Rare and Costly Prosocial Behaviors Are Perceived As Heroic

Paying to Be Nice: Consistency and Costly Prosocial Behavior

Building on previous research in economics and psychology, we propose that the costliness of initial prosocial behavior positively influences whether that behavior leads to consistent future behaviors. We suggest that costly prosocial behaviors serve as a signal of prosocial identity and that people subsequently behave in line with that self-perception. In contrast, costless prosocial acts do n...

Neural regions associated with self control and mentalizing are recruited during prosocial behaviors towards the family

Prosocial decisions can be difficult because they often involve personal sacrifices that do not generate any direct, immediate benefits to the self. The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to understand how individuals decide to provide support to others. Twenty-five participants were scanned as they completed a task in which they made costly decisions to contribute ...

Masculinity and perceived normative health behaviors as predictors of men's health behaviors.

This study examined the unique contributions of masculinity and men's perceptions of the normativeness of men's and women's health behaviors in predicting men's self-reported health behaviors. One hundred and forty men aged 18-78 were recruited from 27 unmoderated and moderated Internet listservs of potential interest to men. They completed measures on-line assessing masculinity, their percepti...

Temperament, Parenting, and Prosocial Behaviors: Applying a New Interactive Theory of Prosocial Development

Extremely costly intensifiers are stronger than quite costly ones

We show how the wide range in strengths of intensifying degree adverbs (e.g. very and extremely) could be explained by pragmatic inference based on differing cost, rather than differing semantics. This predicts a linear relationship between the meaning of intensifiers and their length and log-frequency. We test this prediction in two studies, using two different dependent measures, finding that...