Under what circumstances is helping an impulse? Emergency and prosocial traits affect intuitive prosocial behavior

Abstract

While prosocial behavior is suggested to be a central feature of human life, there is an ongoing debate as to whether individuals have developed a general intuitive tendency to act prosocially or not. We show that prosocial behavior is better described as a person × situation interaction. In two studies (total N = 170), we tested the influence of processing mode on helping behavior in emergency and non-emergency situations and the moderating effect of prosocial traits (i.e., Honesty–Humility and social value orientation) using different experimental manipulations. These studies were conducted among Chinese samples, and provide evidence on prosocial behaviors beyond the “WEIRD” population. Consistent with the existing experimental literature on spontaneous cooperation, we consistently found intuitive processing led to more helping behavior. Moreover, this intuitive prosociality is context-dependent, moderated by the emergency and prosocial traits. Overall, we find clear evidence that the role of intuition and deliberation varies across both situations and individuals as predicted by the social heuristics hypothesis. Our findings reconcile previous diverging results by demonstrating these moderators, and extend our understanding of the model of intuitive prosociality based on social heuristics.