A history of prosocial behavior research: C. Daniel Batson

The word “prosocial” does not appear in most dictionaries; it was created by social scientists as an antonym for “antisocial.” Prosocial behavior covers the broad range of actions intended to benefi t one or more people other than oneself-behaviors such as helping, comforting, sharing, cooperation, philanthropy, and community service. The word “altruism” has at times also been used to refer to these behaviors, or to a subset of them such as self-sacrifi cial helping or helping in the absence of external rewards. This usage seems inappropriate, however, because altruism is a motivational concept. Altruism is motivation to increase another person’s welfare; it is contrasted to egoism , motivation to increase one’s own welfare (Comte, 1851/1875, Dixon, 2008; MacIntyre, 1967). There is no one-to-one correspondence between prosocial behavior and altruism. Prosocial behavior need not be motivated by altruism; altruistic motivation need not produce prosocial behavior.