Prosocial Identity Research Articles

They do not deserve your thanks! Witness reactions to leader-directed expressions of gratitude.

Gratitude expressions have received growing attention from scholars, with research emphasizing its many positive effects on expressers, recipients, and witnesses. Although our knowledge of gratitude expressions' benefits is accumulating, our understanding of its limits is less developed. In this article, we ask when employees' expressions of gratitude toward their leaders positively influence witnesses' perceptions of them, and when they do not. Across three studies including two multiwave surveys and an experiment, we find that expressed gratitude strengthens witnesses' perceptions of expressers' prosocial identities, especially when the leader is believed to be deserving of gratitude. Study 1 examines leader competence as an indicator of deservingness in a sample of leaders and employees in a manufacturing context. Studies 2 and 3 use survey and experimental methods to directly establish leader deservingness as a mechanism of the competence moderator and explore warmth as an additional component of employees' deservingness perceptions. All three studies show how gratitude expression ultimately shapes witnesses' tendencies to help expressers and seek feedback from them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Metaverse and regenerative tourism: the role of avatars in promoting sustainable practices

ABSTRACT This study explores the role of avatars in enhancing awareness and learning outcomes in virtual regenerative tourism. Data from 483 participants engaging in online virtual tourism experiences were analyzed using partial least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings reveal that extrinsic motivations like authenticity, immersion, perceived social distance, and textual credibility positively influence attitudes toward avatars, which in turn significantly impact learning outcomes. These outcomes are moderated by intrinsic motivations such as prosocial identity. Enhanced learning notably shapes regenerative practices, including conservation efforts support for local community. Contributing to self-determination theory, this research highlights the interplay between virtual environments and self-identity in ethical behavior. It offers key insights for destination marketers and tourism operators in leveraging virtual technologies for sustainable tourism development.

Getting traction on positive youth justice: Prosocial identity as a promising target for intervention.

Getting traction on positive youth justice: Prosocial identity as a promising target for intervention.

Defining Who You Are by Whom You Serve? Strategies for Prosocial–Professional Identity Integration with Clients

Many professionals want to both achieve professional success and contribute to society. Yet, in some professional contexts, these aims are in tension because serving elite clients is considered the pinnacle of professional success, but professionals themselves may view serving this clientele as antithetical to making a societal contribution. Drawing on interviews with 84 architects and designers who self-identify as people seeking to contribute to society—that is, who hold a prosocial identity—we develop theory about how professionals navigate tensions between their prosocial and professional identities and with what consequences for their work with clients. We identified four strategies that professionals used to ease these tensions, all of which gave the prosocially oriented professionals a sense of identity integration. However, these strategies differently shaped professionals’ approach to power relations with the client, depending on the client’s status and the types of knowledge and skills each professional viewed as central to their work. Professionals with marginalized social identities, such as women and ethnic/racial minorities, were more likely than others to embrace working with low-status clients and to use broader definitions of the knowledge and skills required for their work. Our findings contribute to scholarship on professional identity construction and prosocial work.

Adult Attitudes and Crime: Understanding the Association Between Latent Adult Attitudes and Offending Across Time

Research on the transition into adulthood finds that individuals are likely to take on new adult roles which can influence a change in identity. Furthermore, literature on desistance finds that offending tends to decline as individuals transition into adulthood and that this decline can be attributed to changes in internal processes such as developing a new pro-social identity. However, scholarship has yet to conceptualize and measure the development of an adult identity as a latent construct. The current study seeks to establish a new latent time variant measurement I call Latent Adult Attitudes (LAA) and examine LAA’s association with offending. LAA uses a collection of items focused on attitudes towards adult roles to measure a latent construct of adult identity.

Children and young peoples’ lyrics and voices capturing their experiences within youth justice services

PurposeThis paper aims to explore young peoples’ authentic experiences of youth justice services (YJS) during the Covid-19 pandemic. By adopting the creative arts-based method of lyric writing, the research team sought to empower participants through collaboration and participation and to facilitate them leading the narrative (Deakin et al., 2020).Design/methodology/approachThis research adopted a creative arts-based method in which participants worked alongside an artist to generate lyrics that captured their experiences within YJS. Such an approach demonstrated a commitment to participatory, child-first approaches.FindingsTwo main themes were identified: identity and relationships. The young people vocalised resistance to frequent labelling and their ambitions to move away from past criminal identity and behaviour. Relationships with practitioners could be a source of frustration within this but were also highlighted as valuable and supportive.Research limitations/implicationsAs data collection was remote, owing to the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns, the opportunity to develop relationships with young people within the YJS prior to conducting the research was restricted. This approach may have also impacted recruitment of participants. The sessions presented short-term interventions and whilst follow-up sessions were offered, many did not take them up. Although the research sample is small and cannot be considered representative, it allows for a valuable insight into the experiences of young people at a particularly challenging time.Practical implicationsUpon receiving our findings and recommendations, the first YJS research site has sought to further embed a relationship-based practice model and greater creative/participatory socially prescribed psychosocial therapeutic interventions, including music groups and spoken word artists to work with children and young people.Originality valueThis research adds to the growing literature base surrounding creative arts-based research with children and young people for their value towards communication, pro-social identity and development.

New Insights for “What Works”? Religiosity and the Risk-Needs-Responsivity Model

The existing literature has devoted relatively little attention to the responsivity principle and, in particular, religiosity as a type of specific responsivity. Using a sample of nearly 2,000 people incarcerated in Minnesota’s prison system, this study examined the relationship between religiosity and measures of risk, needs, and responsivity. The results showed that religiosity was positively associated with childhood trauma, pro-social identities, and perceived social support, while it was negatively associated with criminal thinking and employment needs. Findings further revealed that religiosity was associated with less prison misconduct and reduced recidivism risk, but only for people with positive self-identities, according to Paternoster and Bushway’s Fear of Self scale, and lower levels of perceived social support. We discuss the implications of these results for theory and practice.

The micro-foundations of sustainable entrepreneurship: the role of individuals' pro-social identity and organisational pro-social identity

The micro-foundations of sustainable entrepreneurship: the role of individuals' pro-social identity and organisational pro-social identity

Getting Traction on Positive Youth Justice: Prosocial Identity as a Promising Target for Intervention

Getting Traction on Positive Youth Justice: Prosocial Identity as a Promising Target for Intervention

Inside the Black Box of Green Companies: Organizational Identity of Certified B Corporations

Pursuing prosocial certifications has become an increasingly popular strategy for organizations to obtain social support from their external audiences. However, little is known on how the certifications shape perceptions of the key audience inside the organizations: employees. Reviewing the literature reveals that the current stream of research on prosocial certifications and organizational identity poses several limitations. Through a qualitative study of Certified B Corporations, I build a model of organizational identity outcomes throughout the process of prosocial certifications. The findings suggest that the degree to which a business is embedded in prosocial values, in conjunction with reflexivity during and after the certification process, differentially shapes employees’ prosocial identity. The prosocial identity held by employees is then manifested via various forms of workplace behavior. This research contributes to the literature streams on prosocial certifications identity moving beyond the cross-sectional relationship between the antecedents and outcomes of organizational identity.

Tell Me Something Good: Enabling Conditions for Positive Individual Outcomes

In the stressful times of the pandemic, civil unrest, and other worldly concerns, it’s easy to slip into a negative mindset. Yet, in the recent two decades, positive organizational scholars have resiliently asked positive research questions to identify how we flourish in the workplace. Focusing on the positive side during such bleak societal times has become even more important, as we wrestle with dark feelings and mentalities. As such, this symposium will highlight the good with an emphasis on positive outcomes. Positive organizational scholarship (POS) is the study of positivity of organizational states following four approaches: adopting a positive lens, taking an affirmative bias, explaining extraordinary positive outcomes, and examining the best of the human condition (Cameron & Spreitzer, 2012). Key topical areas of POS include positive individual traits, states, emotions, strengths, and virtues, all of which have specific dependent variables of measurement (Caza, 2015). For example, broaden and build theory examines how physical, intellectual, social, and psychological resources are built (Fredrickson, 2001), and self-determination theory examines workplace wellness, success, and achievement (Deci, Olafsen, & Ryan, 2017). The purpose of this symposium is to contribute to our understanding of positive individual outcomes by examining dependent variables in three key topical areas across four cultures and countries (Australia, Israel, United Kingdom, United States). The symposium’s papers examine outcomes of well-being, prosocial identity, helping behaviors, work meaningfulness, career success (positive individual traits and states), emotions and empathy (positive emotions), and perceived fairness and justice (strengths and virtues). By examining such positive outcomes across multiple cultures and different levels of analysis, this symposium creates an opportunity for cross-pollination of ideas and research on questions focused on individual thriving at work. This cross-pollination of ideas and research addresses the grand challenges being faced around the globe (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016), thereby, contributing towards the conference’s theme of ‘Creating a Better World Together’. Positive Empathy at Work: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Organizational Outcomes Presenter: Deshani Buddhika Ganegoda; Melbourne Business School Presenter: Prashant Bordia; Australian National U. Personal and Interpersonal Drivers of Social Support Provision Presenter: Matthew Deeg; Abilene Christian U. Workplace Characteristics that Foster Experiences of Meaningfulness among Israeli Teachers Presenter: Hayuta Yinon; Oranim College of Education Leadership, Race and Positive Professional Identity: Exploring the Black Experience Presenter: Yvonne Lardner; U. of Cambridge The Inter-Communicability of Well-Being at Work Presenter: Hongxia Peng; Rouen U.

How Stakeholders’ CSR Attribution is Formed: The Role of Workplace Incivility among Employees

Although numerous studies have examined that CSR is associated with stakeholders’ favorable attitude and behavior to the company, the benefits brought by CSR can be undermined if stakeholders have an unfavorable CSR attribution. Yet, how and why stakeholders form favorable or unfavorable CSR attribution, remain open questions. CSR is becoming an ambiguous signal to stakeholders because of increasing greenwashing and corporate scandals. Hence, stakeholders are would likely search for other information related to a company and form more reliable CSR attribution. Drawing on attribution theory and signaling theory, we develop and test an attributional model and confirm that workplace incivility among employees can be a signal to external stakeholders and affect their CSR attribution via influencing their perception of corporate prosocial identity and perceived company warmth. Moreover, we find that external stakeholders who received proactive CSR signals can compensate for the negative effect of workplace incivility on external stakeholders’ CSR attribution. Overall, this study highlights the importance of a company’s internal signals in understanding external stakeholders’ CSR attribution.

Service-Learning in Higher Education and Prosocial Identity Formation

For most nonprofits, their effectiveness, sustainability, and survival all depend on the willingness of individuals to behave in prosocial ways, for example, by giving time, money, and/or resources to various organizations and causes. Scholars have, therefore, long sought to identify predictors of prosocial behaviors; and, one consistently significant variable in this quest has been prosocial role identity. Indeed, the strength of this identity, studies have shown, positively predicts participation in a variety of prosocial activities. Despite this significance, research on service-learning, a widely utilized pedagogical practice intended to prepare prosocially active and engaged citizens, has been largely disconnected from the literature on identity motivated behavior. Yet, this literature provides a strong conceptual foundation for understanding why, when, how, and for whom participation in service-learning will be associated with positive changes in prosocial identities—and, ultimately sustained participation in role-related prosocial behaviors. In this article, we connect these literatures and propose a model.

Exploring Teacher and Parent Perspectives on School-Based Masculinities in Relation to Mental Health Promotion.

The capacity for boys’ and young men’s mental health promotion to act via shifting masculine norms that are linked to poor mental health outcomes, highlights the need to improve the extent to which school-based programs can promote mental health through leveraging more positive embodiments of masculinity. To-date, the perspectives of parents and teachers on such processes are understudied. This qualitative study presents teacher and parent views regarding adolescent masculinities and avenues for school-based developmental programming for boys and young men. In this study, 16 individual qualitative interviews were undertaken with 10 parents (six females, four males), and six teachers (three females, three males), recruited from an independent all-boys’ grammar school in Melbourne, Australia. Thematic analysis of parents’ and teachers’ perspectives indicated their perception of the role of context-dependent “public” and “private” masculinities, the influence of Australian masculinity norms, and the role of private boys’ school cultures in the development of adolescent masculinities. Additionally, strategies for development encompassed participants’ appetite for boys’ exposure to positive role models, in addition to consistent and relevant developmental programming to support positive masculinity development. Findings have implications for efforts to support prosocial masculine identity development via school-based initiatives, as an avenue to promoting mental health of boys and young men.

“I Literally Roll With The Punches”: Black and Latina Women Coping Through Parental Incarceration

Racial and ethnic disparities within the criminal legal system have been shown to disproportionately impact Black and Latinx children. Parental incarceration is associated with emotional and psychological stresses for children, but these effects can extend beyond incarceration. Research suggests that parental incarceration is not a discrete event and problems during childhood can exacerbate throughout the life course. Yet, little is known on how challenges faced by parental incarceration transcend to adulthood. Further, an examination on the long-term effects of parental incarceration through the lens of race, ethnicity, and gender remains understudied. In order to address this gap, this study focused on the lived experiences of young Black and Latina women. We utilized 11 semi-structured interviews to explicate how young Black and Latina women compartmentalize the experience of parental incarceration and use coping strategies. Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis, we found that these young women interpret parental incarceration as an ongoing process and rely on four coping strategies. Thus, our findings highlight that despite the challenges of parental incarceration, young Black and Latina women remain resilient by accepting the reality of their circumstances, keeping themselves occupied with tasks and activities, seeking their own social support systems and mental health services, and reconstructing their own prosocial identity.

Job-Related Programs for People on Supervision: Reframing the Problem

Job training programs for people under supervision have been based on an economic framework that identifies individuals involved in crime as a disadvantaged group with poor human capital. The best available research evidence has not found that these programs consistently improve employment outcomes. This article reviews the evidence for the effectiveness of standard job training programs and then examines new developments in the field that use alternative frameworks for understanding the roles of such programs. The first alternative is signaling: how people under community supervision use the completion of job training to signal to employers and others that the behavior that led to their conviction is either anomalous or no longer representative of them. The second alternative is a model of desistance known as identity change: the ways in which job training can help individuals solidify a new, more prosocial identity. I make sense of extant work and new alternatives and provide a set of recommendations for change in the community supervision system.

The impact of employment upon young offenders’ identities

AbstractWhile numbers of first‐time entrants have decreased dramatically in the last decade, young people remaining in the youth justice system in England and Wales today are the most persistent, troubled offenders. Research suggests that the formation of a non‐offending or ‘prosocial’ identity is crucial for desistance among persistent offenders. This article examines how engaging in an employment programme at a social enterprise influenced the identity of offenders aged 16–18 years. Young people's self‐narratives reveal that although none possessed a strong criminal identity, they developed a more coherent prosocial identity during their employment. This can be attributed to how the employment programme reduced the social exclusion experienced by employees, demonstrating the value of such opportunities for youths.

The importance of congruence between stakeholder prosocial motivation and CSR attributions: effects on stakeholders’ donations and sense-making of prosocial identities

ABSTRACT Stakeholders’ support is of vital importance to the success of many corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. This study investigates the role of CSR communication in facilitating donation and generating positive attitudes towards corporations, by examining the interaction between stakeholders’ personal prosocial motivations of supporting CSR programs and their attributions of the corporations’ motives behind CSR. An online 2 × 2 factorial experiment with 373 participants found that personal belief-based altruistic motivations and the perceived social corporate motive will lead to the generalization of personal and organizational prosocial identities, stakeholders’ identification with the corporation, and their positive attitude towards the corporation. The findings also attested to the interaction effect between stakeholders’ prosocial motivations and the perceived CSR attributions on subsequent participation in stakeholder-support CSR programs. This study contributed to the existing CSR literature by revealing how corporate factors interact with personal factors to influence CSR outcomes and enriched our understanding of how stakeholder-support CSR programs could benefit for-profit and non-profit sectors at the same time.

Consumers’ prosocial engagement in CSR: why should they care and what does it mean to them?

PurposePublic relations practitioners worldwide are attempting to enhance the overall organization–stakeholder relationships by applying strategic communication techniques and skills to corporate social responsibility (CSR) management and communications. In this light, drawing on the prosocial motivation literature, this paper aims to investigate consumers’ implicit and explicit motivations for prosocial behavior, and how these two motivations interact to affect consumers’ willingness to contribute to CSR activities. Second, through the lens of sensemaking theory, this study evaluates the influence of successful prosocial behavior engagement on consumers’ perceptions of both self and companies’ prosocial identities, CSR authenticity and company evaluations.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a dictator game experiment with 2 × 2 factorial design to gauge consumers’ prosocial behavioral response toward companies’ CSR communication with implicit and explicit motivations and to examine its effect on company evaluation.FindingsIn all, the results of this study suggest that implicit motivation, i.e. self-affirmation intervention, in CSR communication will cause consumers to donate more money to CSR programs; whereas explicit motivation does not exert an effect on consumers’ prosocial behavior. In addition, such donation will trigger consumers’ prosocial sensemaking process and lead to strong identification with the company, positive attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the company.Originality/valueThis study aims to build a consumer- and social cause-oriented CSR communication model, which maximizes the impact of CSR investments on consumer relationship building, business bottom line and social causes.

Actions and the Self: I Give, Therefore I am?

Self-signaling models predict less selfish behavior in a probabilistic giving setting as individuals are expected to invest in a pro-social identity. However, there is also substantial evidence that people tend to exploit situational excuses for selfish choices (for instance, uncertainty) and behave more selfishly. We contrast these two motivations (identity management and self-deception) experimentally in order to test which one is more prevalent in a reciprocal giving setting. Trustees' back transfer choices are elicited for five different transfer levels of the trustor. Moreover, we ask trustees to provide their back transfer schedule for different scenarios that vary the implementation probability of the back transfer. This design allows us to identify subjects who reciprocate and analyze how these reciprocators respond when self-image relevant factors are varied. Our results indicate that self-deception is prevalent when subjects make the back transfer choice. Twice as many subjects seem to exploit situational excuses than subjects who appear to invest in a pro-social identity.JEL classifications: C72, C91, D80, D91