Do negative emotional experiences facilitate or hinder prosocial behaviour?

Abstract

While positive emotions are widely believed to drive prosocial behaviour, the role of negative emotions remains unclear. This research investigates the relationships between negative emotional experiences - anger, guilt, sadness, fear, and negative affect - and prosocial behaviour across three complementary studies. Study 1 examined the associations of anger, guilt, sadness, and fear with helping Ukrainian refugees in Poland (N = 365) during the early weeks of Russia's invasion but found no significant effect. Study 2 used a laboratory experiment (N = 203) to test the impact of anger, sadness, fear, and guilt on two prosocial actions - financial donations and helping the experimenter. Despite successful emotion induction, negative emotions had no effect. Study 3 employed a diary methodology, collecting 943 observations from 148 participants over seven days, to examine daily negative affect and prosocial behaviour. Multilevel modelling revealed no statistically significant associations between negative affect on a given or previous day and daily prosocial behaviour. Across all three studies, negative emotions and negative affect consistently showed no statistically significant relationships with prosocial behaviour. These findings challenge the theories emphasising the motivational role of negative emotions in helping actions, suggesting that trait prosocialness may shape helping behaviour more than transient emotional experiences.