Prosocial Behavior

Prosocial behavior — the constellation of cooperative, generous, and altruistic acts directed toward others’ welfare — appears in the depth-psychology and adjacent empirical corpus primarily as an outcome variable through which the moral and self-transcendent dimensions of emotional life are measured. The dominant voice is Piff and collaborators (2015), who demonstrate across five studies that the emotion of awe reliably increases prosocial tendencies by producing what they term the ‘small self’ — a diminished sense of personal significance that relaxes the grip of self-interest. Keltner (2023) extends this framework, situating enhanced prosociality as one of three principal pathways by which awe improves mental and physical health, with empirical grounding in both laboratory and naturalistic contexts. Lench (2018) approaches the phenomenon from a functional-emotions perspective, showing that moral elevation — a distinct but related emotional state — also reliably predicts prosocial intentions and behavior, while noting that admiration tends toward agentic rather than communal outcomes. McGilchrist (2021) offers the most skeptical note, arguing that the cult of self-esteem, far from generating prosociality, yields mediocrity and self-conceit, and that genuine other-directedness is better cultivated through self-discipline and ethical achievement. Yaden (2017) contextualizes the prosocial sequelae of self-transcendent experience within neurobiological terms, implicating oxytocin and vagal tone as probable mechanisms. The central theoretical tension in this literature concerns whether prosociality is best understood as a cognitive reorientation — the self displaced by the collective — or as a physiological and emotional cascade triggered by encounters with vastness.

In the library 15 passages

awe can result in a diminishment of the individual self and its concerns, and increase prosocial behavior… dispositional tendencies to experience awe predicted greater generosity in an economic game above and beyond other prosocial emotions

This passage establishes the central thesis that awe, by diminishing the individual self, causally increases prosocial behavior across multiple experimental paradigms and in a nationally representative sample.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015thesis

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processes that diminish attention to the individual self and its interests can increase prosocial tendencies… self-transcendence values, which emphasize diminished self-importance and increased attention to others and nature, are positively related to prosocial tendencies and empathy

This passage grounds the awe-prosociality hypothesis in a broader literature linking self-diminishment, narcissism reduction, and self-transcendence values to prosocial outcomes.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015thesis

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Awe exerts a specific and likely unique effect on prosociality that is distinct from the influences of other positive emotions, not confounded by more general positive affect, and not reducible to experiences in nature.

This passage argues that awe’s prosocial effects are not attributable to positive affect in general, establishing awe as an independently operative cause of prosocial behavior.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015thesis

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awe leads to more prosocial tendencies by broadening the individual’s perspective to include entities vaster and more powerful than oneself and diminishing the salience of the individual self.

This passage summarizes the mediational mechanism — perceptual expansion and self-diminishment — through which awe translates into prosocial values, generosity, and ethical decision-making across four studies.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015thesis

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A third pathway by which awe may improve mental and physical health is through enhanced prosociality. Empirical studies have found that transient experiences of awe in the lab and in naturalistic contexts leads to cooperation, sacrifice, and sharing.

Keltner frames enhanced prosociality as a distinct health-relevant mechanism of awe, supported by both dispositional and experimental evidence linking awe to cooperation and sharing.

Keltner, Dacher, Awe: A Pathway to Health, 2023supporting

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the experience of awe will increase prosocial behavior, and that these effects will be driven by what we refer to as the ‘small self’—a relatively diminished sense of self vis-à-vis something deemed vaster than the individual.

This passage introduces the ‘small self’ as the theoretical mechanism linking awe to prosocial behavior, framing decisions about cooperation as central to social formation and survival.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting

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religion is associated with increased prosocial behavior… the effects of religion on prosociality may be partly attributable to awe. Religious institutions may promote prosociality insofar as they attune individuals to forces more powerful than themselves.

This passage proposes that religious institutions function partly as institutionalized conduits of awe, and that their documented prosocial effects may be mediated by the awe they reliably elicit.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting

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In several studies, such intentions track onto actual prosocial behavior… morally elevated individuals not only seek moral excellence but are also less tolerant of others who fail to act with moral excellence.

Lench documents that moral elevation reliably predicts not only prosocial intentions but actual prosocial behavior, and further tightens moral standards toward others as a secondary communal function.

Lench, Heather C., The Function of Emotions: When and Why Emotions Help Us, 2018supporting

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The vagus nerve is activated during self-transcendent positive emotions like awe, compassion, gratitude, and love, suggesting a potential mechanism underlying STEs… those with healthy vagal tone are more other-focused.

Yaden identifies vagal tone and oxytocin release as neurobiological substrates linking self-transcendent emotional states, including awe and compassion, to the other-focused orientation characteristic of prosocial behavior.

Yaden, David Bryce, The Varieties of Self-Transcendent Experience, 2017supporting

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awe is associated with increased prosociality… it held when controlling for dispositional tendencies to experience other positive emotions, including love and compassion—emotions that have well-documented and robust influences on prosocial responding.

This passage confirms the unique predictive contribution of dispositional awe to prosocial generosity, independent of other prosocial positive emotions with established influence on prosocial responding.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting

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forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on self-control and self-discipline… boost self-esteem as a reward for ethical behaviour and worthy achievements.

McGilchrist, drawing on Baumeister, argues that the inflation of the self through unconditional self-esteem undermines the ethical and prosocial character that genuine self-transcendence is meant to cultivate.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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a recent review of eighty-eight studies involving 25,000 participants from around the world documents how robust our tendency is to imitate the prosocial behaviors of others, sharing, cooperation, and assisting in need.

Keltner cites large-scale meta-analytic evidence for prosocial modeling — the imitation of observed prosocial acts — as a mechanism supplementing awe-induced prosociality through social contagion.

Keltner, Dacher, Awe The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can, 2023supporting

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psychological entitlement, which reflects a sense that one deserves more and is entitled to more valued resources than others, and is inimical to prosocial behavior.

This passage establishes psychological entitlement as the dispositional inverse of prosocial orientation, and tests awe’s capacity to reduce it in a naturalistic experimental context.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting

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admiration fails to predict self-reported or behavioral improvement… in these cases, the experience of ‘benign envy’ drives efforts for self-improvement.

Lench notes that admiration’s agentic functions are contextually constrained and do not straightforwardly translate into prosocial outcomes, suggesting that communal and agentic emotional functions are functionally dissociable.

Lench, Heather C., The Function of Emotions: When and Why Emotions Help Us, 2018aside

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The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a problem that will be familiar to many readers, originating in an aspect of economic and social modelling known as games theory.

McGilchrist invokes the Prisoner’s Dilemma as a structural model for the tension between individual self-interest and cooperative behavior, contextualizing the deeper problem of prosociality within hemispheric analysis.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009aside

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Related terms