McCullough and Colleagues

McCullough and Colleagues

Sharing, sacrifice, and helping others are some of the activities that prosocial behaviour represents. Often, populace assist others due to multiple reasons, for instance, calculation of profits, preservation of social relationship reciprocity, or practical reasons to prevent property damage. While people can base prosocial behaviour on sympathy and interest, but it can bear egoistic motives.

Aggression refers to a harmful, overt social interaction that inflicts damage to another party (McCullough, 2010). It can either be a retaliatory act due to frustration or an unprovoked behaviour. Additionally, it is classifiable as direct or indirect, where the former is physical and the latter verbal. In contrast, a prosocial behaviour is voluntary and benefits others. Those that engage in it obey the societal rules by conforming to an accepted way of life in the society.

Prosocial behaviour fosters a positive character that benefits the society and young people. In evolutionary psychology, scholars use theories like inclusive fitness and kin selection in explaining why and how human beings pass down aggressiveness and prosocial behaviour from one generation to the other. Further, the positive character improves when undesirable social behaviours decrease. Religion and morality positively impact prosocial behaviour by eliminating aggressiveness. Yet, the manners differ according to gender.

Children develop conscience and self-control early in life. They cannot belong to social groups unless they can get along with their peers. Therefore, the children should show empathy and control their emotions to coexist with each other. Observation, instinct and rewards are three factors that influence aggressiveness. To control it, people need to safely vent their anger and frustrations. Children do this successfully through plays, whereas adults can engage in their hobbies or attend counselling sessions. On the other hand, a person can express prosocial behaviour through empathy. If the parents act as a role model in the family, the children will adopt their good behaviour and use it throughout their lifetime.

Over the past two decades, numerous authors have written about the connection between aggression and prosocial behaviour. According to McCullough & Tabak (2010), prosocial aggression is culturally desirable since it has a positive connotation. Over the years, the link between the two has strengthened, especially after incorporation of assistance, charity and altruism as part of a prosocial behaviour. In addition, Psychological literature registers prosocial tendency as a human reaction, hence its classification falling into the same classification with aggression. Further, McCullough (2008) argues that prosocial behaviour exists as various interrelated constructs rather than as a unit. People are less prosocial in private than in a public setting. The reason for this is the perception of status, where individuals not only desire to improve their public image but also to be included in social groups. If they have a perception of being “watched” (for instance by the prying eyes in wall pictures), people can limit their aggressiveness and embrace positive behaviour (McCullough, 2008).

Today, there are theoretic literature conceptions that present the multi-aspectual aggressiveness in prosocial displays. For example, the Hoffman theory is a result of prosocial behavioural model and aggressiveness. As a scientific approach, it provides a chronological description of volitive, emotional, and cognitive changes accompanying individual growth and development. A controversy surrounds the origin of aggressiveness and prosocial behaviour. In fact, a section of the scientific community is convinced that both of them are genetically conditioned. Contrastingly, others argue that people learn to react differently in distinct situations.

The modern psychological perspectives concur that humans learn violent and aggressive behaviours as a response to frustration, or as instruments to attain targets. The education process is through observation of behavioural models such as peers, mass media, or family. Nearly all the studies attempt to pinpoint the determinants of prosocial and aggressive behaviour. Unfortunately, the researchers consider correlates once or twice in the course of field study. Corrective and preventive interventions are a source of experimental evidence especially with regard to the causal factors and allocation of study subjects to control groups. Still, such experiments cannot particularly measure forms of aggression and prosocial behaviour after the intervention. There is evidence that social skills positively affect aggressive behaviour, particularly if the intensive intervention lasts for more than a decade. If the intervention occurs during early childhood, it is probable that the impact will be longer lasting than during adulthood.

The correlates of prosocial behaviour and aggressiveness are separable into two categories. First, most males are inattentive, fearless and insensitive to social rewards because of low prosocial behaviour and high aggressiveness levels.  Psychologically, men’s testosterone levels are high while their serotonin and heart rates are low. Secondly, environmental factors such as nicotine use during pregnancy or poor nutrition can result in high aggressiveness and low prosocial behaviour. Social contributing factors are poverty, deviant peers, poor performance in school, and poor parenting skills are to blame.

In summary, the literature confirms that prosocial and aggressive behaviours are mutually exclusive. If two individuals interact at a given time, a psychologist can reveal a sequence of aggression and prosocial behaviour. Developmentally, children learn to help others and to refrain from physical aggressiveness as they grow. A failure to inhibit physical aggression results in exclusion from group activities like playing with peers. Sustaining a social behaviour calls for a constant improvement and learning to fit into the environment. Therefore, highly prosocial individuals often opt for aggression despite the stabilization of behaviour over time. The inadequacy of experiments hampers the identification of causal effects despite the presence of multiple risk factors.

References

McCullough, M. (2008). Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct. Jossey-Bass. Chapters 5 & 7

McCullough, M. E., & Tabak, B. A. (2010). Prosocial Behavior. Advanced Social Psychology, Oxford, New York.