the nonprofit organization. Finally, moderation analysis showed that altruism did not significantly strengthen the relationship between affinity with the nonprofit organization and likeability of the nonprofit organization. The findings provide support for the hypothesized relationship between affinity with the nonprofit organization, likeability with the nonprofit organization, and willingness to volunteer for the nonprofit organizations. Theoretical and practical contributions, limitations, and suggestions for new research are discussed.Show less
The current study examined the relation between attachment to peers and giving towards parents, friends, disliked and anonymous peers in a Prosocial Donation Task (PDT) for pre-adolescents....Show moreThe current study examined the relation between attachment to peers and giving towards parents, friends, disliked and anonymous peers in a Prosocial Donation Task (PDT) for pre-adolescents. Secondly, this study examined the influence of giftedness of pre-adolescents’ giving towards parents, friends, disliked and anonymous peers in a PDT, before and after controlling for attachment. Pre-adolescence is an important transition period where a lot of changes (social, emotional, physical) occur and this period of time has not been investigated that much when it comes to prosocial behaviours, such as giving. Additionally, there is not a lot of literature on giftedness and its relation with attachment and prosocial behaviour. Sixty-nine pre-adolescents gifted and typically developing, between 9 and 12 years old filled out the Inventory of Peer and Parents attachment (IPPA) and performed a PDT. The results show that there is no linear relation between attachment and pre-adolescents’ giving behaviour in general. However, the results did show that the giving behaviour, when a distinction is made between targets, is influenced by attachment to peers, and that pre-adolescents give significantly more to parents and friends than to disliked and anonymous peers. This suggests that pre-adolescents who are more securely attached to their peers, display more giving behaviour towards targets they have a connection with (parents and friends). No difference was found in giving behaviour between gifted and typically developing pre-adolescents. One explanation may be that during pre-adolescence the difference between the giving behaviour of gifted and typically developing pre-adolescents is not that big. Another explanation may be that the PDT that was used was too simple, requiring less cognitive capabilities to process relevant information, and therefore no difference occurred between the two groups. Future research should investigate how giving behaviour develops for gifted and typically developing pre-adolescents as they get older, investigate the possible influence of COVID-19, and investigate the influence of attachment to peers and parents simultaneously to better understand the influence of preadolescents’ attachment on giving behaviour.Show less
Perceptions about one’s social class has social consequences on interactional decision making. Studies have shown that the social class of an interaction partner (i.e., the target) predicts how...Show morePerceptions about one’s social class has social consequences on interactional decision making. Studies have shown that the social class of an interaction partner (i.e., the target) predicts how prosocial one will be towards this target. Lower-class targets elicit greater prosociality than higher-class targets, known as the target class effect. The present study (N = 294) replicated this effect in the US with an online survey. We operationalized social mindfulness (SoMi) as a measure for prosociality, while manipulating target class with information about the target’s position on a social ladder. The objective was to explore fairness and moral perspectives as underlying explanations for the target class effect. We proposed that need-based distributive fairness preference (i.e., taking the needs of others into consideration when allocating resources) and moral identity will facilitate and attenuate the target class effect respectively. Our findings did not support these expectations. Implications, limitations, and future directions are further discussed.Show less
Psychopaths are known for their lack of empathy and immoral behaviours, and have shown to be unable to distinguish moral from conventional violations. Research demonstrated that morality can be...Show morePsychopaths are known for their lack of empathy and immoral behaviours, and have shown to be unable to distinguish moral from conventional violations. Research demonstrated that morality can be influenced by empathy, as well as developmental changes. The current study therefore aimed to investigate differences in moral decision-making behaviours between healthy males and psychopathic males in the evaluation of complex social situations. A total of 39 participants took part in this study, with 20 healthy male controls and 19 psychopathic males. The participants observed and evaluated pictures depicting various social situations. These included offenders of intentional pain (IP), offenders of accidental pain (AP), victims of IP, and victims of AP. Participants were then instructed to distribute coins between themselves and a random target from the social situation. The results showed that the controls could differentiate between more conditions than the psychopaths. More specifically, the controls and psychopaths both showed most prosocial behaviour towards victims of IP, followed by victims of AP, and showed most punishing behaviour towards offenders of IP, followed by offenders of AP. However, the psychopaths showed less prosocial behaviour than the controls towards victims of IP and AP. No significant differences were found in punishing behaviour between the controls and psychopaths towards offenders of AP. Finally, no significant correlation was found between age and prosocial behaviour in both the controls and psychopaths towards victims. Taken together, these findings further support the notion that psychopaths’ lack of prosocial behaviour stems from an empathy deficiency, rather than an impairment in moral judgement.Show less
