Opposite effects of social harm and help on prosocial behaviors: Behavioral and EEG studies

Abstract

Prosocial behaviors are fundamentally important for social harmony but vary across individuals with diverse experiences during development. We tested the hypothesis that receiving harms and helps from others during social interactions produce opposite (decreasing or increasing) effects on prosocial behaviors in four studies. We showed that a short experience of receiving social harms reduced both prosocial decision-making and affective empathy for others’ pain whereas a short experience of receiving social helps enhanced prosocial decision-making (Experiment 1). Social harms produced stronger effects on prosocial decision-making and subjective/electroencephalography measures of empathy related to inflictors who produced harms compared to irrelevant strangers (Experiments 2 and 3). Sustained experiences of receiving social helps were able to restore the impaired prosocial decision-making and empathy caused by a short experience of receiving social harms (Experiment 4). These findings indicate opposite relationships between prosocial behavior and social harm/help and suggest empathy as a potential intermediate psychological mechanism.