Prosocial Contexts Research Articles

Investigating the effectiveness of virtual influencers in prosocial marketing

AbstractHeeding the rising popularity of virtual influencers on social media, many established brands are beginning to collaborate with them. Although virtual influencers are perceived as novel and exciting, their effectiveness in different areas of consumer behavior has not been examined. While previous research has compared several attributes of virtual and human influencers, our research is specifically motivated to answer: how can marketers increase the effectiveness of virtual influencers in promoting prosocial causes? Across four experiments employing different prosocial contexts, we compared the effectiveness of virtual and human influencers in increasing consumers' prosocial intentions and behaviors. Findings suggest that although human influencers are more persuasive in promoting prosocial behaviors, this effect only occurs when a virtual influencer is perceived as a standalone influencer (i.e., not affiliated with a brand). Overall, our results imply that marketers can substantially increase the effectiveness of virtual influencers by making the cues of brand affiliation salient in influencers' posts.

Moral evaluations of children’s truths and lies in a prosocial context: The role of reputation

The current investigation examined the influence of a child’s reputation on 7- to 12-year-olds’ (Study 1; N = 146) and parents’ (Study 2; N = 198) moral evaluations of the child’s blunt truths (i.e., truths told despite possible hurt feelings) and prosocial lies (i.e., lies told to protect another’s feelings). In Study 1, children were read a series of vignettes in which a child, described as being smart, kind, or clean (with clean serving as the irrelevant control reputation), told either the blunt truth or a prosocial lie that varied in content (opinions or facts). In Study 2, parents evaluated the same vignettes and reputations as in Study 1 with the addition of a troublemaker reputation. The reputation of the child protagonist significantly influenced both children’s and parents’ moral evaluations. Children rated the kind child’s lies more positively, and parents rated the smart child’s truths and lies less positively, than those of the clean (control) child when told about opinions. No differences were noted in the facts content condition. Findings suggest that a child’s perceived reputation may influence both children’s and adults’ moral interpretations of the child’s honesty behaviors.

The warm glow of kindness: Developmental insight into children's moral pride across cultures and its associations with prosocial behavior.

Moral pride is a key component of virtue development. This study provides developmental insight into children's moral pride across cultures, and the potential for moral pride to underlie prosocial behavior. Participants included children and adolescents ages 6, 9, and 12 years from Canada (n = 186; 50% girls; ethnically diverse sample), Japan (n = 180; 48% girls), and a subsample from Italy (n = 86; 54% girls), as well as their primary caregivers or teachers. Moral pride was measured using a vignette procedure wherein children reported their emotions, emotion intensities, and reasoning following moral actions (harm omission and prosocial contexts). Global prosocial behavior was assessed via caregiver reports. Results revealed that moral pride increased from 6 to 9 years of age in Japanese and Canadian children (some similar trends were found in the Italian subsample) and that Canadian children reported stronger feelings of moral pride than Japanese children (Italian children's moral pride intensities were akin to those of Canadian children). Moral pride was positively associated with global prosocial behavior in Japanese children (and marginally in Italian children) but not in the Canadian children. These novel findings showcase the role of culture in shaping children's moral pride, and the potential for this moral emotion to reinforce children's commitment to prosocial action in childhood and early adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Age but not education affects social decision‐making in the Ultimatum Game paradigm

AbstractBackgroundDecision‐making is a key cognitive ability for autonomy and quality of life in old age and it may be influenced by social context. Social decision‐making is often studied through the use of gaming paradigms, where participants allocate resources between themselves and others based on predefined rules. In a version of the Ultimatum Game (UG) decision‐making behaviour was modulated in response to fairness of monetary offers and social context of monetary offers designed to produce either prosocial or punishing behaviours. Previously, patients with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia were reported to be impaired in the UG when they needed to modulate their decisions in response to social contextual information. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether social decision‐making evaluated by the UG is affected by age and education. It is relevant to know whether sociodemographic variables may bias UG results.MethodA total of 131 healthy adults participated ‐ 35 were young university students and 96 were older adults. The sample was divided into three age groups (17‐ 22, 60‐ 69, 70‐79 years old) and three education groups (4‐8, 9‐11, 12 or more years of education). Participants completed a health questionnaire and cognitive tests to ascertain normal cognitive status.ResultAge and education did not affect performance in fair monetary offers. Differences were observed in the unfair conditions. The older group (70‐79) accepted less frequently the Baseline unfair offers (without social context), when compared with the young and the 60‐69 group (young = 60‐69 > 70‐79). Regarding the Prosocial unfair and Punishing unfair conditions, older adults accepted such offers more frequently (young < 60‐69 = 70‐79). In other words, when a prosocial context (for instance, unemployment) was added to unfair monetary offers, older adults accepted them more frequently than younger adults. Education effects were not observed.ConclusionIn the context of social decision‐making, cognitively unimpaired older adults may show prosocial behaviors more frequently than younger adults. Findings suggested the UG is affected by age but not education.

Neural Representation of Donating Time and Money.

Volunteering and charitable donations are two common forms of prosocial behavior, yet it is unclear whether these other-benefitting behaviors are supported by the same or different neurobiological mechanisms. During an fMRI task, 40 participants (20 female-identifying; age: mean = 18.92 years, range = 18.32-19.92 years) contributed their time (in minutes) and money (in dollars) to a variety of local charities. With the maximum amount of time and money that participants could spend on these charities, they did not differentially donate their time and money. At the neural level, donating time and money both showed activations in brain regions involved in cognitive control (e.g., dorsolateral PFC) and affective processing (e.g., dorsal anterior cingulate cortex), but donating time recruited regions involved in reward valuation (e.g., ventral striatum) and mentalizing (e.g., temporal pole) to a greater extent than donating money. Further, the precuneus, which is also a region involved in mentalizing, more strongly tracked the varying amount of money than time donated, suggesting that the precuneus may be more sensitive to the increasing magnitude of a nonsocial exchange (e.g., donating money is a financial exchange) than a social exchange (e.g., donating time is an interpersonal exchange). Our findings elucidate shared as well as distinct neurobiological properties of two prosocial behaviors, which have implications for how humans share different resources to positively impact their community.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Prosocial behaviors broadly characterize how humans act to benefit others. Various prosocial behaviors, such as volunteering and charitable donations, share the goal of positively contributing to community. Our study identifies brain regions that may serve as ubiquitous neurobiological markers of community-based prosocial behaviors. Despite this shared goal, our study also shows that the human brain responds to donating time and money in diverging ways, such that brain regions associated with processing emotional reward and thinking about others are more strongly recruited for donating time than for money. Therefore, our study sheds light on how different personal resources, such as one's time and money, within a prosocial context are represented in the brain.

Let the dead talk: How deepfake resurrection narratives influence audience response in prosocial contexts

With the unceasing advancement of novel digital technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to change and challenge established social dynamics. As such, a deeper understanding of AI and its impacts will prove to be crucial in an AI-enriched world. In the current study, we focus on an emerging AI-based technology, deepfakes, and investigate the effects of a lesser-known use of deepfakes (i.e., using deepfakes for prosocial purposes). Specifically, we examine the impacts of exposure to a “deepfake resurrection” narrative on individuals' policy support and activism intentions in two contexts (i.e., drunk driving and domestic violence). We conducted a between-subjects experiment (N = 1990) that varied in the use (vs. non-use) of deepfakes and tested four psychological processes related to the effects of deepfake resurrection narratives. While the moderating role of point of view and the mediating role of perceived desecration of the dead did not receive much support, the narrative-based and the surprise-focused mediational pathways were shown to be important mechanisms of deepfake resurrection narratives. Finally, we reflect on the potential of prosocial deepfakes and deepfake resurrection narratives and discuss the findings’ relevance to both theory and practice.

People Overestimate Backlash Against Helpers Who Violate Gender Stereotypes: Experimental Examination of a Prosociality Paradox

Men and women typically help others in gender stereotypic ways (gender-consistent helping), but how might people judge helpers who do so in counter-stereotypic ways (gender-inconsistent helping)? Most of the time helpers are viewed favorably, but behaviors that deviate from gender stereotypes tend to elicit social sanctions from others. Thus, gender-inconsistent helping presents a paradox wherein people may anticipate facing negative judgments from others despite helping being a positive, prosocial act. Across three experiments (two pre-registered), participants provided their own (Studies 1–3) and normative (Studies 2–3) evaluations of gender-consistent and gender-inconsistent helpers. Taken together, results revealed that participants expected other people to evaluate gender-inconsistent helpers less favorably than gender-consistent helpers (Hypothesis 1), and less favorably than they actually did themselves (Hypothesis 2). These findings show that gender-inconsistent helping is less susceptible to backlash than people think, and instead suggest that pluralistic ignorance could be a barrier to gender-inconsistent helping, if people fear that others’ judgments of gender-inconsistent helpers are harsher than their own. Our results highlight novel opportunities for addressing persistent occupational gender segregation in prosocial contexts (by confronting pluralistic ignorance), which could subsequently enhance gender equality more broadly.

Age Differences in Prosocial Behavior Depend on Effort Costs.

This study examined age differences in willingness to engage in effortful and effortless prosocial behavior for a fully anonymous recipient. Participants were recruited through the Prolific online recruitment platform. In Experiment 1, older (N = 46) and younger (N = 65) adults completed the "pay-it-forward" effortful decision-making task with fixed effort demands and a version of the Dictator Game, an effortless prosocial decision-making task. In Experiment 2, older (N = 38) and younger (N = 42) adults completed the Dictator Game and a modified pay-it-forward decision-making task in which effort demands were calibrated to one's ability. In both Experiments 1 and 2, older adults were more prosocial than younger adults on the effortless Dictator Game. In Experiment 1, older adults were less prosocial across all trials of the effortful pay-it-forward task. However, when the task was more achievable in Experiment 2, older adults were only less prosocial when the probability of a reward was low. In everyday life, many prosocial contexts depend on effort expenditure. When prosocial activities are effortful, older adults are less willing to engage in prosocial behavior, particularly when reward likelihood is low, and instead focus on resource conservation. In the absence of such effort costs, older adults are more prosocial than younger adults. This work suggests that older adults may prefer to engage in prosocial behavior more than younger adults, but physical resource constraints may limit their ability to engage in such effortful prosocial activities.

You are how you speak: The roles of vocal pitch and semantic cues in shaping social perceptions.

Social perceptions of speakers are influenced by their voice information, including vocal characteristics and semantic content. Our study investigated how individuals' warmth- and competence-related perceptions of speakers were affected by vocal pitch levels (i.e., high/low) and three kinds of semantic cues (i.e., prosocial, antisocial, and neutral) simultaneously. We have three key findings. First, antisocial cues negatively affected social perceptions, regardless of speakers' gender. However, prosocial cues did not have positive impacts on evaluations of speakers because ratings were similar between prosocial cues and neutral cues. Second, female vocal pitch mattered for warmth-related perceptions but not for competence-related perceptions. The role of semantic cues should be additionally considered when investigating the impact of male vocal pitch on these perceptions. For example, higher-pitched men in prosocial contexts were perceived as warmer, while low-pitched men in antisocial contexts were judged as more competent. Third, the connection between vocal pitch and two kinds of perceptions showed an opposite trend, in which high pitch was related to more warmth but less competence, while the low pitch was associated with less warmth but more competence. These findings extend the understanding of the role of vocal pitch in the formation of stereotypes of strangers in different semantic contexts.

Immigration in an Era of Mass Reentry: Does Immigrant Concentration Guard Against Serious Recidivism?

Objectives Determine whether the protective role of immigrant concentration extends to individuals with prior criminal histories such as ex-prisoners. Methods The present study used hierarchical logistic regression to examine the association between concentrated immigration and serious recidivism among a cohort of 182,509 ex-inmates nested within 957 zip codes in Florida. The study also considered whether this relationship is applicable to inmates from all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Results Results indicate that ex-prisoners have a 21 percent lower likelihood of recidivism when they return to communities with substantial numbers of foreign-born residents. This effect, however, is stronger for some populations than others. Conclusions Immigration serves as a protective feature for even high-risk populations. While this relationship does differ across race and ethnicity, no group experienced a crime-enhancing effect when returning to a community categorized by high immigration. The findings contribute to the burgeoning literature on immigration and crime by demonstrating that immigrant communities provide ex-prisoners with a pro-social context that diminishes their risk for serious recidivism.

The Games We Play: Prosocial Choices Under Time Pressure Reflect Context-Sensitive Information Priorities

Time pressure is a powerful experimental manipulation frequently used to arbitrate between competing dual-process models of prosocial decision-making, which typically assume that automatic responses yield to deliberation over time. However, the use of time pressure has led to conflicting conclusions about the psychological dynamics of prosociality. Here, we proposed that flexible, context-sensitive information search, rather than automatic responses, underlies these divergent effects of time pressure on prosociality. We demonstrated in two preregistered studies (N = 304 adults from the United States and Canada; Prolific Academic) that different prosocial contexts (i.e., pure altruism vs. cooperation) have distinct effects on information search, driving people to prioritize information differently, particularly under time pressure. Furthermore, these information priorities subsequently influence prosocial choices, accounting for the different effects of time pressure in altruistic and cooperative contexts. These findings help explain existing inconsistencies in the field by emphasizing the role of dynamic context-sensitive information search during social decision-making, particularly under time pressure.

When Self-Humanization Leads to Algorithm Aversion

Decision support systems are increasingly being adopted by various digital platforms. However, prior research has shown that certain contexts can induce algorithm aversion, leading people to reject their decision support. This paper investigates how and why the context in which users are making decisions (for-profit versus prosocial microlending decisions) affects their degree of algorithm aversion and ultimately their preference for more human-like (versus computer-like) decision support systems. The study proposes that contexts vary in their affordances for self-humanization. Specifically, people perceive prosocial decisions as more relevant to self-humanization than for-profit contexts, and, in consequence, they ascribe more importance to empathy and autonomy while making decisions in prosocial contexts. This increased importance of empathy and autonomy leads to a higher degree of algorithm aversion. At the same time, it also leads to a stronger preference for human-like decision support, which could therefore serve as a remedy for an algorithm aversion induced by the need for self-humanization. The results from an online experiment support the theorizing. The paper discusses both theoretical and design implications, especially for the potential of anthropomorphized conversational agents on platforms for prosocial decision-making.

The squeaking vocalization of grey wolves (Canis lupus): individuality in a close-range affiliative mammalian vocalisation

Abstract Wolves (Canis lupus) frequently use the close-range squeaking vocalization, a soft, multi-unit, high-pitched tonal vocalisation. We examined the social and movement contexts of the occurrence and acoustic characteristics of squeaking from videotapes of pack-reared, pack-living captive wolves living in semi-natural conditions at the Canadian Centre for Wolf Research over a three-year period. We only examined squeaking vocalisations for which the sender and potential receiver(s) could be determined. Wolves squeaked in many contexts, especially when approaching other wolves in prosocial and food contexts. Some wolves squeaked more than others. Acoustically, squeaking vocalisations were individually identifiable, primarily through frequency characteristics. Contextual use suggests that squeaking conveys the friendly motivation of an approaching wolf and in aggressive situations, a motivation to defuse or decrease aggression. This close-range vocalisation may play an important role in controlling and coordinating social interactions within the pack.

Context specificity in adolescents’ implicit theories of morality

This study investigated between and within person differences in adolescents’ endorsement of moral essentialism and moral incrementalism across various types of morally-relevant situations. The sample included 97 adolescents (age range = 12–15 years). Adolescents responded to vignettes depicting recurrent and nonrecurrent actions in prosocial and antisocial contexts, with questions assessing moral essentialism, incrementalism, and other character and situation judgments. The majority of the variance for essentialism and incrementalism was linked to within-person differences across contexts. Findings revealed between-person associations between moral mindset, implicit theories of personality, and externalization of blame. Adolescents endorsed moral essentialism more in prosocial contexts and incrementalism more in antisocial contexts. Within-person variations in essentialism were linked to likability, acceptability, person attributions and consequence judgments in particular contexts. Results corroborate research and theorizing about the flexible endorsement of moral essentialism and incrementalism, and document the ways in which adolescents’ judgments are responsive to the unique features of events. Findings are discussed in terms of their contributions to scholarship on moral mindsets during adolescence.

Does peer-to-peer crowdfunding boost refugee entrepreneurs?

To provide new insights into the determinants of fundraising success for loans requested by refugees on a prosocial peer-to-peer (P2P) platform, this study investigates more than 180,000 business loan campaigns during 2015–2018. The leading online P2P platform offers access to financing for refugee entrepreneurs in developing countries, and the benefits are especially strong for refugees with prior borrowing experience. However, the results also reveal discrimination against female refugee entrepreneurs, compared with their non-refugee counterparts, in this P2P prosocial context. This gap should be addressed by scholars and policymakers determined to reach excluded and niche groups, including women and refugees.

Supporting entrepreneurs: The role of third-party endorsement in crowdfunding platforms

Third-party endorsements are appreciated in entrepreneurial ventures since they help signal the value of an idea and the trustworthiness of an entrepreneur. They contribute therefore to reducing ‘information asymmetry’, always present in an entrepreneur-investor relationship. However, the role of third-party endorsements in for-profit contexts might differ from that in prosocial contexts. In prosocial contexts, investors are interested not only in financial returns but also in creating a social impact. On the one hand, the endorsement might signal trustworthiness, while on the other, it might also signal that the entrepreneur already has some financial support and thus is less in need than an entrepreneur with no support at all. Investors seeking to maximize their social impact might perceive the social impact generated by funding an endorsed entrepreneur as smaller than the social impact created by funding an entrepreneur with no support at all. This study analyzes these contradictions through the lens of signaling theory and explores the role of third-party endorsements in the success of entrepreneurial projects in the context of online social crowdfunding. A comparison of different types of endorsements shows that having a pro bono endorsement provides the best equilibrium between the number of investors and dollars per investor.

Responding to requests for help: Effects of payoff schemes with small monetary units

How do people react to different payment levels when asked to help a stranger perform a mundane task? The literature suggests a U-shaped relationship between a person’s willingness to help and how much payment they are offered for the help, such that a small payment reduces willingness to help as compared to no payment or medium-sized payment. We report seven studies showing that when people are aware of the existence of distinct rewards for the same helping behavior, (1) most people behave as if they use a cutoff strategy; (2) individual response patterns are predictably heterogeneous; (3) people with lower household incomes are more likely to follow the pattern predicted by standard economic theory; and (4) joint evaluation of multiple payment levels (vs. separate evaluation) steers people toward the pattern predicted by standard economic theory. Subjective utility and reinforcements are discussed as potential sources of this heterogeneity. Our research contributes to understanding of how monetary payments affect helping behavior in prosocial contexts with small monetary units.

Volunteer tourism (VT) traveler behavior: merging norm activation model and theory of planned behavior

While volunteer tourism has been gaining in popularity around the world, few studies have looked into the travelers’ re-participation intention within a pro-social context. This study aimed to develop and test a new conceptual framework that explains the volunteer travelers’ behavioral intention formation in the context of a pro-social activity. It employed three theories, which include the norm activation model, the theory of planned behavior, and the personal values, as a theoretical basis that considers the altruistic and egoistic aspects of the travelers’ psychological response to volunteer tourism. A total of 375 quantitative surveys were obtained from Korean travelers who voluntarily completed a non-profit global volunteer tourism program during the spring in 2019. Using a structural equation modelling analysis, the study’s results verified that the proposed model connecting the personal values, the norm activation model, and the theory of planned behavior was a satisfactory predictive model that explains the travelers’ re-participation intention in volunteer tourism. Additionally, subjective well-being was found to be a significant moderator between the re-participation intention and its predictors. The study sheds light on the role of personal and social factors in volunteer tourism.

Differences and similarities in lying frequency, moral evaluations, and beliefs about lying among children with and without conduct problems

The current study examined whether children (6–12 years old) with varying levels of conduct problems differ from those without conduct problems in three key areas: their perceptions of how often other people tell lies, their moral evaluations of truth- and lie-telling in different social contexts, and how often they tell antisocial and prosocial (i.e., “white”) lies. Using a continuous measurement of conduct problems, we found that children with greater conduct problems believed that other people tell lies more often compared with children with fewer conduct problems. However, unexpectedly, children’s moral evaluations of truth- and lie-telling in antisocial and prosocial contexts did not significantly differ based on conduct problems. Using parent-report methods, we found that children tell more antisocial lies with increasing severity of conduct problems, but they tell prosocial lies at a similar rate regardless of conduct problems. Finally, after grouping children based on level of conduct problems (none, low, or high), we found that children in the group with no conduct problems told more prosocial lies than antisocial lies, but the reverse was found for children in the group with high conduct problems. These findings highlight the importance of considering social context when examining the development of lying in children experiencing conduct problems.

Using the pup retrieval instinct as reinforcement for efficient auditory learning in mice

There is growing interest in the mechanisms for natural sensory learning in pro-social contexts. Studies using a maternal model of social behavior in the mouse have provided new insight into the auditory processing of behaviorally relevant pup vocalizations, which are used as communication signals to elicit pup retrieval behavior by adult females. Whether neural and behavioral plasticity in response to these vocalizations reflect auditory associative learning linking the sounds to pups, versus simply a change in maternal responsiveness to evolved vocal signals, remains an open question. Here we describe a T-maze paradigm to track auditory learning as we pair an initially neutral, non-ethological stimulus with delivery of a pup for retrieval, which is intrinsically reinforcing for rodents.•Training is rapid and completely appetitive.•Over a period of 7 × 50-minute daily training sessions, animals increasingly use the sound to guide their arm choice for pup retrieval, with an increase in performance from chance to an average of ~80% on day 7.•This pairing method establishes a newly-formed sensory association using a natural maternal behavioral response, and lays a solid foundation for studies into the neurochemical and circuit mechanisms that mediate auditory associative learning in natural social contexts.