Prosocial Attitudes Research Articles

Pro-Social Behaviour Analysis of Students through Students’ Organizations

<p><span>Student organization as a place to develop the talents of the students in the form of aspirations, ideas, and creativity to provide opportunities for students to be able to nurture their sense of organization. In student organizations, students are met with certain conditions that bring on pro-social attitudes. </span><span>The purpose of this study is to analyze, describe, and assess the pro-social behaviour of students through student organizations. This research is descriptive qualitative research. Collecting data through observation, interviews and documentation. Analysis of the data is done by using the model of Miles and Huberman. This study results that students involved in student organizations have social behaviours such as empathy, social responsibility, and low egocentrism. </span><span>The factors that affect student Pro-social attitudes are the environment, knowledge and personality. Mankind as the main source in the organization should be able to develop individuals with certain criteria. Coaching intensively and encouragement over the ownership of Pro-social attitudes for students are solutions to the emergence of the smart and good citizen.</span></p>

Introduction. The Evolutionary Approach to Ethics: From Animal Prosociality to Human Morality.

Evolutionary research on the biological fitness of groups has recently given a prominent value to the role that prosocial behaviors play in favoring a successful adaptation to ecological niches. Such a focus marks a paradigm shift. Early views of evolution relied on the notion of natural selection as a largely competitive mechanism for the achievement of the highest amount of resources. Today, evolutionists from different schools think that collaborative attitudes are an irremovable ingredient of biological change over time. As a consequence, a number of researchers have been attracted by evolutionary studies of human behaviors. Some think that a continuity among prosocial attitudes of human beings and other social mammals (particularly primates) can be detected, and that this fact has relevance for accounting for human morality. Others deny one or the other of these claims, or both. The papers in the present special issue address how these topics impact ethics and religion.

Social Feedback During Sensorimotor Synchronization Changes Salivary Oxytocin and Behavioral States.

In humans and animal models, oxytocin increases social closeness, attachment and prosocial behaviors, while decreasing anxiety and stress levels. Efficiently triggering the release of endogenous oxytocin could serve as a powerful therapeutic intervention for disorders of social behavior and for anxiety. We designed a new version of a social sensorimotor synchronization task to investigate the role of social approval in inducing biochemical and psychological changes following behavioral synchrony in a sample of 80 college students. Social approval in the form of real time positive feedback increased well-being only in women, while increasing social closeness in both genders. Social disapproval in the form of real time negative feedback prevented a decrease in stress levels that otherwise women reported following engagement in either social or non-social synchronization. Surprisingly, for certain personality traits, negative social feedback during sensorimotor synchronization was psychologically beneficial irrespective of gender. Salivary oxytocin levels increased only in women after the social but not the non-social synchronization tasks. Oxytocin dynamics were independent of the type of real time feedback that subjects received, indicating the existence of distinct mechanisms for hormonal versus behavioral changes following synchronization. Nevertheless, changes in salivary oxytocin after positive social feedback correlated with changes in well-being and predicted changes in prosocial attitudes. Our findings show evidence of distinct mechanisms for behavioral versus hormonal changes following social sensorimotor synchronization, and indicate that gender and personality traits should be carefully considered when designing behavioral therapies for improving social attitudes and for stress management.

A syncing feeling: reductions in physiological arousal in response to observed social synchrony

Synchronized movements are often key elements in activities where social bonding and emotional connection are a shared goal, such as religious gatherings, sporting events, parties and weddings. Previous studies have shown that synchronous movements enhance prosocial attitudes and affiliative behaviors. Similarly, observers attribute more social closeness to people moving synchronously together than people moving asynchronously. The mechanisms by which synchrony modulates these attributions are not well understood. In the present study, we ask whether viewing synchronous activities influences physiological arousal as measured by skin conductance and whether group size impacts this effect. Undergraduates viewed a series of short videos depicting people moving either (1) in or out of synchrony with each other and (2) in a large or small group. Participants’ skin conductance was measured. Change in skin conductance levels and response counts were attenuated while watching synchronous movement, but only in the large-group condition. Post-hoc analyses suggest that viewer enjoyment/interest in the large-group synchronous videos mediated this association for phasic skin conductance responses, but no evidence of mediation was found for tonic skin conductance levels. Results extend previous research on affiliative effects of first-person interpersonal synchrony and demonstrate that watching others moving synchronously has an attenuating effect on observers’ physiological state.

Inequality, fairness and social capital

Inequality is often associated with negative societal consequences, but identifying a causal relationship is a daunting task. We provide evidence on the impact of unjust economic inequality on social interactions. Using a large-scale controlled experiment, we document that unjust inequality results in a significant decline in trust and trustworthiness. This erosion of social capital is associated with pessimistic beliefs about others’ behavior and is muted if there is no direct link between the income-generating process and social interaction. Finally, our data do not support the view that higher status or wealth affects pro-social attitudes: the successful are always more generous, whereas unsuccessful persons display the least efficient and generous behavior regardless of the status of the person who they interact with.

Development of Protective Factors for Reducing Juvenile Reoffending: A Strengths-Based Approach to Risk Assessment

This study described the development of the Protective Factors for Reducing Juvenile Reoffending (PFRJR), a strengths-based measure to assess responsivity, guide case management, and potentially predict desistance. The study employed two diverse independent samples: a construction sample ( N = 278) and a validation sample ( N = 265) of juveniles under court supervision in a Midwestern juvenile court. Factor analyses revealed two factors—the Individual/Community domain includes items that measure prosocial attitudes and perceived access to resources in the community; the Family domain includes items that measure prosocial involvement with family and peers. The PFRJR had good model fit, strong internal consistency, and is related to risk in the theoretically appropriate direction. This research highlights the practicability of incorporating a strengths-based measure into traditional risk assessment procedures within an applied setting and contributes to the paucity of risk assessment research that examines strengths-based theoretical models and assessment protocols.

Building the Modern State in Developing Countries: Perceptions of Public Safety and (Un)willingness to Pay Taxes in Mexico

What is the relationship between taxation and public safety? Contrary to studies suggesting that personal victimization and heightened perceptions of insecurity increase pro-social attitudes and support for state intervention in the form of greater taxation, this article argues that such concerns decrease willingness to pay taxes to address public safety. It estimates what citizens are willing to pay to reduce crime, using an original representative survey conducted in Mexico and relying on the contingent valuation method to assess the value of nonmarket goods. Attitudes toward taxation are found to respond to subjective, sociotropic assessments of public safety rather than to actual risk or occurrences of individual victimization. These findings counter the conventional wisdom that demand for personal security enables greater extraction, a central proposition in classic accounts of state building. Showing that willingness to accept heavier taxation may be weakest among those who perceive the gravest need for security, the study adds precision to theories of fiscal exchange.

The Free2B Multi-Media Bullying Prevention Experience: An Exemplar of Scientific Edutainment.

ObjectiveThe objective of the current article is to highlight an example of a new paradigm, Scientific Edutainment. The manuscript describes how educational researchers and technologists worked together to develop a multi-media bullying prevention experience, called Free2B for middle school students paying particular attention to ensure that the programming was not only relevant to all students but also was appealing and responsive to the needs of urban youth. Bullying is the most common form of aggression experienced among school-aged youth, which impairs students’ learning and social-emotional functioning and has financial costs to society. Given that the prevalence of bullying is highest in middle school, finding brief and feasible methods for motivating and sustaining change at this age is critically important, especially in the case of urban, under-resourced schools.MethodIn response to this challenge, multidisciplinary bullying prevention researchers collaborated with international technologists to develop the Free2B multi-media bullying prevention experience through an iterative Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach. In addition, the research team conducted a series of pilot studies to iteratively develop and initially evaluate the multi-media program, helping to ensure relevance specifically for urban middle school youth.ResultsResults from the pilot studies indicated that the vast majority of middle school students found the Free2B multi-media bullying prevention experience to be enjoyable, relevant to their needs, and addressed important strategies to handle peer bullying and victimization. In addition, the brief prevention experience was associated with increases in problem-solving knowledge, prosocial attitudes about bullying, increased sympathy, and confidence in handling peer conflicts.ConclusionThe current paper illustrates the use of a new paradigm, termed Scientific Edutainment, as a way to combine evidenced-based developmental science with the latest in entertainment technology to provide innovative, engaging, and technologically-sophisticated educational programming.

From immersion to intention? Exploring advances in prosocial storytelling

Little empirical work has explored the psychological processes triggered by immersive technologies and how they might lead to more effective desirable prosocial outcomes. Thus, the current study explores two different modalities for presenting 360 videos—YouTube and head‐mounted display (HMD)—as strategies for engaging audiences with cause‐related stories. Across three stories, using these technologies led to the highest levels of presence, but there was no association between presence and increased attitudes towards the story content. Only narrative engagement impacted prosocial attitudes towards the video content. Data suggest that regardless of the technology used, telling engaging narratives that increase the viewer's self‐efficacy is key to behavioral intentions—immersive technologies help viewers feel closer to the physical location of the narrative, but not the narrative itself.

Attitudes of Polish Entrepreneurs towards 65+ Knowledge Workers in the Context of Their Pro-Social Attitude and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

In this article, we examine the issue of Polish entrepreneurs’ attitudes towards knowledge workers above the age of 65 in the context of pro-social and citizenship behavior. The article was written as part of the diversity management paradigm. Firstly, it presents the existing literature on the subject, and then, we present our analysis on the results of a longitudinal study conducted among 93 entrepreneurs, owners, and co-owners of small and medium enterprises, during 2014 and 2019. During this time, legal regulation took place twice, extending and then shortening the period of obligatory work enabling employees to acquire the right to retire. The study was carried out using a specially developed questionnaire, whose reliability met the requirements of methodological correctness and two other research tools. Positive, neutral and negative attitudes were identified among entrepreneurs’ attitudes towards knowledge workers aged 65+. The research results show a correlation between the attitudes of entrepreneurs in 2014 and 2019, stabilization of these attitudes (in relation positive, neutral and negative attitudes), and their particularly significant relationship with organization-oriented citizenship behavior.

Parental perceptions linked to opioid misuse among justice-involved children

Justice-involved children (JIC) are a subset of at-risk youth highly susceptible to the ill-consequences of opioid misuse (OM), especially for younger JIC. Parental practices and attitudes towards delinquency are known to influence a child’s behavior, however the relationship between parental attitudes towards youth delinquent behavior and odds of OM has yet to be investigated. The current study used a sample from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (age 10–18; M = 14; n = 79,960) to investigate how parental attitudes towards youth delinquent behavior influence the likelihood JIC meet criteria for past-30 day (P30D) OM. P30D OM was verified utilizing urinalysis. Youth with parents expressing proud or accepting attitudes towards youth delinquent behavior were roughly twice as likely to meet criteria for P30D OM as those with parents expressing disapproving attitudes. This relationship varied by age, with younger ages experiencing the greatest risk. These findings support early intervention efforts to develop prosocial attitudes in youth and their parents.

Identification with all humanity-A test of the factorial structure and measurement invariance of the scale in five countries.

Identification with all humanity measured as an individual characteristic is an important factor related to social and international relations, such as concern for global issues and human rights, prosocial attitudes, intergroup forgiveness, attitudes toward immigrants, solving global problems, reactions to hate crimes and dehumanisation. We examine the factorial structure, psychometric properties and measurement invariance of the Identification with All Humanity (IWAH) scale in student samples from five countries (the United States, Poland, France, Mexico and Chile; N=1930). Separate confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) for each country showed a second-order model of one superordinate factor with two subfactors. The cross-country validation of the scale, based on multigroup CFA, confirmed configural and metric invariance between countries for raw scores, and full metric invariance for "pure" scores. This study showed that the IWAH scale can be successfully used for cross-country research and the results from different countries can be compared and integrated.

The Role of Universities in Shaping a Safe Environment

The human and social security paradigm has been developed and shaped at different levels in various countries and political regions as a result of their diverse development of civilisation. Security in all spheres of social life has become a paradigm of the present and the future and, following its creation, has caused mental changes in the human value system. The system of values developed at universities, in terms of peaceful coexistence, tolerance, respect for the canons of law, and environmental protection, is becoming an interpretation of the quality of human life. This means that universities, regardless of their educational and scientific research profiles, are actively involved in building security in their micro- and macro-environment in the short and long term. The social responsibility of universities to shape a safe environment consists in including the following in the content of education and in the system of values of graduates: human rights, assumptions of humanitarianism, ethics, tolerance, environmental protection, respect for the law, shaping pro-social attitudes, and many others arising from the challenges of the present and future.

Early investments in state capacity promote persistently higher levels of social capital

Social capital has been shown to positively influence a multitude of economic, political, and social outcomes. Yet the factors that affect long-run social capital formation remain poorly understood. Recent evidence suggests that early state formation, especially investments in state capacity, are positively associated with higher levels of contemporary social capital and other prosocial attitudes. The channels by which early state capacity leads to greater social capital over time are even less understood. We contribute to both questions using the spatial and temporal expansion of the US postal network during the 19th century. We first show that county-level variation in post office density is highly correlated with a bevy of historical and contemporary indicators of social capital (e.g., associational memberships, civic participation, health, and crime). This finding holds even when controlling for historical measures of development and contemporary measures of income, inequality, poverty, education, and race. Second, we provide evidence of an informational mechanism by which this early investment in infrastructural capacity affected long-run social capital formation. Namely, we demonstrate that the expansion of the postal network in the 19th century strongly predicts the historical and contemporary location of local newspapers, which were the primary mode of impersonal information transmission during this period. Our evidence sheds light on the role of the state in both the origins of social capital and the channels by which it persists. Our findings also suggest that the consequences of the ongoing decline in local newspapers will negatively affect social capital.

ANALISIS HELPING BEHAVIOR DALAM PENYELENGGARAAN DIKLAT DI BALAI DIKLAT KEAGAMAAN BANDUNG (Suatu Pendekatan Teori Organizational Citizenship Behavior)

In training management pro-social attitudes needed by all employees as the organization good citizens such as: employees sincerely work full-heartedly to develop the organization and are willing to work beyond their own jobs and functions as the representation of virtuous. These behaviors are necessary for the education and training management in order to be qualified and run smoothly and optimally. These behaviors are known as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This research employed a descriptive qualitative method, and the purpose of this research was to examine how the employee organizational citizenship behaviors specialy helping behavior took place in the education and training management at Bandung Religious Training Centre. It also tried to provide recommendations so that the employee organizational citizenship behaviors at Bandung Religious Training Centre continuously improved to increase the quality of education and training administration. The research findings that, in the education and training management, the employees have not showed the criteria of helping behavior. It is recommended that to raise the employee helping behaviors, and change the employees’ mindset, develop the positive values of helping behaviors, improve the employee competence through TOC and MOT Training, and change the existing leadership style into horizontal leadership.Keywords: OCB, helping behavior, training management.

Prosocial consumer socialization: how socialization agents impact prosocial attitudes and behavior

ABSTRACT Individuals donating to and volunteering with charitable organizations is an important and increasingly necessary aspect of society. Through the use of an online survey of college students from a large southwest university (N= 374), the current body of research utilized consumer socialization theory to examine the influence that four socialization agents (parents, peers, media, and social media) have on individuals’ prosocial attitudes and behavioral intentions. Analysis reveals parents, peers, and social media have a positive influence on volunteer intentions, while only peers influence prosocial attitudes. Additionally, females have more favorable attitudes and volunteer intentions than males and were influenced by peers, media, and social media significantly more than males.

An effective intervention can contribute to enhancing social integration while reducing perceived stress in children

Introduction. This investigation evaluates whether an intervention involving mindfulness-based practices, socio-affective activities, and socio-cognitive instances can foster prosocial attitudes and positive social relationships, and reduce perceived stress in children. Method. The study was conducted with 44 children (20 girls and 24 boys) aged between 6 and 8 (M= 7.25 years, SD= 0.43), and followed a quasi experimental wait list design with two measurement time points (pre and post intervention). We analyzed relative changes in social integration, universal altruism and perceived stress levels. Results. Our results revealed that children who participated in the intervention showed an enhancement in social integration and universal altruism tests, and a decrease in the perceived stress indices. That is, children chose more peers as playmates and rejected fewer of them, while evidencing more prosocial attitudes. Discussion and Conclusion. Our findings suggest that this kind of intervention can contribute to fostering social integration and prosociality while promoting children’s health and wellbeing from an early age.

Stress in paramedics: relationships with coping strategies and personality traits

PurposeThough working in the ambulance service implies persistent confrontation with human suffering and exposure to significant work-related stressors, previous research revealed comparatively low self-reported stress in paramedics. This study investigated stress, personality traits, sensation seeking and resilience in paramedics. Moreover, the impact of psychological variables on individual differences in paramedics' stress burden was explored.Design/methodology/approachA convenience sample of 395 paramedics and 397 professionals from other disciplines completed the Perceived Stress Questionnaire, Stress Coping Style Questionnaire, Big Five Inventory, Sensation Seeking Scale and Resilience Scale. Multivariate group comparison and regression analysis were performed.FindingsCompared to other professionals, paramedics reported lower stress burden, more positive and less negative coping strategies, lower neuroticism and higher extraversion, conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, adventure seeking and resilience. In the regression analysis conducted on paramedics, positive coping, resilience, extraversion and conscientiousness negatively predicted perceived stress; negative coping and neuroticism were positive predictors.Research limitations/implicationsThe cross-sectional design of the study limits the interpretability of the data.Practical implicationsTraining in stress management and resilience should be core elements in the education of paramedics.Originality/valueThe findings confirm the notion of reduced stress burden and increased resilience in paramedics. Regarding personality traits, a pattern of emotional stability, conscientiousness, extraversion, prosocial attitudes and propensity to exciting experiences might characterize this group. Moreover, the use of adaptive coping strategies, high levels of resilience, extraversion and conscientiousness and low neuroticism are associated with lower stress burden in paramedics.

Gaming alone: Videogaming and sociopolitical attitudes

What sustains prosocial attitudes and political engagement in the era of online connectivity? Scholars disagree on whether frequent consumers of virtual entertainment disconnect from sociopolitical life. Using the Swedish Political Socialization Panel dataset and partial-pool time series methodology, I investigate the relationship between playing videogames and adolescents’ political and social attitudes over time. I find that those gamers who spend more time engaging in their favorite pastime become less interested in sociopolitical issues and less prosocial than non-gamers from year to year. My findings tell a cautionary tale about the adverse effects of extensive gaming on the development of democratic attitudes among adolescents.

Social Resources for Positive Psychosocial Health: Youths’ Narratives of a Street Dance Performing Arts Program

This article explores and identifies the social processes underlying a 12-month youth street dance performing arts program, MINDJAM, in promoting positive psychosocial outcomes among young people in Hong Kong. We conducted in-depth interviews with 22 participants aged 13 to 18 years old who were MINDJAM participants. Data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Five emergent themes were identified, providing insights into the social mechanism bridging program participation and various positive psychosocial outcomes among youths. The positive psychological outcomes identified are: happiness, prosocial attitudes, and self-efficacy. These emergent findings are discussed as they relate to the program design of MINDJAM. Our study contributes to existing theory on social capital building and future youth interventions as we uncover the complex processes and mechanisms that translate street dance program into positive psychosocial outcomes.