A new typology of psychological mechanisms underlying prosocial decisions

Abstract

Charitable giving, volunteering, climate-friendly choices, and most recently changing one’s lifestyle to stop the spread of the coronavirus are all examples of prosocial behavior. Prosociality can be investigated from different perspectives including the “who-question” (which people are more likely to help), and the “when-question” (which situational factors stimulate helping?), but in this article we focus primarily on the “why-question” (which emotions and cognitions motivate helping?)Specifically, this article tries to organize and synthesize literature related to emotions, thoughts, and beliefs (i.e. psychological mechanisms) that motivate or demotivate human helping behavior. To do this, we present a new typology including four overarching interrelated categories, each encompassing multiple subcategories.(1) Emotions: (a) emotional reactions elicited by the need situation such as empathic concern/sympathy, (b) positive or negative attitudes toward the beneficiary or the requester, (c) incidental mood. (2) Moral principles: (a) personal responsibility, (b) fairness-concerns, (c) aversion towards causing harm. (3) Anticipated impact: (a) self-efficacy (e.g. “can I make a difference?”) and (b) response-efficacy (e.g., “is this cause/project efficient and worthwhile?”). (4) Anticipated personal consequences: (a) material, (b) social and (c) emotional costs and benefits that the helper expects will follow if she helps or if she does not help. Increased knowledge about the “who” (e.g. individual differences in demography or personality) and “when” (situational antecedents such as characteristic of those in need, or type of solicitation) can surely help predict and even increase prosociality, but we argue that to understand the psychology of helping we need to also consider the psychological mechanisms underlying prosocial decisions (the “why-question”).We compare our typology against related theoretical frameworks, and present the pros and cons with different methodological approaches of testing psychological mechanisms of helping, with the aim to help researchers and practitioners better organize and understand the many psychological factors that influence prosocial decisions.

Unequal Valuations of Lives and What to Do About It : The Role of Identifiability, Numbers, and Age in Charitable Giving

“…This thesis focuses on how people make decisions about donating. Donating money is regarded as one type of prosocial behavior, which refers to acts that involve some type of cost for the self and result in benefits for others (Erlandsson et al, 2021;Wittek & Bekkers, 2015). Thus, charitable giving is a prosocial act as it involves a monetary cost for oneself and a beneficial consequence for the victims 1 .…”

“…If instead choosing to donate, the decision maker needs to forego personal benefits (e.g., buying themselves something) to benefit the recipients. However, it should be noted that in the latter situation many experience warm-glow -the warm, positive feeling after helping (Andreoni, 1990), meaning donating can also benefit oneself but in an emotional way (for a review on underlying mechanisms to helping, such as helping that benefits oneself, see Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011;Erlandsson et al, 2021). Further, donation decisions are also many times more affect-evoking than other financial decisions.…”