The Influence Of Social Comparison On Prosocial Behavior

Prosocial behavior is a kind of positive social behavior, it can give others the interests and benefits in the social context, including charitable donations, volunteer activities and so on. Social comparison is a kind of common psychological process, include Upward comparison, Parallel comparison and Downward comparison, use the social interaction game to set social comparison situation, and lead to the social comparison effects on social cognition and behavior. Previous research has shown that the parallel comparison can affect individual prosocial behavior, participant usually pay more attention on the information of the high status individual in the upward comparison, and do the similar behavior with the high status individual, moving closer to they. This study combine prosocial behavior and social comparison, adopt the experimental method, discusses the the influence of upward comparison and downward comparison about charitable donations and volunteer activities, also discusses the personality traits which play an important role in this process.This study include two parts. In the first study, the number of subjects are40, we use the social interaction game to set the social comparison situation, the two kinds of experimental conditions are the upper comparison and the downward comparison, the experiment task is prosocial behavior decision-making task, to explore the influence of social comparison on prosocial behavior decision-making. In the second study, the number of subjects are40, we use the quality rating scale to measure the cognition of the different status of individual, to reveal the influence of personality traits on prosocial behavior. Research shows that social comparison has a similar effect in the charitable donations and the volunteer activities, the main conclusions are:1. The status of others will affect individual prosocial behavior decision-making. As they see the decision informations of low status others, they decision ratio is more higher, they are willing to make a pro-social behavior.2. The decision results will affect individual prosocial behavior decision-making. As they see the "yes" decision-making informations, they decision ratio and decision degree are more higher, they are willing to make a pro-social behavior. 3. The status and decision result of others can affect individual prosocial behavior decisions together.They decision-making ratio and degree are more susceptible to high statue others, the change of decision results of high status individual will play a greater influence on the prosocial behavior decision-making ratio and degree of the participant.4. The personality traits of high status individual (likability, powerfulness, and morality) can affect the prosocial behavior decision-making.In the charity donations decision-making task, the participants are more susceptible to high statue others who performed very well in powerfulness and likability, the change of decision results of high status who is more power and nice are more likely to affect participants’decision degree.In the volunteer activities decision-making task, the participants are more susceptible to high statue others who performed very well in morality and likability, the change of decision results of high status who is more moral and nice are more likely to affect participants’decision degree.