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The British journal of social psychology
Jul, 2022;61 (3): 924-939.

People prefer to diversify across different types of prosocial behaviour.

Johanna Peetz, Andrea L Howard
Author Information
  1. Johanna Peetz: Psychology Department, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. ORCID
  2. Andrea L Howard: Psychology Department, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
PMID: 34994477 DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12519

Abstract

People have multiple opportunities to act prosocial any given day but only limited resources to do so (e.g. time, effort and money they are willing to invest). We test whether people prefer to diversify their prosocial efforts across different types of help: casual help, direct help, indirect help and emotional support. In two daily diary studies (total N = 711), we examine whether previous prosocial behaviour affects subsequent prosocial behaviour for the same or other types of prosocial behaviour. We found that day-to-day prosocial behaviours reflected a diversified helping pattern. Participants were less likely to help the same way (i.e. the same type of prosocial behaviour) on subsequent days and more likely to help in different ways (i.e. a different type of prosocial behaviour). This tendency did not extend to casual help in Study 2, implying that the next day reduction in doing the same type of prosocial behaviour is limited to prosocial behaviours that are at least somewhat effortful or time consuming.

Keywords

diversification help distribution prosocial behaviour prosocial taxonomy task switching variety seeking

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Grants

  1. 435-2012-1211/Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

MeSH Term

Altruism
Humans
Journal Article
Article has an altmetric score of 1

Word Cloud

Created with Highcharts 10.0.0prosocialbehaviourhelpdifferentetypestypePeopledaylimitedtimewhetherpreferdiversifyacrosscasualsubsequentbehaviourslikelyimultipleopportunitiesactgivenresourcesgeffortmoneywillinginvesttestpeopleeffortshelp:directindirectemotionalsupporttwodailydiarystudiestotalN = 711examinepreviousaffectsfoundday-to-dayreflecteddiversifiedhelpingpatternParticipantslesswaydayswaystendencyextendStudy2implyingnextreductionleastsomewhateffortfulconsumingdiversificationdistributiontaxonomytaskswitchingvarietyseeking

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