In this experiment we examined the effects of task and ego involvement on three measures of moral behavior--prosocial choice, observed prosocial behavior, and observed antisocial behavior--in a competitive setting. We also investigated sex differences in moral behavior. Male (n = 48) and female (n = 48) college students were randomly assigned to a task-involving, an ego-involving, or a control ...

Studies using estrogen receptor alpha (ERalpha) knock-out mice indicate that ERalpha masculinizes male behavior. Recent studies of ERalpha and male prosocial behavior have shown an inverse relationship between ERalpha expression in regions of the brain that regulate social behavior, including the medial amygdala (MeA), and the expression of male prosocial behavior. These studies have lead to th...

Relations between parents' discipline, children's empathic responses, and children's prosocial behavior were examined in order to evaluate Martin Hoffman's claim that children's empathy and empathy-based guilt mediate the socialization of children's prosocial behavior. 78 sixth and seventh graders (138-172 months in age), their mothers, and teachers completed multiple measures of Hoffman's cons...

Prosocial acts benefitting others are widespread amongst humans. By contrast, chimpanzees have failed to demonstrate such a disposition in several studies, leading some authors to conclude that the forms of prosociality studied evolved in humans since our common ancestry. However, similar prosocial behavior has since been documented in other primates, such as capuchin monkeys. Here, applying th...

The current study examined correlates of preschool children's (n = 82) peer status. In particular, we assessed children's prosocial behavior, social problem behavior, norm enforcement, language abilities, and temperament. Children's prosocial behavior, pragmatic language abilities, and gender correlated with peer status. A regression analysis revealed that prosocial behavior and gender were ind...

The field of quantitative genetics aims to understand how environmental and genetic factors independently and interactively shape behavioral traits in humans. This scientific approach has been applied to a wide variety of observed characteristics, or phenotypes, making this work relevant for all areas of psychology. To fully understand this body of work, we first need to introduce the quantitat...

Little research has focused on how individual- and team-level characteristics jointly influence, via interaction, how prosocially individuals behave in teams and few studies have considered the potential influence of team context on prosocial behavior. Using a multilevel perspective, we examined the relationships between individual (affective balance) and group (team prosocial efficacy and team...

Prosocial behavior is a central feature of human life and a major focus of research across the natural and social sciences. Most theoretical models of prosociality share a common assumption: Humans are instinctively selfish, and prosocial behavior requires exerting reflective control over these basic instincts. However, findings from several scientific disciplines have recently contradicted thi...

Theoretical considerations and new empirical evidence suggest that children's development cannot simply be explained by either genes or environment but that their interaction is important to understanding child behavior. In particular, a genetic polymorphism, the exon III repeat region of the dopamine receptor D4, has been the focus of interest regarding differential susceptibility to parental ...

Human prosocial behavior emerges in the 2nd year of life, posing challenging questions about mechanism. An increasingly common claim is that prosocial behavior in the first 3 years of life is neither a result of nor affected by socialization. In this article, we argue that early socialization plays a critical role in the developmental origins of prosocial behavior. To support this argument, we ...