What Is Prosocial Behavior?

Prosocial behavior is also called profit social behavior, which refers to a type of behavior that is in line with social hopes and has no obvious benefits to the actors themselves, while the actors consciously and willingly bring benefits to the recipients of the behavior. General prosocial behavior can be divided into altruistic behavior and helping behavior.

Prosocial behavior is also called profit social behavior, which refers to a type of behavior that is in line with social hopes and has no obvious benefits to the actors themselves, while the actors consciously and willingly bring benefits to the recipients of the behaviors. General prosocial behavior can be divided into altruistic behavior and helping behavior.

Chinese name: Prosocial behavior
Foreign name: Prosocial behavior

Applied discipline: psychology
Application range: Social psychology

Causes of Prosocial Behavior

Instinct theory: Prosocial behavior is genetically determined, and the internal mechanism of the individual is sacrificed to ensure the survival of the species. Risking lives for the benefit of the group is the highest state of altruism.

Acquisition theory: Prosocial behaviors are continuously learned in the acquired environment, and are gradually formed and developed by individuals in the process of socialization.

Social exchange theory: The interaction between people is essentially a social exchange process in which individuals try to obtain the greatest possible benefits while paying as little as possible.

Social Norm Theory: The most common component of human morality is interactive norms. Interaction norms are a basic principle that governs social exchanges and maintains the balance of gains and losses in social relations; social responsibility norms are the society expecting people to help those in need.

Prosocial behavior training

Notes on Prosocial Behavior

1. Learn to be modest;

2. Learn to share;

3. Help others;

4. Care for social development.

Prosocial approach

1. Provide examples of prosocial behavior.

Parental rearing patterns influence the development of young children's prosocial behavior. Parents who adopt democratic parenting methods often use milder, non-compulsory reasoning methods to educate young children. Young children also learn from parents' education and parenting behaviors to treat others in the same way. At the same time, parents should pay attention to standardize their behaviors in daily life, pay attention to living in harmony with others around them, actively cooperate, and enthusiastically solve problems for others, etc., to optimize the living environment of children, so that children can find good examples of learning and imitation.

2. Empathy training.

Empathy training refers to guiding young children to experience the psychological feelings of others in certain situations, and then to respond appropriately when encountering similar situations in real life. Using empathy to educate young children to have internal self-regulation capabilities is much more effective than blindly restricting and demanding external constraints. When a child encounters a similar situation, before making negative behaviors, they will recall the previous experience and show the painful expression of the victim's companions, so they will suppress their negative behaviors and make positive behaviors such as mutual assistance and sharing.

Praise and reward

Whether children's prosocial behavior is conscious or unconscious, they need to be recognized by the group. Therefore, spiritual rewards can not be underestimated to strengthen the prosocial behavior of young children. Once a child has prosocial behavior, parents should strengthen it in time, such as praise, rewards, etc., so that the child can get positive feedback and achieve the goal of gradually strengthening. Conversely, learned prosocial behavior may subside. Proper use of praise and reward can effectively promote the development of young children's prosocial behavior, and to a certain extent inhibit young children's aggressive behavior.

Prosocial behavioral significance

Prosocial behavior is an important part of individual socialization and is formed in the process of socialization. As a universal social phenomenon, prosocial behavior has attracted the attention of developmental psychologists and social psychologists, and has become an important subject in the field of educational psychologists. Promoting the development of children's prosocial behavior will help children adapt better to the society, lay a solid foundation for the lifelong development of young children, and is conducive to the in-depth development of school quality education practices.

Prosocial behavior is an important basis for forming and maintaining good relationships between people, and it is a positive social behavior. It is affirmed and encouraged by human society. The emergence and development of pro-social behavior of the only child is consistent with the emergence and development of their moral behavior.

The process of the development of prosocial behavior into the psychological quality of the only child is the process of improving children's level of moral knowledge, increasing their moral emotions, and effectively mastering the knowledge, skills, and will of others in activities. These are of great significance to the cultivation of prosocial behaviors that are conducive to others, and society, such as modest concessions, help, cooperation, and sharing in social interactions, in the social interactions of the only child born under the family planning policy of China since the reform and opening up.

These prosocial behaviors are affected by thematic factors such as biological factors, cognitive factors, self-concepts, and personality factors, as well as non-subjective factors such as family, society, and school. Therefore, children's prosocial behaviors are cultivated through schools and families. In terms of role-playing, role models, empathy training, organizing games, etc. Prosocial behavior is an important aspect of young children's social development and personality formation.

Prosocial behaviors of young children appear early in life, and they gradually increase with age. However, with the increasingly favorable family living environment, young children are greatly loved and cared for by their families, but their prosocial behavior has decreased significantly. Therefore, from the age of 1-2 years, parents should pay attention to the cultivation of their prosocial behavior. This can not only accelerate the socialization process of young children, but also an important basis for establishing good interpersonal relationships and mental health and harmonious development of young children.

Therefore, exploring the cultivation of children's prosocial behavior has important theoretical and practical significance.

Prosocial behavior influencing factors

External factors of prosocial behavior

1. The bystander effect means that when an individual is facing an emergency, the response of an individual to being with others is different. The presence of others will inhibit the occurrence of prosocial behavior.

2. The role of role models

The presence of bystanders will hesitate and hesitate individuals who want to help, but role models will lead to prosocial behavior of others.

3. The ambiguity of the situation

The ambiguity of the situation will affect the occurrence of prosocial behavior. Individuals will often shrink back when they cannot confirm what happened and whether they need to provide help.

Influencing factors of prosocial behavior

Influence of cognitive factors

Weiner points out that people with disabilities who need help often make decisions through cognitive attribution. The occurrence of prosocial behavior not only involves a series of basic cognitive processes such as perception, reasoning, problem solving, and behavioral decision-making, but also has a direct relationship with the development of individual cognitive ability, especially social cognitive ability.

2. Individual emotional state

In a positive mood, people will pay less attention to themselves, learn more about the needs of others, and transform prosocial cognition into prosocial behavior.

3. Individual Personality

Helpers have the following characteristics: Have a strong social motivation; Believe that things have an influence on themselves; Have special ability suitable for the needs of the situation; Sympathy, understanding of others, and a sense of responsibility.

Pro-Social Behavior Theory at Home and Abroad

Prosocial BehaviorStaub's Theory of Social Behavior

Any behavior is determined by multiple factors and is the result of the interaction of individual characteristics and situational factors. Staub (1978, 1980, 1984) proposed a theory of social behavior to explain how social behavior is generated. This theory combines value orientation with other factors in an attempt to form a comprehensive theory of moral behavior.

The theory of social behavior holds that people have formed various motivations in development, and most of human behaviors are characterized by purpose. Therefore, we should focus on exploring the motivation of pursuing the desired purpose. It summarizes the motivation as a goal orientation. ) Or Personal goals or Goals. Goals are the ultimate state of personal pursuit. They consist of interconnected cognitive networks, including beliefs, thoughts, and meanings related to the evaluation of results. It can be activated under certain conditions, and the environment (including the internal environment) can activate one, two or more purposes at the same time, and the activation degree is different. We can think of value orientation as a personal purpose in the realm of ethics. Prosocial values are personal goals that are altruistic and do not harm others. Staub's research found that the stronger the prosocial value orientation, the more people help the activation condition (physical or psychological distress). In other words, the stronger a person's prosocial value orientation, the more likely it is to be activated in a particular context. Prosocial value orientation is reflected in two sources of motivation: one is as a source of motivation for altruistic selfless behavior, the purpose of which is to help others, and is centered on others. The second source of motivation is characterized by a rule-centric moral orientation, the purpose of which is to adhere to rules or principles of behavior. Therefore, the two moral orientations have different purposes and have different effects on behavior.

Social behavior theory also believes that in addition to the two motivational sources of value orientation, empathy is the third major motivational factor. Empathy depends on three conditions: (1) primary empathy; (2) positive evaluation of others; positive evaluation of others; (3) self-concept. Primary empathy refers to a child's initial emotional response caused by the restlessness of others. This is the original form of empathy (it cannot be called empathy yet). Positive evaluation of others is a component of prosocial value orientation. Prosocial value orientation is the motivation factor for empathy. Finally, self-concept affects empathy. Empathy is to some extent an extension from the ego to others, so people are more likely to respond to people who are similar to themselves. Without a precise self-concept, it is difficult to extend the boundaries of the self in a helpful way.

In short, social behavior theory provides a method or idea for analyzing and predicting prosocial behavior. In specific situations, it is possible to predict prosocial behavior or make a comprehensive understanding or explanation of it by considering various motivation factors.

Schwartz's theory of prosocial behavior

Schwartz (1968, 1970, 1977) used internalized social norms as motivation factors for altruistic behavior. He believes that the activation of internalized social norms produces a sense of moral obligation to people, and the sense of obligation and the intensity of the obligation affect altruistic behavior. He believes that personal norms and awareness of the consequences of the actions of others determine whether the situation can truly produce a sense of moral obligation, and attribution of responsibility promotes the activation of personal norms and obligations. He believes that attributing the responsibility for personal welfare to himself can activate personal norms and a sense of obligation, which may lead to helping behavior.

Schwartz (1977) pointed out that the four steps of helping people's behavior: the activation phase related to the need and the perception of responsibility; the obligation phase related to the generation of normative structure and the sense of obligation. To build a norm under specific circumstances); the stage of defense related to the estimation, evaluation, and re-estimation of the response; and finally, the response of people acting or not acting.

Schwartz's decision theory states that when specific social norms are applied to specific situations, whether people act according to norms depends on whether existing conditions (internal and external) activate these norms psychologically. He particularly emphasized the important role of the two personality factors in activating norms, including the awareness of consequences and the attribution of responsibility for helping others, and believed that they were affected by the situation at the time, that is, the situation could arouse or activate the responsibility attribution of responsibility.

According to Schwartz, awareness of consequences and attribution of responsibility are general characteristics directly linked to prosocial behavior. Although they are affected by the situation, they are not the mediating factors that determine the situation and personal norms and their interaction with each other, but two aspects of prosocial orientation. Like the cognitive structure of values and norms, they are stable personality tendencies and affect the activation and defense of norms.

Decision making theory of prosocial behavior Pomazal and Jeckard

Another decision theory pointed out by RJPomazal JJJaccard. 1978 emphasizes the importance of information available to people when making decisions. People formed Bchavior intentions based on information about the situation and personality at the time. Behavioral intention determines whether people help others. According to this theory, an individual's intention to make a behavior depends on two factors: "(1) An individual's belief in the consequences of doing a certain behavior, which is evaluated according to its value to the individual. (2) The individual's belief in what other important people think should make him should be evaluated based on his obedience to others' motives. "(Pomazar, 1973) In a study of both of them, there was an intention to donate blood. Of the subjects, 53 actually donated blood, and 102 did not donate blood. Of the 99 people who did not intend to donate blood, only 2 donated blood. The correlation between intention and actual blood donation was 0.46 (P <0.01). In the experiments, they also measured other help-related variables. Such as: blood donation experience, reciprocity, social responsibility, needs, etc. They found that these factors were not helpful in measuring behavioral intent and predicting actual behavior. However, some variables were highly correlated with behavioral intent. For example, if social responsibility is related to it by 0.52, if social responsibility is measured as a general orientation to others, then it has great significance in predicting behavior.

Compared with other decision-making theories, this theory places more emphasis on context-related factors, and it can predict specific behavior better than general information about personality orientation. Schwartz's decision theory emphasizes general personality traits, which greatly involve individual situational factors.

In summary, as a part of values, value orientation, especially prosocial value orientation, is gradually developed by external influences in the process of socialization, and is an important motivation factor for prosocial behavior. However, as the theory of social behavior points out, in certain situations, prosocial value orientation may not be the most prominent motivation, and its influence on prosocial behavior must rely on the activation of the situation and various other personality and situation factors. Therefore, combining other factors to study the relationship between prosocial value orientation and prosocial behavior can better understand the motivational role of value orientation. However, social behavior theory attempts to explain prosocial behavior with motivational competition or conflict, and takes prosocial value orientation as its main motivation. In this sense, social behavior theory is still not specific enough.

Research on Prosocial Behavior Zhang Zhiguang et al

Zhang Zhiguang and others believe that the concept of the significance of things to individuals or society is Values. Values are a layered structure, so they are also called "System of value". When a value is internalized and becomes a guide for human behavior, this is called a "value orientation". In recent years, they have conducted two tentative studies on value orientation in middle schools. For example: Dong Wanyue's "Experimental Research on Adolescent Individual-Collective Value Orientation and Its Relationship with Cooperative Behavior" (1989) and Liu Lei's "Study on the Relationship between Individual-Collective Value Orientation and Remuneration Norms in Cooperation Behavior" (1990). Researchers believe that value orientation is a more stable personality type, and education may promote cognitive changes more easily than qualitative changes in value orientation. Cognitive changes, of course, can also affect changes in personality structure, but it may take time and more powerful educational measures to be effective. Experiments show that value orientation not only exists in individuals, but also may be tested; personal value orientation has a certain, or even decisive influence on social behavior. But this impact is not all direct. It can be seen in this experiment that it was invented through specific motivations (cooperation or competition) and normative cognition (fair or average). There are many problems to be explored here, which are more complicated than people think. ^[1]