Hillei Arghandewal
Question
What is Prosocial
behavior?
How does Prosocial
behavior differ from
Altruism?
Prosocial behavior is
essential to the make
up of a socially
resilient society. What
are the three elements
of prosocial behavior?
What are three types
of prosocial behavior?
Does it matter if
someone is watching?
Answer
Prosocial behavior are
voluntary actions intended to
benefit another individual or a
group of people such as the
society.
Altruism is helping an
individual in need to get out of
their distress situation.
Prosocial behavior refers to the
activity resulting from the
individuals’ altruistic feelings.
Explanation
The concept behind prosocial
behavior is that it arises as a
consequence of a person’s behavior
rather than the motivations behind
the actions.
For example, an individual makes
an anonymous donation to a person,
group or institution without any
resulting recognition, political or
economic gain; here, the donation
is the prosocial action and the
altruism is what motivates the doer
to action.
People who usually donate funds or
● Ability to recognize
other materials to others are those
another individual’s
who understand the challenges
problem
● Ability to determine the these individuals go through. For
example, when a person donates
cause of that problem
blankets and food to a flood victim,
● Motivation to help
it is because they understand the
them overcome the
situation these people are currently
problem
undergoing and empathize with
them.
An example of helping is offering
● Helping
deliberate effort such as stopping to
● Sharing
help a motorist change their tire.
● Donating
An example of sharing is baking
cookies and sharing with friends in
school or particularly the less
fortunate.
An example of donations is giving
food to immigrants in concentration
camps.
Individuals willing to help
Any act of helping, sharing, or
should do voluntarily.
donating should be done out of
personal effort and not due to
expected appreciation or benefits
set to be enjoyed later.
The manner in which the social perceiver’s thoughts, emotions and behaviors change in the
presence of others is the definition of
(A) Social influence
(B) Social cognition
(C) Obedience
(D) Conformity
Social influence is an umbrella term that encompasses both conformity and obedience. Social
cognition is different to social influence in that social cognition is not limited to processes that
occur in the presence of others.
Which one of the following does not relate to social psychology?
(A) The science of social psychology began when scientists first started to systematically and
formally measure the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of human beings
(B) The field of social psychology is growing rapidly and is having an increasingly important
influence on how we think about human behavior.
(C) The way that we see other people (and the way we think they see us) can play a powerful
role in a wide variety of actions and decisions.
(D) All of the above
Social psychology is broad and encompass a wide range of social topics including:
Group behavior
Social perception
Leadership
Nonverbal behavior
Conformity
Aggression
Prejudice
All the above statements relate to social psychology and provide insights on the different ways to
define the topic.