TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding prosocial and antisocial behaviours
T2 - The roles of self-focused and other-focused motivational orientations
AU - Joyal-Desmarais, Keven
AU - Euh, Hyun
AU - Scharmer, Alexandra
AU - Snyder, Mark
N1 - This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada doctoral fellowship to KJD. Data collection for Study 4 was supported by the Center for the Study of the Individual and Society at the University of Minnesota. The authors did not receive any funds or grants to do this research from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not\u2010for\u2010profit sectors.
We extend special thanks to Joseph A. Vitriol for his involvement and substantial feedback throughout the project. We acknowledge and thank the World Values Survey's network of dedicated scientists for collecting and making available a significant portion of the data used in the current work. We also acknowledge our use of data from Add Health, a programme project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman and Kathleen Mullan Harris and funded by a grant P01\u2010HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. No direct support was received from grant P01\u2010HD31921 for the current analysis. Finally, we would also like to extend our thanks to Mina and Midori Nishioka for providing support throughout the project.
PY - 2024/9/18
Y1 - 2024/9/18
N2 - We examine how individual differences in self-focused and other-focused orientations relate to prosocial (e.g., helping, volunteerism) and antisocial (e.g., theft, violence) behaviours/attitudes. Using four datasets (total N = 176,216; across 78 countries), we find that other-focused orientations (e.g., socially focused values, intimacy motivation, compassionate/communal traits) generally relate positively to prosocial outcomes and negatively to antisocial outcomes. These effects are highly consistent cross-nationally and across multiple ways of operationalizing constructs. In contrast, self-focused orientations (e.g., personally focused values, power motivation, assertive/agentic traits) tend to relate positively to both antisocial and prosocial outcomes. However, associations with prosocial outcomes vary substantially across nations and construct operationalizations. Overall, the effects of other-focused orientations are consistently larger than those of self-focused orientations. We discuss the implications of these findings for interventions that target self-focused and other-focused motivations to influence prosocial and antisocial outcomes.
AB - We examine how individual differences in self-focused and other-focused orientations relate to prosocial (e.g., helping, volunteerism) and antisocial (e.g., theft, violence) behaviours/attitudes. Using four datasets (total N = 176,216; across 78 countries), we find that other-focused orientations (e.g., socially focused values, intimacy motivation, compassionate/communal traits) generally relate positively to prosocial outcomes and negatively to antisocial outcomes. These effects are highly consistent cross-nationally and across multiple ways of operationalizing constructs. In contrast, self-focused orientations (e.g., personally focused values, power motivation, assertive/agentic traits) tend to relate positively to both antisocial and prosocial outcomes. However, associations with prosocial outcomes vary substantially across nations and construct operationalizations. Overall, the effects of other-focused orientations are consistently larger than those of self-focused orientations. We discuss the implications of these findings for interventions that target self-focused and other-focused motivations to influence prosocial and antisocial outcomes.
KW - antisocial behaviour and aggression
KW - egoistic and altruistic motivations
KW - interpersonal circumplex
KW - other-focused orientations
KW - prosocial behaviour
KW - self-focused orientations
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U2 - 10.1002/ejsp.3110
DO - 10.1002/ejsp.3110
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85204313883
SN - 0046-2772
VL - 54
SP - 1610
EP - 1643
JO - European Journal of Social Psychology
JF - European Journal of Social Psychology
IS - 7
ER -