Surprisingly Happy to Have Helped: Underestimating Prosociality Creates a Misplaced Barrier to Asking for Help

The Misprediction of Helpers in Comforting Situations and Its Mechanism

Background

As a prosocial behavior, comforting behavior can prompt individuals to provide emotional support to others. After the comforting behavior, the comforter may estimate the consoled individual's reaction, and this prediction will influence their future behavior. According to social cognition theory, competence dominates self-cognition, and warmth dominates the cognition of others, which impacts the prediction accuracy of comforters. They may overestimate the negative reaction of the consoled. This misprediction has also been confirmed for other prosocial behaviors, such as helping behavior and sharing behavior.

Methods

In this study, 337 Chinese college students were investigated by convenience sampling. Through one real-world experiment and three imaginary-situation experiments, this study explored the phenomenon, effects and causes of the comforter's misprediction in the comfort condition.

Results

SPSS 23.0 and statistical methods such as analysis of variance, an independent sample t-test and an intermediary test were used. The comforters overestimated the negative responses and underestimated the positive responses of the recipients, and the intensity of this misprediction increased in the comfort failure condition. The comforters' misprediction arose because the recipients were more concerned with the warmth dimension of the comforters, whereas the comforters were more inclined to focus on their own competence dimension.

Conclusion

The comforter's prediction of the consoled's response was more negative than the actual situation, and this misprediction was more obvious when the consolation failed, which can be explained by social cognition theory. This study provides an understanding of how to relieve the psychological stress of comforters.

Pursuing Safety in Social Connection: A Flexibly Fluid Perspective on Risk Regulation in Relationships

People are fundamentally motivated to be included in social connections that feel safe, connections where they are consistently cared for and protected, not hurt or exploited. Romantic relationships have long played a crucial role in satisfying this fundamental need. This article reconceptualizes the risk-regulation model to argue that people draw on experiences from inside and outside their romantic relationships to satisfy their fundamental need to feel safe depending on others. We first review the direct relational cues (i.e., a partner's affectionate touch, responsive versus unresponsive behavior, and relative power) and indirect cues (i.e., bodily sensations, collective value in the eyes of others, and living conditions) that signal the current safety of social connection and motivate people to connect to others or protect themselves against them. We then review how people's chronic capacity to trust in others controls their sensitivity and reactivity to the safety cues. The article concludes with future research directions.

Talking to strangers: Intention, competence, and opportunity

Despite having more opportunities than ever to connect with strangers, and much to gain from doing so, people often refrain from talking with, and listening to, strangers. We propose a framework that classifies obstacles to connecting with strangers into three categories concerning intention (underestimating the benefits of conversations), competence (misunderstanding how to appear likeable and competent in conversation), and opportunity (being constrained in access to a diverse set of strangers). To promote conversations among strangers, interventions have attempted to calibrate people's expectations, improve their communication, and create more opportunities for strangers to connect. We identify the need to better understand how miscalibrated beliefs emerge and are sustained, what contextual factors impact conversation likelihood, and how conversations evolve as relationships develop.

Childhood emotional but not physical or sexual maltreatment predicts prosocial behavior in late adolescence: A daily diary study

BACKGROUND

Childhood maltreatment (CM), including physical, emotional, and sexual maltreatment, is detrimental to adolescents' psychological and behavioral outcomes. However, most studies on the relationship between CM and prosocial behavior focused on the overall experience of CM. Since different forms of CM exert various influences on adolescents, it is essential to find out which form of CM has the strongest link with prosocial behavior and the underlying mechanism behind it to fully understand this relationship and design a specific intervention for promoting prosocial behavior.

OBJECTIVE

Guided by internal working model theory and hopelessness theory, this study aimed to investigate the connections of multiple forms of CM with prosocial behavior, and explore the mediating mechanism of gratitude from the perspective of the broaden-and-build theory through a 14-day daily diary study.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 240 Chinese late adolescents (217 females; M_age = 19.02, SD_age = 1.83) from a college volunteered for this study and completed questionnaires regarding CM, gratitude, and prosocial behavior.

METHODS

A multilevel regression analysis was conducted to investigate which form of CM was correlated to prosocial behavior, and a multilevel mediation analysis was applied to examine the underlying mechanism (i.e., gratitude) behind this relationship.

RESULTS

The results of the multilevel regression analysis showed that it was childhood emotional maltreatment, but not physical or sexual maltreatment that negatively predicted prosocial behavior. The results of the multilevel mediation analysis indicated that gratitude mediated the relationship between childhood emotional maltreatment and prosocial behavior.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings from the present study highlight the predictive effect of childhood emotional maltreatment on late adolescents' prosocial behavior and the mediating role of gratitude in this link.

Kindness in short supply: Evidence for inadequate prosocial input

In everyday life, people often have opportunities to improve others' lives, whether offering well-intentioned advice or complimenting someone on a job well done. These are opportunities to provide "prosocial input" (information intended to benefit others), including feedback, advice, compliments, and expressions of gratitude. Despite widespread evidence that giving prosocial input can improve the well-being of both givers and recipients, people sometimes hesitate to offer their input. The current paper documents when and why people fail to give prosocial input, noting that potential givers overestimate the costs of doing so (e.g., making recipients uncomfortable) and underestimate the benefits (e.g., being helpful) for at least four psychological reasons. Unfortunately, the reluctance to give prosocial input results in a short supply of kindness.