Prosocial Attitudes Research Articles

Social Communication Disorders and Social Cognitive Strategies and Attitudes in Victims of Child Abuse

This research analyzes social communication disorders, as well as social cognitive strategies and attitudes, in 12–17-year-olds in residential care. The research is carried out in the Residential Childcare Centers of the Region of Extremadura (Spain). The research shows that social communication disorders in victims of child abuse hinder social competence, making opportunities for interaction more difficult. The subjects show deficiencies in the use of communication for social purposes. As for prosocial attitudes, it can be seen that these young people are characterized by a lack of the following: social sensitivity, self-confidence and firmness in their interactions, and leadership. With respect to social cognitive strategies, what stands out is the following: an impulsive cognitive style, independence, a rigidity of ideas, and a tendency towards social distrust and suspicion. Furthermore, it is in the strategies for solving social problems that the greatest difficulties can be appreciated. The research stresses the need for the design of individual and group intervention plans focusing on the main difficulties observed.

Internet, television and social capital: the effect of ‘screen time’ on social capital

Social capital theory as it was developed in the 1990s assumed that face-to-face interaction is a crucial requirement for the development of generalized trust and other pro-social attitudes and behaviours. Television and other electronic media were therefore dismissed as having a potentially negative impact on social capital development. Based on an analysis of high-quality data and a rich variety of social capital indicators in the General Social Survey 2012, we assess the impact of two broad categories of screen time – internet and television – on both attitudinal and behavioural components of social capital. The results show that while watching television is either unrelated or negatively related to a range of social capital indicators, there is usually a positive relation between internet use (in various forms) and social capital indicators. This direct comparison of the impact of internet and television usage on social capital indicators in a nationally representative study challenges the expectation that television and other digital technologies would have a similar negative impact on social capital. The findings suggest that internet-based activities clearly play a positive role in the development of social capital despite the lack of in-person interaction, and the concluding discussion reviews avenues for future research to tease out causal mechanisms in the production of social capital in the digital age.

Ageist attitudes block young adults' ability for compassion toward incapacitated older adults.

Upon encountering older adults, individuals display varying degrees of prosocial attitudes and behaviors. While some display compassion and empathy, others draw away and wish to maintain their distance from them. The current study examined if and how ageist attitudes influence the association between the sight of physical incapacity in older age and compassionate reactions toward them. We predicted that ageist attitudes would interfere with the ability to respond to them with compassion. Young adults (N = 149, ages 19-29) were randomly distributed into two experimental conditions, each viewing a short video portraying different aspects of older adult physicality; one group viewed older adults displaying incapacitated behavior, and the other viewed fit behavior. Participants subsequently filled out scales assessing aging anxieties, and ageist and compassionate attitudes. Ageism was associated with reduced compassion toward the figures. Moreover, viewing incapacitated older adults led to increased concern toward them and perceived efficacy in helping them. However, significant interactions proved that higher scores of ageism in response to the videos led to increased need for distance and reduced efficacy toward incapacitated adults, an effect not observed among subjects with lower ageism scores. Ageism seems to be a factor which disengages individuals from older adults displaying fragility, leading them to disregard social norms which dictate compassion. The results are discussed from the framework of terror management theory, as increased mortality salience and death-related thoughts could have led to the activation of negative attitudes which, in turn, reduce compassion.

Conflict monitoring and stimulus categorization processes involved in the prosocial attitude implicit association test: Evidence from event-related potentials

The implicit association test (IAT) is a promising method used to assess individual implicit attitudes by indirectly measuring the strengths of associations between target and attribute categories. To date, the cognitive processes involved in the prosocial attitude IAT task have received little attention. The present study examined the temporal dynamics of the IAT that measures prosocial attitude using event-related potentials (ERPs). ERP results revealed enhanced N2 amplitudes for incongruent trials when compared with congruent trials and enhanced P300 amplitudes for congruent trials when compared with incongruent trials. In addition, the N2 amplitude differences were significantly correlated with individual prosocial behavior (the amount of donation). Our findings suggest that conflict monitoring and stimulus categorization processes are involved in the prosocial attitude IAT task and that the ERP indices of IATs that measure prosocial attitude may predict individual prosocial behavior.

Much Obliged: Volunteering, Normative Activities, and Willingness to Serve on Juries

Although compulsory, many people treat jury duty as voluntary. This article examines the conceptual and empirical links between participating in voluntary activity and stated willingness to serve on a jury. We also consider the role of engaging in other normative behaviors. Analysis of 1,304 US citizens in the Survey of Texas Adults showed an initial relationship between volunteering and willingness to serve, net of personal resources, prior jury service, and prosocial attitudes. However, indicators of normative activities (voting, contacting elected officials, keeping up with medical appointments, and avoiding bars) largely eliminated this relationship. People who volunteered some, but not too much, were more willing; an analysis of domains of volunteering showed that engaging in public service work predicted willingness. Results suggest that the public service and duty‐based nature of jury participation should be emphasized to understand willingness to serve and to consider novel ways to increase summons responses.

When Bad Things Happen to Bad People: Using Disposition Theory to Explore the Effects of Cautionary Tales

Cautionary tales are a prevalent form of entertainment narrative in media-saturated environments, yet they have received little empirical examination. Using disposition theory, this study manipulated affective disposition toward the protagonist in order to explore the effects of exposure to a cautionary tale on adoption of prosocial attitudes and behavioral intentions. A between-subjects experimental design was used with 2 conditions (positive/negative) and a control group (n = 305). Results provide evidence that exposure to cautionary tales positively influences adoption of attitudes and intentions to purchase a carbon monoxide detector and talk about accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. Affective disposition influenced identification with the protagonist, and perceptions that the protagonist deserved the negative consequences experienced in the cautionary tale narrative. Findings also suggest that identification mediates the relationship between affective disposition and perceived risk.

Little Dictators

Using the dictator game as a measure of prosocial behavior, we combined data from developmental studies from 14 different sites around the world (N = 1,601). We fitted several growth models to the developmental trajectories that varied in their complexity and levels of prosociality. The rationale we used here assumes we can infer something about where all children start on a generous-selfish continuum by looking at the shape of developmental change. We found the model that best explained the variation in developmental trajectories began with a sharing value of ~15%, more toward the selfish end of the spectrum. We also found tentative evidence that the rate at which these prosocial attitudes develop is dependent on the norm of the society. Essentially, if the adult-sharing norm is higher, as it is in non-Western societies, then the child needs to develop at a quicker rate to reach this norm by adulthood. Results are discussed with reference to whether the history of human evolution has left the content of a norm underspecified while leaving the cognitive architecture in place to acquire it—a process that we argue is analogous to imprinting.

Conscience Accounting: Emotion Dynamics and Social Behavior

This paper presents theory and experiments where people's prosocial attitudes fluctuate over time following the violation of an internalized norm. We report the results of two experiments in which people who first made an immoral choice were then more likely to donate to charity than those who did not. In addition, those who knew that a donation opportunity would follow the potentially immoral choice behaved more unethically than those who did not know. We interpret this increase in charitable behavior as being driven by a temporal increase in guilt induced by past immoral actions. We term such behavior conscience accounting and discuss its importance in charitable giving and in the identification of social norms in choice behavior through time inconsistency. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1942 . This paper was accepted by Teck-Hua Ho, behavioral economics.

Helping Others as a Response to Reconcile a Criminal Past

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many of the staff members working for prisoner reentry programs are formerly incarcerated persons. Moreover, criminologists have written that the strengths-based role of the “wounded healer” or “professional ex-” is exemplified by released prisoners who desist from a deviant career by replacing it with an occupation as a paraprofessional, lay therapist, or counselor. Despite these observations, there is a paucity of research about formerly incarcerated persons employed by agencies that provide reentry-related programming. This study begins to fill this gap by examining whether, how, and why the staff members of prisoner reentry programs differ from the clients. Characteristics of formerly incarcerated persons thought to be related to desistance and reconciling a criminal past such as overcoming stigma, prosocial attitudes and beliefs, active coping strategies, psychological well-being, and satisfaction with life are examined. Findings support the notion that the wounded healer or professional ex- role is related to desistance and can potentially transform formerly incarcerated persons from being part of “the problem” into part of “the solution” to reduce crime and recidivism.

Perceptions of the African American Experience (PAAX): A New Measure of Adaptive Identities Among African American Men and Women

Differential treatment based on race impacts the adoption of prosocial or maladaptive behaviors and attitudes of African Americans, which in turn influences their perceived wellbeing. In essence, the African American experience is shaped by intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional social determinants. As such the nature of the African American experience is predicated on the identity formulated and the associated lifestyle adopted by African Americans. To empirically verify this proposition, the newly developed Perceptions of African American Experience (PAAX) scale was tested. The PAAX includes 2 maladaptive and two adaptive subscales that define 4 identities among African American men and women. The maladaptive identities, Depreciated and Vulnerable coping styles, are theoretically connected to risk, unhealthy social determinants and anti-social outcomes. The adaptive identities, Transcendent and Integrated coping styles, involve resiliency characteristics resulting in both healthy and prosocial outcomes. It was hypothesized that the 4 PAAX subscales would show acceptable psychometric properties for internal consistency and validity, but that the 2 higher order dimensions, Risk and Resilience, would emerge with factor analytic approaches. An item analysis demonstrated it is feasible to maintain subscale integrity while retaining only those items from the 4 hypothesized subscales, which produces acceptable internal consistencies. A higher order confirmatory factor analytic approach was then used. The confirmatory factor analysis supported the hypothesis that for African Americans the 4 adaptive identities load on 2 underlying dimensions, Risk and Resilience. Implications for the future study of the PAAX scale among clinical populations as well as with other racially diverse groups are highlighted.

National Identification and Collective Emotions as Predictors of Pro-Social Attitudes Toward Islamic Minority Groups in Indonesia

The present study examined the role of Indonesian Moslem majority’s national identification, collective emotions of pride and guilt in predicting their support in helping members of Islamic minority and their perceived inclusion towards this group. Data from this study (N= 182) demonstrated that, in line with our prediction, support for minority helping significantly predicted perceived inclusion. We also hypothesized and found that collective pride and collective guilt directly predicted the minority helping. Finally, national identification had significant direct effects on both collective pride and collective guilt. These findings shed light on the importance of collective emotions and national identification in giving rise to pro-social attitudes of Indonesian Moslem majority towards members of Islamic minority. Implications of the research findings were discussed with reference to theories of group-based emotion and intergroup helping, and to practical strategies Indonesian government can apply to recognize Islamic minorities.

Religious Ambivalence: Suppression of Pro-Social Attitudes Toward Asylum Seekers by Right-Wing Authoritarianism

A survey of 168 White Australian community members examined whether ambivalence toward certain social groups by some religious individuals constituted a suppression effect in which authoritarian motivated prejudice suppressed more pro-social attitudes toward asylum seekers. Using mediation analysis, it was found that Christian religious identity was not significantly associated with prejudice at a bivariate level. However, when Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) was taken into account, Christians (compared with non-Christians) were less likely to hold negative attitudes toward asylum seekers in Australia. Inclusion of acculturation ideologies (assimilation, multiculturalism, and color-blindness) in the models indicated that the suppression effect was specific to RWA rather than due to other intergroup attitudes. However, findings suggest that multiculturalism may be one proximal indicator of Christian pro-sociality.

Cerebral lateralization of pro- and anti-social tendencies.

Mounting evidence suggest that the right-hemisphere (RH) has a relative advantage, over the left-hemisphere (LH), in mediating social intelligence - identifying social stimuli, understanding the intentions of other people, awareness of the dynamics in social relationships, and successful handling of social interactions. Furthermore, a review and synthesis of the literature suggest that pro-social attitudes and behaviors are associated with physiological activity in the RH, whereas unsocial and anti-social tendencies are mediated primarily by the LH. This hemispheric asymmetry is rooted in several neurobiological and functional differences between the two hemispheres. (I) Positive social interactions often require inhibiting one's immediate desires and considering the perspectives and needs of others. Given that self-control is mediated by the RH, pro-social emotions and behaviors are, therefore, inherently associated with the RH as it subserves the brain's self-restraint mechanisms. (II) The RH mediates experiences of vulnerability. It registers the relative clumsiness and motor weakness of the left limbs, and it is involved, more than the LH, in processing threats and mediating fear. Emotional states of vulnerability trigger the need for affiliation and sociality, therefore the RH has a greater role in mediating pro-social attitudes and behaviors. (III) The RH mediates a holistic mode of representing the world. Holistic perception emphasizes similarities rather than differences, takes a long-term perspective, is associated with divergent thinking and seeing other points-of-view, and it mediates a personal mode of relating to people. All these features of holistic perception facilitate a more empathetic attitude toward others and pro-social behaviors.

Competencias comunicativas y salud mental positiva en el perfil profesional de los profesores de la educación básica de Lima Metropolitana

Esta investigación selecciona dos variables contribuyentes a la configuración de un perfil profesional del profesor de la educación pública, desde la psicología, y a partir de competencias comunicativas y la de salud mental positiva. Esta última centrada en seis factores: Satisfacción Personal; Actitud Prosocial; Autocontrol; Autonomía; Resolución de problemas y autoactualización; y Habilidades de Relación Interpersonal, exploradas por la variable salud mental positiva y la competencia comunicativa, identificando los estilos de pensamiento resultantes de la dominancia cerebral hemisférica. La muestra estuvo constituida por 274 profesores de los distintos niveles de la educación básica y que laboran en el ámbito geográfico del departamento de Lima; según variables controladas que favorecen el análisis de la correlación de las variables investigadas. Los hallazgos gruesos encontrados, precisan que los puntajes de las competencias comunicativas (pruebas 1 y 2) presentan correlaciones significativas con la salud mental positiva llegando hasta 0.197, 0.190, 0.67, 0.175; y en el caso contrario de los puntajes de las pruebas 3 y 4 los cuales prácticamente no muestran correlación con la salud mental positiva, lo que significa que se evidencia dominancias cruzadas de los hemisferios cerebrales que orientan la comunicación comunicativa en relación a la salud mental positiva, destacando casi uniformemente los hemisferios derecho e izquierdo. Se concluye que hay una hegemonía del hemisferio izquierdo y cerebral superior, predisponiendo hacia un perfil lógico-racional analítico y creativo-lógico; en el primer caso permite un proceso de comunicación de tipo verbal y escrito caracterizado por un lenguaje simbólico y argumentativo ideal para la elaboración de ensayos científicos en el que priman los códigos elaborados del discurso de las ciencias. Sin embargo, es necesario anotar que dicho perfil es de carácter dogmático y reduccionista; y en el segundo permite un proceso de comunicación tanto verbal como no verbal, pues en dicho perfil se da una comunicación media entre los dos hemisferios a través del cuerpo calloso. Debido a la capacidad sinérgica existen capacidades aunque reducidas de actuar tanto en el cuerpo del ensayo científico como en la poesía, el cuento, sin embargo, es un perfil que descuida lo humanístico, lo espiritual y la gestión de la complejidad humana. Es importante destacar que en la salud mental positiva, específicamente el ítems 20 “Creo que soy una persona sociable” presenta correlaciones significativas y negativas con los cuatro puntajes de las pruebas de competencias comunicativas, recomendando profundizar el análisis de los resultados obtenidos en la presente investigación contrastándolos con otras investigaciones, para así contribuir a un mejor entendimiento de las competencia comunicativas con la salud mental positiva.

Prosocial Attitudes in the Public and Private Sector

This paper will contribute to a growing body of research on the concept of public service motivation and its effects. It addresses two important though still largely unexplored questions: How stable or dynamic are prosocial attitudes, and do differences among employees or the individual changes in their attitudes over time matter, in order to explain the performance of prosocial behavior? To learn more about public employees in this respect, the paper will compare them with their counterparts in the private sector and explore multiple waves of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study that covers a time period of sixteen years. We find that prosocial attitudes are mostly stable, there are no socialization effects in either sector, and differences among employees matter a great deal. We also detect longitudinal effects, suggesting that increases in prosocial motivation trigger related behaviors, however, at the risk of neglecting others.

Evidence of Anticipatory Socialization Among Tattooed, Wannabe, and Non-Tattooed Adolescents

In anticipatory socialization, individuals adopt norms and behaviors of reference groups before transitioning into them. We hypothesized that non-tattooed students who desired a tattoo (1,364 “wannabes”) would report attitudes and behaviors between those of students who already had tattoos (429 tattooed) and respondents who neither had a tattoo nor wanted one (816 resistant students) in Grades 7 to 12 in an entire school district in Colorado. Tattooed respondents reported the lowest school attitudes and educational aspirations, and the most weapons possession, substance use, and delinquent behaviors. Resistant students reported the most prosocial attitudes and behaviors. Consistent with anticipatory socialization toward a more antisocial, tattooed reference group, wannabes reported attitudes and behaviors between resistant and tattooed students. A majority of respondents want a tattoo, so we recommend that school health curricula address health and stigma issues associated with tattoos.

High-frequency rTMS on DLPFC increases prosocial attitude in case of decision to support people

Engaging in prosocial behavior was explored in the present research, by investigating the role of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in modulation of intention to support other people and of emotional attuning as it was expressed by facial feedback (electromiography, EMG). High-frequency rTMS was applied on DLPFC to 25 subjects when they were required to choose to directly intervene or not to support other people in emotionally valenced social situations (cooperative, noncooperative, conflictual, neutral contexts). Two control conditions were included in the experimental design to control the simple stimulation effect (sham condition with absence of TMS stimulation) and the location effect (control site condition with Pz stimulation). In comparison with sham and control condition, rTMS stimulation induced increased prosocial behavior in all the emotional situations. Moreover, as a function of valence, zygomatic (for positive situations) and corrugators (for negative situations) muscle activity was increased, with significant effect by DLPFC stimulation which induced a “facilitation effect”. In addition, negative situations showed a higher rTMS impact for both behavioral and EMG responsiveness. Finally, prosocial behavior was found to be predicted (regression analysis) by EMG variations, as a function of the negative versus positive valence. The prefrontal circuit was suggested to support emotional responsiveness and facial feedback in order to facilitate the prosocial behavior.

A study of social participation and knowledge sharing in the teachers' online professional community of practice

To facilitate professional development of teachers in the online context, the online community of practice (CoPs) has become an important platform in which individuals with similar interests or common goals get together to share their resources, develop working strategies, solve problems, and improve individual as well as organizational performance. In this study, we have collected self-reported knowledge-sharing behaviors from 321 members of the largest online professional CoP of teachers in Taiwan. The results show that closer connections among online CoP members can lead to greater recognition of and altruism towards others. Moreover, performance expectation and self-efficacy belief play essential roles in knowledge-sharing participation. Thus, the development of social relationships among online teacher members helps them obtain potential resources and reliable support through their social network. Also, teachers' membership in the online professional CoP fosters a prosocial attitude that heightens their willingness to share useful resources and solve other members' problems, both emotionally and instrumentally. Consequently, knowledge-sharing behaviors, in terms of knowledge giving and knowing receiving, are significantly predicted by prosocial commitment and performance expectation respectively. The implications to both research and practice are provided in this paper.

Self-compassion and empathy across cultures: Comparison of young adults in China and the United States

A cross-cultural study was conducted to examine differences in self-compassion and empathy among Chinese and American undergraduates. Forty Chinese and 41 American undergraduates completed the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) and Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Groups did not significantly differ in overall Self-Compassion or Empathy. However, significant differences were found in the Self-Kindness, Common Humanity, Isolation, and Over-Identification SCS subscales and the Personal Distress IRI subscale (Chinese > American). American students reported significantly higher scores on the Fantasy and Empathic Concern IRI subscales. Gender differences were stable across groups. The results of this study have implications for understanding self- and other-directed pro-social attitudes, beliefs and behaviors across cultures.

Ethnic diversity, segregation and the social cohesion of neighbourhoods in London

The question of whether and how ethnic diversity affects the social cohesion of communities has become an increasingly prominent and contested topic of academic and political debate. In this paper we focus on a single city: London. As possibly the most ethnically diverse conurbation on the planet, London serves as a particularly suitable test-bed for theories about the effects of ethnic heterogeneity on prosocial attitudes. We find neighbourhood ethnic diversity in London to be positively related to the perceived social cohesion of neighbourhood residents, once the level of economic deprivation is accounted for. Ethnic segregation within neighbourhoods, on the other hand, is associated with lower levels of perceived social cohesion. Both effects are strongly moderated by the age of individual residents: diversity has a positive effect on social cohesion for young people but this effect dissipates in older age groups; the reverse pattern is found for ethnic segregation.