Prosocial behaviour in helping professions

Designing Interventions for the Helping Professions

Moral Judgments: Studying People with Helping Professions

While a considerable amount of research is done in the field of moral psychology, to our best knowledge, no systematic study of moral judgments made by professional groups who make moral decisions as part of their occupational duties exists (e.g. firefighters, medical doctors, midwives, police officers). By their training and practice, such professionals are expected to exhibit differences in m...

Virtual morality in the helping professions: Simulated action and resilience.

Recent advances in virtual technologies have allowed the investigation of simulated moral actions in aversive moral dilemmas. Previous studies have employed diverse populations to explore these actions, with little research considering the significance of occupation on moral decision-making. For the first time, in this study we have investigated simulated moral actions in virtual reality made b...

Computer Games and Prosocial Behaviour

We relate different self-reported measures of computer use to individuals' propensity to cooperate in the Prisoner's dilemma. The average cooperation rate is positively related to the self-reported amount participants spend playing computer games. None of the other computer time use variables (including time spent on social media, browsing internet, working etc.) are significantly related to co...

Lying aversion and prosocial behaviour

The opportunity to tell a white lie (i.e., a lie that benefits another person) generates a moral conflict between two opposite moral dictates, one pushing towards telling always the truth and the other pushing towards helping others. Here we study how people resolve this moral conflict. What does telling a white lie signal about a person’s pro-social tendencies? To answer this question, we cond...