Role of the prefrontal cortex in prosocial and self-maximization motivations: an rTMS study

More than a decade of neuroimaging and brain stimulation studies point to a crucial role for the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) in prosocial behavior. The intuitive prosociality model postulates that the rDLPFC controls intuitive prosocial behavior, whereas the reflective model assumes that the rDLPFC controls selfish impulses during prosocial behavior. The intuitive prosociality model implies that the transient disruption of the rDLPFC should increase voluntary transfers in both dictator and generosity games. In contrast, the reflective model suggests that the transient disruption of the rDLPFC should decrease transfers in the dictator game, without affecting voluntary transfers in the generosity game, in which selfish motives are minimized. The aim of this paper was to compare predictions of the intuitive and reflective models using the classic dictator game and generosity game and continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS). In this study, two groups of healthy participants (dictators) received either cTBS over the rDLPFC or right extrastriate visual areas. As shown by the results, the transient disruption of the rDLPFC significantly promoted prosocial motives in the dictator game only, particularly in the trials with the lowest dictator’s costs. These findings partially support the notion that the rDLPFC controls intuitive prosocial behavior.

Research on the goal setting by modern students

The article presents a study of the goal setting by modern students. The authors analyze the role of goal setting in educational and future professional activities. The authors consider goal setting in the structure of valueoriented activity. They reveal the correlation of prosocial and egoistic values of students. The article provides a brief overview of modern approaches to goal setting. The authors consider various aspects of goal setting related to future professional activities, family life planning and the formation of material prosperity. The practical part of the study includes an analysis of goal setting based on a survey of 479 respondents (172 male, 307 female). The respondents were senior students of Novosibirsk universities. The researchers asked the respondents to formulate their life goals for one year, for five years, and for life. The results of this study are diverse. On the one hand, it reveals disturbing trends (a low level of prosocial motives expressed in the goal setting by students, as well as a small percentage of students who associate their future with research activities). Consumer motivation is expressed in student’s goal setting much more strongly than prosocial motivation. On the other hand, the results of the study allow us to speak about the preservation of the importance of family values in the views of modern students. There is a desire to acquire housing in the property, which indicates a tendency to settle down. This contradicts the ideas about the prospect of increasing the mobility of labor resources in Russia. It is also significant that only less than a third of young men and less than a third of girls expressed their intention to start their own business, which indirectly indicates the relatively modest prospects for the development of small and medium-sized businesses in Russia. Finally, the study showed a low level of emigrant sentiment among the surveyed students. The authors consider it expedient to organize such studies everywhere on an ongoing basis.

Don’t get it or don’t spread it: comparing self-interested versus prosocial motivations for COVID-19 prevention behaviors

COVID-19 prevention behaviors may be seen as self-interested or prosocial. Using American samples from MTurk and Prolific (total n = 6850), we investigated which framing is more effective—and motivation is stronger—for fostering prevention behavior intentions. We evaluated messaging that emphasized personal, public, or personal and public benefits of prevention. In initial studies (conducted March 14–16, 2020), the Public treatment was more effective than the Personal treatment, and no less effective than the Personal + Public treatment. In additional studies (conducted April 17–30, 2020), all three treatments were similarly effective. Across all these studies, the perceived public threat of coronavirus was also more strongly associated with prevention intentions than the perceived personal threat. Furthermore, people who behaved prosocially in incentivized economic games years before the pandemic had greater prevention intentions. Finally, in a field experiment (conducted December 21–23, 2020), we used our three messaging strategies to motivate contact-tracing app signups (n = 152,556 newsletter subscribers). The design of this experiment prevents strong causal inference; however, the results provide suggestive evidence that the Personal + Public treatment may have been more effective than the Personal or Public treatment. Together, our results highlight the importance of prosocial motives for COVID-19 prevention.

Self-Interested Giving: The Relationship Between Conditional Gifts, Charitable Donations, and Donor Self-Interestedness

Nonprofits regularly use conditional “thank you” gifts to entice prospective donors to give, yet experimental evidence suggests that their effects are mixed in practice. This paper uses multiple laboratory experiments to test when and why thank you gifts vary in effectiveness. First, we demonstrate that although gifts often increase donations to charities that donors did not rate highly, many of the same gifts had no effects or negative effects for charities that prospective donors already liked. We replicate these findings in a second experiment that uses a different range of charity and gift options as well as different measures of participant perceptions of a charity. We also find that making gifts optional, as is common in fundraising campaigns, does not eliminate these negative gift effects. In additional experiments, we directly test for donor motives using self-report and priming experiments. We find that thank you gifts increase (decrease) the weight that donors place on self-interested (prosocial) motives, leading to changes in donation patterns. Altogether, our results suggest that practitioners may find gifts more useful when appealing to donors not already familiar with or favorably inclined to their charity, such as during donor acquisition campaigns. They may be less useful when appealing to recent donors or others who already favor the charity, in part because the gift may activate mindsets or norms that emphasize self-interested motives instead of more prosocial, other-regarding motives. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, decision analysis.

Belief in Altruistic Motives Predicts Prosocial Actions and Inferences

Are humans ever truly altruistic? Or are all actions, however noble, ultimately motivated by self-interest? Psychologists and philosophers have long grappled with this question, but few have considered laypeople’s beliefs about the nature of prosocial motives. Here we examine these beliefs and their social correlates across two experiments (N = 445). We find that people tend to believe humans can be, and frequently are, altruistically motivated—echoing prior work. Moreover, people who more strongly believe in altruistic motives act more prosocially themselves—for instance, sacrificing greater amounts of money and time to help others—a relationship that holds even when controlling for trait empathy. People who believe in altruistic motives also judge other prosocial agents to be more genuinely kind, especially when agents’ motives are ambiguous. Lastly, people independently show a self-serving bias—believing their own motives for prosociality are more often altruistic than others’. Overall, this work suggests that believing in altruistic motives predicts the extent to which people both see altruism and act prosocially, possibly reflecting the self-fulfilling nature of such lay theories.

Workplace spirituality and social enterprise. A review and research agenda

Workplace spirituality is a social movement about purposeful work that has both personal and broader societal considerations. Social enterprises are alternative organizational forms that strive to create value by simultaneously pursuing social, economic and environmental goals. Both workplace spirituality and social enterprise discourses have a value creation orientation for self and others, framed as serving and contributing towards the common good. However, only a few studies have addressed the relevance of workplace spirituality for social enterprises. Based on the literature for workplace spirituality and social enterprise, respectively, this paper argues that these phenomena have a common ground: prosocial motives, doing well (value creation) and being well (flourishing). Workplace spirituality can help preserve social enterprises’ integrity, while the social enterprise context can support the incorporation of workplace spirituality to generate positive outcomes. Further studies could explore this potentiality, and the present paper provides some future research suggestions.

The Salience of Children Increases Adult Prosocial Values

Organizations often put children front and center in campaigns to elicit interest and support for prosocial causes. Such initiatives raise a key theoretical and applied question that has yet to be addressed directly: Does the salience of children increase prosocial motivation and behavior in adults? We present findings aggregated across eight experiments involving 2,054 adult participants: Prosocial values became more important after completing tasks that made children salient compared to tasks that made adults (or a mundane event) salient or compared to a no-task baseline. An additional field study showed that adults were more likely to donate money to a child-unrelated cause when children were more salient on a shopping street. The findings suggest broad, reliable interconnections between human mental representations of children and prosocial motives, as the child salience effect was not moderated by participants’ gender, age, attitudes, or contact with children.