Positive Psychology: Prosocial Behavior

PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

A broad range of actions intended to benefit one or more people other than oneself—behaviors such as helping, comforting, sharing and cooperation.

Altruism

• Actions or behavior that is intended to benefit another person.

• Promoting another person’s sense of well-being

  

• Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another

  • Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis: Empathy for another person leads to a greater likelihood of helping that person
  • Egotism: The motive to pursue some sort of personal gain or benefit through targeted behavior
  • Egotism-Motivated Altruism:
  • Helping others with the conscious motive of:
    • Self-benefit
    • Public praise
    • Monetary rewards

  

• Measures of Altruism:

  • Altruistic Personality Scale (Rushton, J. P., Chrisjohn, R.D., & Fekken, G. C.,1981)
  • Prosocial Behavior Scale (Caprara & Pastorelli, 1993)
  • Helping Attitude Scale (Nickell, G.,1998)

• How can we cultivate altruism?

  • You will not get altruism just by wishing for it. You need to train. You can do it twenty minutes a day, and you can do it a few seconds every hour. You stop, you look around, and whomever you see, you say, “May that person be happy. May that person flourish.”

• Look for people that could use a helping hand.

• The key is to surprise other people and do them favors that they are not expect fare well in endeavoring

• Answer the following questions:

  • Situation given
  • How did you approach the person?
  • How did the person react to the situation?
  • What were the:
  • Feelings
  • Realizations

Forgiveness

• A freeing from a negative attachment to the source of the transgression (Thompson, 2003)
• Target of forgiveness:
  • Self
  • Other person
  • Situation
• Willingness to abandon one’s right to resent negative judgment and indifferent behavior toward one who unjustly beset us, while showing love, gratitude and generosity.
• Forgiveness is a person to person transaction
• Decision-Based Forgiveness
  • Willful decision-making and forgiveness that is based on will power
  • Cognitive letting go of resentment and bitterness and need for vengeance.
  • Does not account for hurt feelings which often persist after the choice was made.
  • Forgiveness here is viewed as an act of will, a choice to let go or to hold
• Emotional Forgiveness
  • Worthington (2006) defined true forgiveness as something that happens only when emotional forgiveness can occur because emotional replacement is necessary.
  • When emotional forgiveness is complete, the person will have replaced negative emotions associated with unforgiveness like anger, resentment, and vengefulness with positive emotions like empathy, compassion, sympathy, and altruistic love
• Forgiveness as a Process
  • All three aspects of forgiveness need to change, namely cognitive, affective, and behavioral, if a person is to fully forgive.
  • They argue that a person must have a form of emotional readiness to forgive before they are likely to be receptive to forgiving.
  • The process of forgiveness involves some of the following: cultivating acceptance and empathy, perspective taking, and benefit finding
• What Forgiveness is NOT
  • Forgiveness is not pardoning, condoning, excusing an offense or forgetting about it.
  • It is also not the same as reconciliation although that can occur as part of the forgiveness process
  • ^^Tolerating^^ the situation or any form of denial and suppression of emotions that create more stress are also not effective forms of coping and forgiving.
  • ^^Pardoning^^ is very much a legal concept like the administration of justice and also does not constitute forgiveness.
  • ^^Condoning^^ which justifies the offense, and excusing which implies shifting the blame, are no more than forms of self-deception that encourage a deeper sense of victimhood
• True forgiveness, is an individual and internal process
• Coping Theory of Forgiveness
  • R = Recall the Hurt
  • E = Empathize with the Person Who Hurt You
  • A = Give an Altruistic Gift of Forgiveness
  • C = Commit to the Emotional Forgiveness That Was Experienced
  • H = Hold on to Forgiveness When Doubts Arise (Worthington, 2006)
• Measures of Forgiveness
  • Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Scale (McCullough, M. E., Rachal, K. C., Sandage, S. J., Worthington, E. L., Jr., Brown, S. W., & Hight, T. L.,1998)
  • Trait Forgivingness Scale (TFS, 2005)
  • Decisional Forgiveness Scale and Emotional Forgiveness Scale (2007)
• Benefits of Forgiveness
  • Physical health (Harris & Thoresen, 2005; Worthington & Scherer, 2004),
  • Mental health (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000; Toussaint & Webb, 2005)
  • Life satisfaction (e.g., Karremans, Van Lange, Ouwerkerk, & Kluwer, 2003)
  • Reduction in negative affect and depressive symptoms
  • Restoration of positive thinking
  • Restoration of relationships
  • Reduction in anxiety
  • Strengthened spirituality
  • Raised self-esteem
  • A greater sense of hope
  • Greater capacity for conflict management and
  • Greater ability to cope with stress and find relief.
• Think of a person or a situation you have difficulty forgiving (and forgetting). You may include yourself.
• Write a letter to the person (or situation) about your:
  • Feelings
  • Realizations
  • Action

Gratitude

• Being thankful for and appreciating the actions of another.
• Recognizing that one has received a positive outcome from another person who behaved in a manner that was costly to him, valuable to the recipient and intentionally rendered
• Kindness, generosity, gifts, beauty of giving and receiving
• Prized virtue across religious
• Strong motive for altruism, paying it forward
• Measures of Gratitude
  • Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Test (Watkins, 2003)
  • Gratitude Questionnaire (McCullough, 2002)
  • Appreciation Scale (Adler, Fagley, 2005)
• Cultivating Gratitude
  • Celebrate minor accomplishments (seeing the glass half full)
  • Share your appreciation with people
  • Volunteer
  • Regular prayer and meditation
  • Have a gratitude journal

Attachment, Love and Flourishing Relationships

• Purposeful Positive Relationship Behaviors

  • Attachment and love are necessary components of flourishing relationships, but they are not sufficient for the maintenance of relationships.

• Appetitive Processes

  • The promotion of positive relationship behaviors

• Person-growing relationships

  • Relationships that promote optimal functioning for BOTH participants

• Components of a Successful Relationship

  • Attachment System
  • The sum of emotional and physical proximity seeking behaviors toward the caregiver.
  • Developed by the child as a result of adaptive and maladaptive parent behaviors.
  • Regulates the pattern of attachment characteristic of the child
  • Adaptive Parental Behaviors: Parents’ appropriate responsiveness to a child’s behavioral cues (eg. smiling)
  • Maladaptive Parental Behaviors: Chaotic, unplanned attempts to meet the child's needs.

  

• Adult Attachment: Perspectives on attachment are carried over through childhood, adolescent to adulthood in the form of internal working model of self and others

Love

• Agape – the bestowal of love by the divine

• Nomos – submission and obedience to the divine

• Eros – romantic love, including the search and possession for something beautiful

• Philia – love characterized by affection and friendship

• Triangular Theory of Love

  • All types of love are made up of different combinations of passion, intimacy and commitment. Robert Sternberg

  

• Self-Expansion Theory of Love

  • Arthur and Elaine Aron (1996)
  • Humans have a basic motivation to expand the self
  • Emotions, cognitions and behaviors of love fuel such self-expansion
  • People get into relationships to try and expand their identities
  • Success of a relationship depends on the ability of the relationship to expand partner’s experiences and sense of self

• Flourishing Relationships

  • Closeness or the satisfaction and relationship behaviors that contribute to one another’s goals in life maybe enhanced
  • Interpersonal connection stimulates brain activity that helps to create the regulatory systems that lead to the development of empathy, enjoyment of positive interactions
  • A good relationship that continues to get better due to concerted effort of both partners

• Minding

  • The reciprocal knowing process involving the non-stop interrelated thoughts, feelings and behaviors of persons in relationships
  • Primary component: knowing and being known

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• What makes relationships work?
  • Appetitive process: The promotion of positive relationship behaviors
  • Aversive process: Eliminating negative relationship patterns

Bottom line:

The positive psychology of close relationships builds on the work of the past (knowledge of attachment style and love), focus on appetitive process and states an agenda for the future—an agenda that will produce research that will tell the story of flourishing relationships.

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