PSYCHOLOGY

PRESENTATION
GROUP FANTASTIC 7
PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR
NOOR ZAMAN
PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Prosocial behavior refers to
"voluntary actions that are intended to help or benefit another individual
or group of individuals“(Eisenberg and Mussen 1989, 3).

Prosocial behaviors are those intended to help

other people. These actions are characterized by
a concern for the rights, feelings, and welfare of
other people.
 Behaviors that can be described as prosocial include feeling empathy
and concern for others.
These behaviors include a broad range of activities:
sharing, comforting, rescuing, and helping.
Origin of the term
According to the psychology researcher C. Daniel Batson, the term
"was created by social scientists as an antonym for antisocial."
PROSOCIAL BEHAVIR VS ALTRUISM
Though prosocial behavior can be confused with altruism, they are, in
fact, two distinct concepts.
Prosocial behavior refers to a pattern of activity, whereas, altruism is
the motivation to help others out of pure regard for their needs rather
than how the action will benefit oneself.
A familiar example of altruism is when an individual makes an
anonymous donation to a person, group or institution without any
resulting recognition, political or economic gain; here, the donation is
the prosocial action and the altruism is what motivates the doer to
action.
BENEFITS
In addition to the obvious good that prosocial actions do for their
recipients, these behaviors can have a range of beneficial effects for the
"helper":

Mood-boosting effects:
Research has also shown that people who engage
in prosocial behaviors are more likely to experience
better moods. Not only that, people who help others tend to experience
negative moods less frequently.
Social support benefits:
Having social support can be crucial for getting
through difficult times. Research has shown that
social support can have a powerful impact on
many aspects of wellness, including reducing the
risk of loneliness, alcohol use, and depression.
Stress-reducing effects:
Research has also found that engaging in
prosocial behaviors helps mitigate the
negative emotional effects of stress. Helping
others may actually be a great way to reduce
the impact of stress in your life.
TYPES
While prosocial behavior is often presented as a single, uniform
dimension, some research suggests that there are different types. These
types are distinguished based on why they are produced and include:
Proactive: These are prosocial actions that serve self-benefitting
purposes.
Reactive: These are actions that are performed in response to
individual needs.
Altruistic: These include actions that are meant to help others without
any expectations of personal gain.
MOTIVES OF PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Prosocial behavior has long posed a challenge to social scientists. Researchers
seek to understand why people engage in helping behaviors that are beneficial to
others, but costly to the individual performing the action.

In some cases, including acts of heroism, people will even put their own lives at
risk in order to help other people, even those who are complete strangers. Why
would people do something that benefits someone else but offers no immediate
benefit to the doer?

Psychologists suggest that there are a number of reasons why people engage in
prosocial behavior.
Evolutionary influences:
Evolutionary psychologists often explain prosocial behaviors in terms
of the principles of natural selection. While putting your own safety in
danger makes it less likely that you will survive to pass on your own
genes, kin selection suggests that helping members of your own genetic
family makes it more likely that your kin will survive and pass on genes
to future generations. Researchers have been able to produce some
evidence that people are often more likely to help those to whom they are
closely related.
Personal benefits:
Prosocial behaviors are often seen as being compelled by a number of
factors including egoistic reasons (doing things to improve one's self-
image), reciprocal benefits (doing something nice for someone so that they
may one day return the favor), and more altruistic reasons (performing
actions purely out of empathy for another individual).
Reciprocal behavior: The norm of reciprocity suggests that when
people do something helpful for someone else, that person feels
compelled to help out in return. This norm developed, evolutionary
psychologists suggest, because people who understood that helping
others might lead to reciprocal kindness were more likely to survive
and reproduce.
Socialization: In many cases, such behaviors are fostered during
childhood and adolescence as adults encourage children to share, act
kindly, and help others.
ACCORDING TO BATSON ET AL
Batson et al. (2007, 243) declares four possible ultimate goals behind
prosocial behavior:
1. Egoism
2. Altruism
3. Collectivism and upholding a moral principle.

 Batson et al. also notes that these goals are not mutually exclusive;
individual can have one or all of them as ultimate goal while he or she
is behaving in a prosocial manner. These and other possible
motivations of prosocial behavior are examined as we go further.
EGOISM
Egotistical behavior, by its dictionary definition, is concerned with
believing oneself to be superior. An egotist may actually believe they're
more attractive, intelligent, rational, (fill in the trait here) than anyone else.
A form of helping behavior in which the goal
of the helper is to increase his or her positive
feelings or to receive some other benefit.
For example:
Someone may make a large donation to an
institution with the expressed interest of
having a building named in his or her honor.
TYPES OF EGOISM
1. Psychological Egoism
2. Ethical Egoism
3. Rational Egoism
PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM
Psychological egoism claims that each person has but one ultimate aim: her
own welfare. This allows for action that fails to maximize perceived self-
interest, but rules out the sort of behavior psychological egoists like to target —
such as altruistic behavior or motivation by
thoughts of duty alone. It allows for weakness
of will, since in weakness of will cases I am
still aiming at my own welfare; I am weak
in that I do not act as I aim. And it
allows for aiming at things other than
one’s welfare, such as helping others, where
these things are a means to one’s welfare.
Psychological egoism suggests that all behaviors are motivated by self-interest. In
other words, it suggests that every action or behavior or decision of every person is
motivated by self interest. It also suggests that every action must be motivated by
self interest. The doctrine of selfish motivation is simply a natural law of psychology.
Just as it is a natural law of physics that bodies tend to move toward one another in
proportion to their masses and at velocities inversely proportionate to their distances
from one another, it is a natural law that all motivations are, ultimately, selfish.
Because psychological egoism states that every act of every person is motivated by
self-interest, it is universal.
Because psychological egoism states that all motivations are, in the final analysis,
selfish, it is reductive. That is, it reduces what seems to be a plurality or a multiplicity
of motives to a single kind.
ETHICAL EGOISM
Ethical egoism claims that I morally ought to perform some action if and only
if, and because, performing that action maximizes my self-interest. (There are
possibilities other than maximization. One might, for example, claim that one
ought to achieve a certain level of welfare, but that there is no requirement to
achieve more. Ethical egoism might also apply to things other than acts, such
as rules or character traits. Since these variants are uncommon, and the
arguments for and against them are largely the same as those concerning the
standard version, I set them aside.)
Ethical egoism is the normative ethical position that moral agents
 ought to act in their own self-interest. It differs from 
psychological egoism, which claims that people can only act in their
self-interest. Ethical egoism also
differs from rational egoism, which holds
that it is rational to act in one’s
self-interest.
RATOINAL EGOISM
Rational egoism claims that I ought to perform some action if and only
if, and because, performing that action maximizes my self-interest.
As with ethical egoism, there are variants which drop maximization or
evaluate rules or character traits rather than actions.
 There are also variants which make the maximization of self-interest
necessary but not sufficient, or sufficient but not necessary, for an action
to be the action I ought to perform. Again, I set these issues aside.
Rational egoism makes claims about what I ought, or have reason, to
do, without restricting the “ought” or “reason” to a moral “ought” or
“reason.”