Prosocial behaviour

Irene Bruna Seu

pp. 345-364

in: Brendan Gough (ed), The Palgrave handbook of critical social psychology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

This chapter critically reviews existing socio-psychological literature on prosocial behaviour, with a focus on helping in response to humanitarian communications, including giving to charity, as a case study.The author shows how mainstream social psychology's conceptualisation of the individual as self-contained and separate from their socio-historical context, its neglect of ideological and societal factors, and the restrictive impact of cognitive-experimental methods lead to a problematic disregard of crucial aspects of complex, conflicted and ambivalent prosocial behaviour in the humanitarian contexts.The chapter shows the benefits of a critical psychological approach to prosocial behaviour through the discussion of several studies on public responses to humanitarian and human rights communications.