ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 quarantine, its effects and impact, not only escalated into a slowed down global economic growth but also the modification of people's values and its manifestations. The purpose of this article is to reveal the manifestations of help and support to others, whether prosocial behaviors or simple solidarity, that developed from the crisis situation brought by the pandemic in the Republic of Panama. This article delivers quantifiable descriptions on the association of demographic data and prosocial actions performed by a sample of 502 survey participants during the time of the pandemic. Results suggest that social interaction in the form of emotional accompaniment and food provision were the most commonly performed prosocial actions during this period in general. According to sex, women were more inclined to offer advice and provide mentorship, while men were more inclined to offer making repairs. There is a statistically significant association between actions and levels of education where those with university degrees are mostly represented when it comes to giving money and paying off bills.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has drastically changed human behaviors and posed a threat to globalism by spurring a resurgence of nationalism. Promoting prosocial behavior within and across borders is of paramount importance for global cooperation to combat pandemics. To examine both self-report and actual prosocial behavior, we conducted the first empirical test of global consciousness theory in a multinational study of 35 cultures (N = 18,171 community adults stratified by age, gender, and region of residence). Global consciousness encompassed cosmopolitan orientation, identification with all humanity, and multicultural acquisition, whereas national consciousness reflected ethnic protection. Both global consciousness and national consciousness positively predicted perceived risk of coronavirus and concern about coronavirus, after controlling for interdependent self-construal. While global consciousness positively predicted prosocial behavior in response to COVID-19, national consciousness positively predicted defensive behavior. These findings shed light on overcoming national parochialism and provide a theoretical framework for the study of global unity and cooperation.
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Purpose: Prosocial behavior (PSB) plays a critical role in everyday society, especially during the pandemic of COVID-19. Understanding the underlying mechanism will provide insight and advance its implementation. According to the theory of PSB, social interaction, family and individual characters all contribute to its development. The current study aimed to investigate the influencing factor of PSB among Chinese college students during COVID-19 outbreak. This is an attempt to understand the mechanism of PSB and to provide a reference for the formulation of policies aimed at promoting healthy collaborative relationships for college students. Method: The online questionnaire was administered to 664 college students from 29 provinces of China via Credamo platform. There were 332 medical students and 332 non-medical students aged between 18 and 25 included for final study. The mediating role of positive emotion/affect (PA) and the moderating role of parental care in the association between social support and PSB during the pandemic of COVID-19 was explored by using Social Support Rate Scale (SSRS), Prosocial Tendencies Measurement Scale (PTM), The Positive and Negative Affect (PANAS), as well as Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI). The process macro model of SPSS was adopted for mediating and moderating analysis. Results: The results showed that social support positively predicted PSB among Chinese college students, even after adding PA as a mediation variable. PA during COVID-19 mediated the association between social support and PSB. PSB also revealed as a predictor of PA by regression analysis. Moreover, the moderating effect of parental care in the relationship between PA and PSB was detected. Conclusion: PA under stress acts as a mediator between social support and PSB. This mediating effect was moderated by PC in childhood. In addition, PSB was observed to predict PA reversely. The promoting factors and path between the variables of PSB are complex and need to be explored extensively. The underlying factors and process should be further investigated for the development of intervention plans.
ABSTRACT
With the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, videoconferencing was rapidly adopted. However, individuals frequently decide to keep their cameras off during videoconferences. Currently, the reasons for this are not well modeled, and neither are the social effects this decision has. The present research addresses the question whether camera use can be conceptualized as prosocial behavior. To this end, two preregistered studies (total N = 437) examined how the decision to turn on one's camera is influenced by established situational determinants (group size, social influence, and social tie strength) and dispositional predictors of prosocial behavior (individual communion, agency, and social value orientation), whether individuals prefer meetings in which others turn on their cameras, and whether camera use impacts social perception (communion and agency) by others. As predicted, people were shown to overall prefer meetings in which others turn on their cameras in Study 1 (a factorial survey). Furthermore, situational determinants of prosocial behavior were demonstrated to influence camera use in the hypothesized directions, while findings regarding dispositional predictors of prosocial behavior were mixed. Study 2 conceptually replicated the effect of social influence on camera use in a correlational survey. As predicted, it was also demonstrated that individuals who have their camera on are perceived as higher in agency, but, in contrast to predictions, not higher in communion. Together, the findings indicate that camera use is prosocial in that it benefits others, but that it is not primarily driven by prosocial intent or commonly interpreted as a prosocial act.
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By combining words and images that impact emotions and generate empathetic storytelling, advertising (ADV) has evolved into a form of communication for promoting consumer awareness, positive social change, and ADV-related decisional processes, even on topics of high-social relevance such as crisis communication. This study explored consumers' emotional and cognitive responses to crisis-related ADVs using implicit (autonomic) and explicit (self-report) measurements. Nineteen participants watched twelve high-impact social communications about Covid-19, personal health, safety, and prosociality, while autonomic and self-report data were collected. Personal health, safety, and prosociality had higher skin conductance than Covid-19 stimuli, indicating higher arousal and engagement. Personal health reported lower heart rate variability values than Covid-19, suggesting greater emotional reactions for personal health topics, but also lesser mental load for Covid-19 stimuli. Self-report results confirmed autonomic findings. In conclusion, communications about personal health, safety, and prosociality generate higher emotional impact and allow for effective storytelling that facilitates viewer identification, developing a high level of empathy.
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PurposeThis study examines whether, how and when socially responsible human resource management (SRHRM) practices increase employees' in-role and extra-role corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses data from 422 employees of 68 companies.FindingsSRHRM improves employees' in-role CSR-specific performance via impression management motivation and enhance extra-role CSR-specific performance via prosocial motivation. Moral identity symbolization strengthens the relationship between SRHRM and impression management motivation, and moral identity internalization reinforces the relationship between SRHRM and prosocial motivation. The authors also propose mediated moderation models.Practical implicationsThis study indicates that company can adopt SRHRM practices to improve employees' in-role and extra-role CSR-specific performance.Originality/valueThis study reveals how and when SRHRM practices influence employees' CSR-specific performance and sheds light on the social impacts of SRHRM.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has unprece-dentedly influenced social interactions, which can be implemented both in real life (offline) and on the Internet. Prosocial behavior as a type of social interactions has a positive impact on individuals and society, especially during crises. Prosocial behavior is determined by various factors, including individual values and contextu-al factors as the most influential ones. The form of prosocial behavior and its deter-minants may differ in different periods of the society functioning. Therefore, study-ing prosocial behavior before and during the pandemic, and identifying factors of its implementation in various contexts is a relevant task. This study explores the relationship between individual values and prosocial behavior, in an offline and an online context, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia. A cross-sectional study with two sub-samples - the "pre-pandemic" group (N=304) and the "pandemic" group (N=187) - was conducted online, using the short version of Human Values Scale by S. Schwartz (ESS-21) and scales of prosocial behavior in online and offline contexts. Results show that during a pandemic people are less likely to engage in prosocial behavior offline and rely less on Self-Trans -cendence values. At the same time, in "the pre-pandemic" group, Self-Transcendence values contribute to prosocial behavior in both contexts, while Self-Enhancement values contribute to prosocial behavior in the online context. Next, in the "pandem-ic" group, Self-Transcendence values and Openness-to-Change values promote prosocial behavior in both contexts, while Conservation values discourage it. The results are discussed regarding the impact a pandemic has on people's lives.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has a significant negative impact on people's life and behavior. This happens due to circumstances beyond the control of people, which lead to social isolation, increase in fear, anxiety, and other negative feelings and states. However, these negative feelings and states may have not only negative consequences, but also trigger prosocial behavior as a coping strategy. Prosocial behavior online is a relatively new domain of prosocial behavior developed due to an increase in ICT use in recent decades. Prosocial behavior online is more safe and less costly than offline one, and thus can be more relevant in times of the pandemic. This research was aimed at identifying the relationship between negative emotional states actualized by the COVID-19 pandemic (fear of COVID-19, stress, anxiety, depression) and prosocial behavior online. Cross-sectional study was conducted on a Russian sample (N=215) with the help of such instruments as Scale of Prosocial Behavior in an Online Context, Fear of COVID-19 scale and DASS-21. Regression analysis has shown that fear and anxiety contributed to prosocial behavior online, while depression inhibited it. The relationship between stress level and prosocial behavior online was not statistically significant. The results are discussed considering arousal potential of different negative emotional states. © 2023 National Research University Higher School of Economics. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
With the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, videoconferencing was rapidly adopted. However, individuals frequently decide to keep their cameras off during videoconferences. Currently, the reasons for this are not well modeled, and neither are the social effects this decision has. The present research addresses the question whether camera use can be conceptualized as prosocial behavior. To this end, two preregistered studies (total N = 437) examined how the decision to turn on one's camera is influenced by established situational determinants (group size, social influence, and social tie strength) and dispositional predictors of prosocial behavior (individual communion, agency, and social value orientation), whether individuals prefer meetings in which others turn on their cameras, and whether camera use impacts social perception (communion and agency) by others. As predicted, people were shown to overall prefer meetings in which others turn on their cameras in Study 1 (a factorial survey). Furthermore, situational determinants of prosocial behavior were demonstrated to influence camera use in the hypothesized directions, while findings regarding dispositional predictors of prosocial behavior were mixed. Study 2 conceptually replicated the effect of social influence on camera use in a correlational survey. As predicted, it was also demonstrated that individuals who have their camera on are perceived as higher in agency, but, in contrast to predictions, not higher in communion. Together, the findings indicate that camera use is prosocial in that it benefits others, but that it is not primarily driven by prosocial intent or commonly interpreted as a prosocial act. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Cyberpsychology is the property of Masarykova Univerzita, Fakulta Socialnich Studii and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
Introduction: In Japan, the social climate surrounding older adults has gotten worse as a result of the spread of COVID-19 and the growing isolation of older adults who are increasingly unable to engage in prosocial behavior through work and volunteering. This is detrimental to the physical and mental well-being of older adults. The purpose of this study is to look into robot teleoperation for older adults as a viable way to deal with these issues and overcome the barriers preventing older adults from engaging in prosocial behavior. Materials and methods: We designed and tested a remote-control approach for dialogue agents that is appropriate for older adults as well as evaluating their impressions in a real-world setting. Twelve older adults participated in experiments in two separate locations, a children's center and the city ward office, where they could remotely teleoperate a robot and have conversations with the visitors. In the city ward office, the older adults had a conversation with the visitors and gave them information and trivia quizzes about the city. In the children's center, older adults had conversations with children regarding their age, family, their likes, and dislikes. A questionnaire and interview were set up after the experiments to understand their impressions of the system and to clarify how older adults feel about certain issues regarding remote-controlled work, starting a new job, social interaction, to what extent have older adults been affected by the pandemic, how and in what ways has it affected their involvement in society, and whether teleoperating a robot can be a suitable approach to encourage prosocial behavior from them through volunteer work and social engagement. Results: The results show that older adults have a strong desire to engage in volunteer work, but are hampered mainly by physical isolation resulting from COVID-19 restrictions and their declining physical and mental health. Their impressions of the teleoperation system were highly positive, as they enjoyed having conversations with children through the robot. With this teleoperation system, older adults were able to remote control a robot by themselves without major issues. It made interaction simpler as conversing with children through a robot added a layer of anonymity that allowed older adults to express themselves freely without worrying about how they are perceived by others in public. Discussion: Older adults were able to successfully engage in prosocial behavior through remote-controlling a robot. The system seems to be effective at easing the physical barriers preventing older adults from engaging in volunteer work, which have worsened since the spread of COVID-19. Copyright © 2023 Maalouly, Hirano, Yamazaki, Nishio and Ishiguro.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has unprecedentedly influenced social interactions, which can be implemented both in real life (offline) and on the Internet. Prosocial behavior as a type of social interactions has a positive impact on individuals and society, especially during crises. Prosocial behavior is determined by various factors, including individual values and contextual factors as the most influential ones. The form of prosocial behavior and its determinants may differ in different periods of the society functioning. Therefore, studying prosocial behavior before and during the pandemic, and identifying factors of its implementation in various contexts is a relevant task. This study explores the relationship between individual values and prosocial behavior, in an offline and an online context, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia. A cross-sectional study with two sub-samples — the "pre-pandemic” group (N=304) and the "pandemic” group (N=187) — was conducted online, using the short version of Human Values Scale by S. Schwartz (ESS-21) and scales of prosocial behavior in online and offline contexts. Results show that during a pandemic people are less likely to engage in prosocial behavior offline and rely less on Self-Transcendence values. At the same time, in "the pre-pandemic” group, Self-Transcendence values contribute to prosocial behavior in both contexts, while Self-Enhancement values contribute to prosocial behavior in the online context. Next, in the "pandemic” group, Self-Transcendence values and Openness-to-Change values promote prosocial behavior in both contexts, while Conservation values discourage it. The results are discussed regarding the impact a pandemic has on people's lives. © 2023 National Research University Higher School of Economics. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
As the COVID-19 crisis forces individuals to self-isolate, work from home, and find new leisure activities, an increasing number are turning to online gaming. These online communities are often developed by community managers who work to engage communities and establish norms. Community management work, broadly, is considered the "soft-skilled" labor of communication, diplomacy, and empathy within an online community. Despite an obvious need for this work in mediating the myriad of personalities and sheer number of users, community management is often underpaid and precarious. Using early interviews with community managers, conducted during the COVID-19 crisis, I aim to highlight those who work promoting pro-social behavior in leisure spaces online. This work plays a vital role in community well-being, particularly for those who have not previously interacted extensively online. Community management is arguably an essential service during times of self-isolation, as they corral toxicity and shepherd users into positive online communities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The current study focuses on a sample of low- to middle-income school-age Latina girls and their parents and examines how children's distress proneness interacts with parental empathic accuracy and posttraumatic growth in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to predict children's empathy and prosocial behavior toward unknown others. Approximately 2-3 months into state-mandated stay-at-home orders, 55 parent-daughter dyads were recruited to participate in this four-session longitudinal study. To assess distress proneness, daughters (ages 8-13 years, 100% Latina) identified their degree of distress in response to pandemic-related stressors. Concurrently, their parents reported how they thought their children would respond to these same pandemic-related stressors, which assessed parental empathic accuracy. Parents also completed an adapted version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory, which assessed perceived positive outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon study completion, a behavioral measure of children's empathic and prosocial behaviors was collected. Parental empathic accuracy interacted with children's distress proneness to positively predict children's affective empathy, such that children's distress proneness predicted affective empathy at high and mean, but not low, levels of parental empathic accuracy. In a separate analysis, parental posttraumatic growth interacted with children's distress proneness to positively predict children's altruistic sharing behavior, such that children's distress proneness predicted altruistic sharing behavior only at high, but not mean or low, levels of parental posttraumatic growth. The results of this study highlight how positive parental socialization and understanding of children's tendencies toward distress are associated with children's empathic and prosocial behaviors, particularly during major global crises. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
In the past several years, social and emotional learning (SEL) has become a widely discussed and more frequently addressed area of need in schools. SEL curricula can enhance behavioral practices at the universal tier to be able to comprehensively address the social, emotional, and behavioral needs in school buildings. With the COVID-19 pandemic, these SEL needs have become more pronounced. This case example presents a pilot evaluation of the Open Circle SEL curriculum implementation, delivered universally, at Tier 2 for all students. Universal SEL instruction was conducted weekly across an entire elementary school in the southeastern United States which had other universal, preventative strategies in place. Across the year, pre- and post-implementation teacher ratings of student SEL skills and teacher perceptions of school climate and school-level descriptive outcomes (e.g., academic achievement, office discipline referrals, attendance) were evaluated. Results indicated that the universal SEL implementation yielded differential effectiveness noted by grade level, with the intervention being more effective in increasing prosocial skills for third grade students. There were also moderate improvements in teacher perceptions of school climate and the school-level variables across grade levels. Implications for future research and practice are presented. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, social consequences in day-to-day decisions might not have been salient to the decider and thus egoistic. How can prosocial intentions be increased? In an experimental vignette study with N = 206, we compared the likelihood that parents send sick children to kindergarten after four interventions (general information about COVID-19, empathy, reflection of consequences via mental simulation, and control group). Independent of the intervention, empathic concern with individuals who were affected by COVID-19 and the salience of social consequences were high. The reported likelihood of sending a sick child to kindergarten was somewhat reduced in the control group and even more reduced in the reflection and empathy group, but not in the information group. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Thoughts of family bring to mind the extent to which, fundamentally, we are prosocial, attachment-orientated and proximity-seeking beings. Child-centred play therapy is about presence;it is a relational, embodied process, informed by the implicit interpersonal qualities of attunement and attachment, on both verbal and non-verbal levels. Covid subverted the very essence of our inherent, attachment-orientated nature as the nation, the world, had to suddenly adapt to the post-viral rules of social distancing, self-isolation and quarantine. Fear of infection and enforced lockdown meant that physical contact-touch-became something of an anathema, to be feared and avoided. Children experienced the loss of friends, extended family, structure, routine, education as well as grieving for those close to them who died or became seriously ill through infection. Furthermore, the Covid pandemic starkly exposed a range of intersectional, societal fault-lines around poverty, ethnicity, age, oppression, disability, systemic racism and social justice, the virus unforgiving in its capacity to lay bare the inequalities of our society. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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It has been theorized that loneliness, the subjective experience of social disconnection, functions as an evolutionarily adaptive drive similar to pain, hunger, or thirst (Cacioppo et al., 2002;Masi et al., 2011). Unfortunately, chronic loneliness is an increasingly common experience, as it has a detrimental impact of chronic loneliness on physical health and mental wellbeing (Cacioppo et al., 2002;Masi, Chen, Hawkley, & Cacioppo, 2011). These significant consequences highlight the importance of developing interventions targeting loneliness. Emerging research suggests that prosocial behavior may be an important factor related to the creation and maintenance of social ties, and thus, a possible candidate for loneliness reduction interventions (Brown et al., 2003). Few studies have examined the direct impact of prosocial behaviors on loneliness. The first manuscript presented in this dissertation aims to extend the current literature by examining the impact of two forms of prosocial behavior on loneliness and associated psychological processes of negative automatic thoughts about the self and mood. Additionally, we tested whether depression and social anxiety moderated the effects of prosocial behavior on loneliness, given the significant overlap between loneliness and depressive and social anxiety symptoms.The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique context in which to study loneliness, as primary mitigation strategies included social distancing and stay-at-home orders, leading to significant disruptions in nearly all aspects of life. The second manuscript presented in this dissertation explored the effects of the pandemic and associated public health measures on loneliness. We were particularly interested in examining these effects because we drew our sample from young adults in college, and we hypothesized that this age group (18-25) might be particularly vulnerable. The second manuscript presented in this dissertation utilizes cross-sectional data collected between June-July 2019 and from March 2020-February 2021, allowing us to compare endorsement of loneliness, depressive and social anxiety symptoms, state affect, and negative automatic thoughts before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.The following dissertation aims to contribute to the broader literature by examining interventions to reduce loneliness, while providing a portrait of loneliness in young adults at a specific historical moment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
This paper introduces a novel theoretical model and measure of strategic thinking in social decision making. The model distinguishes four strategic orientations: egocentric (thinking about how one's actions shape one's outcomes), impact (thinking about how one's actions shapes others' outcomes), dependency (thinking about how others' actions shape one's outcomes), and altercentric (thinking about how others' actions shape their outcomes). Applying this model to explain social behavior in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, an exploratory study finds that the more people think about how their actions shape others' outcomes, the more likely they are to: (a) comply with social distancing restrictions designed to curb the spread of the virus, and (b) donate money they received in the study to charitable organizations. These findings advance understanding of the multifaceted nature of strategic thinking and highlight the usefulness of the Strategic Thinking Scale for explaining social behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)