{"id":1140,"date":"2023-01-25T08:05:49","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T13:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/its-cuthemedev1.carleton.ca\/mental-health\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2026-01-14T10:06:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T15:06:28","slug":"prosocial-behaviours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/2023\/prosocial-behaviours\/","title":{"rendered":"When and how are we more likely to help others?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n When and how are we more likely to help others?\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Many individuals want to engage in prosocial behaviours, but have limited time and resources to be able to do so. Therefore, it can be difficult to decide what prosocial acts one has to capacity to engage in. To examine some factors that determine when people engage in daily prosocial acts, two seven-day diary studies were conducted by Dr. Johanna Peetz<\/a> and Dr. Andrea Howard<\/a>. In the first study, participants described the various prosocial acts they engaged in on a daily basis in their own words and rated the time, energy, and money required by these activities on a Likert scale. In the second study, participants indicated the prosocial acts they engaged in, and reported time and money in units of minutes and dollars. In both studies, prosocial behaviors were categorized in to types of prosocial behaviours, either by the researcher (first study) or the participant themselves (second study). For instance, behaviors were categorized as casual help (e.g., low-effort prosocial behaviours), direct help (e.g., helping a friend complete a task), indirect help (e.g., providing advice on how to complete a task), or emotional help (e.g., providing a friend emotional support). Both studies found that individuals preferred to spend their time and resources engaging in a variety of prosocial behaviours on a day to day basis. Those who engaged in more direct, indirect, and\/or emotional behaviours the day before were less likely to engage in the same type of prosocial behaviour the following day. In sum, sometimes decisions to help might depend on the help one already did that day or even the day before.<\/p>\n\n\n

To read this article and learn more, click here!<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

Peetz, J., & Howard, A. L. (2022). People prefer to diversify across different types of prosocial behaviour. British Journal of Social Psychology<\/em>, 61<\/em>(3), 924\u2013939. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/bjso.12519<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many individuals want to engage in prosocial behaviours, but have limited time and resources to be able to do so. Therefore, it can be difficult to decide what prosocial acts one has to capacity to engage in. To examine some factors that determine when people engage in daily prosocial acts, two seven-day diary studies were conducted by Dr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellness-wednesday"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1142,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions\/1142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/mental-health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}