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Rare and Costly Prosocial Behaviors Are Perceived as Heroic.

ABSTRACT: Heroism has only recently become a topic of empirical investigation. Existing research suggests a connection between heroism and four well-documented dimensions of human social behavior: (1) the cost incurred by the actor; (2) the benefit provided to the recipient; (3) the perceived frequency (i.e., descriptive normativity); and (4) the perceived expectation to perform it (i.e., injunctive normativity). In a series of exploratory studies (total N = 408), we aim to shed light on how each of these constructs influence lay intuitions about the nature of heroism (i.e., what determines which acts people perceive to be heroic). In Study 1, subjects generated a list of acts they deemed to be heroic. In Study 2, subjects rated the heroicness of the acts from Study 1, revealing considerable variation in the level of heroism. Finally, subjects in Study 3 rated the cost to the actor, the benefit to the recipient(s), the descriptive normativity (i.e., frequency), and the injunctive normativity (i.e., obligatoriness) of ten acts, five of which received particularly high heroism scores in Study 2 ("exemplary" acts of heroism) and five of which received particularly low heroism scores in Study 2 ("ambiguous" acts of heroism). We find that more heroic acts are seen as rarer and more costly to actors-but, interestingly, not more beneficial to recipients or less obligatory. These findings help to illuminate what it means to be seen as a hero, and suggest clear future directions for both empirical and theoretical work.

SUBMITTER: Kraft-Todd GT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6370665 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Rare and Costly Prosocial Behaviors Are Perceived as Heroic.

Kraft-Todd Gordon T GT Rand David G DG

Frontiers in psychology 20190205

Heroism has only recently become a topic of empirical investigation. Existing research suggests a connection between heroism and four well-documented dimensions of human social behavior: (1) the cost incurred by the actor; (2) the benefit provided to the recipient; (3) the perceived frequency (i.e., descriptive normativity); and (4) the perceived expectation to perform it (i.e., injunctive normativity). In a series of exploratory studies (total <i>N</i> = 408), we aim to shed light on how each o ...[more]

PMID: 30804858

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Project description:The present study investigated how linguistic group membership influences prosocial behaviors, namely helpfulness and cooperation, in preschool children. Whilst research indicates that children preferentially direct their prosocial behavior towards members of their own groups, the influence of perceived linguistic group membership on actual helpfulness and cooperation has not been investigated. We presented an experimenter to 4- and 5-year-olds either as a foreigner, who did not speak the local language or as a native person. Children were then given the opportunity to help or cooperate with this experimenter in a series of nonverbal playful tasks. Whilst 4-year-olds helped and cooperated equally with the foreign and the native experimenter, 5-year-olds required significantly more cues and prompts in order to help or cooperate in the foreign condition. We also found that children were overall more reluctant to respond prosocially in the cooperation tasks than in the helping tasks. We tested children in two European countries (France and Hungary) and found the same pattern of responses in the two locations, suggesting that our findings are not specific to the local culture. Our results extend the findings of earlier research that showed selectivity according to the language spoken by the partner for sharing and imitation. Studies that looked at helpfulness or cooperation used the minimal group paradigm to induce group membership (based on arbitrary cues) and used indirect measures of prosociality, such as different forms of reasoning about the partner. In our study, we used language, a natural cue for group membership (versus arbitrary cues or cues based on social conventions) and directly observed children's helpful and cooperative behaviors toward the experimenter. Our results also confirm previous results indicating that with age, children become selective in their prosocial behaviors as they acquire new means of social evaluation and categorization. We conclude that the language associated with a potential social partner is not only a cue for affiliation and shared knowledge but also a cue mediating children's prosocial acts.

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Rare and Costly Prosocial Behaviors Are Perceived as Heroic.

Publications

Rare and Costly Prosocial Behaviors Are Perceived as Heroic.

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