Personality and Prosocial Behavior: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis

Abstract

We investigate the effect of personality on prosocial behavior in a Bayesian multilevel meta-analysis (MLMA) of 15 published, interdisciplinary experimental studies. With data from the 15 studies constituting nearly 2500 individual observations, we find that the Big Five traits of Agreeableness and Openness are significantly and positively associated with prosocial behavior, while none of the other three traits are. These results are robust to a number of different model specifications and operationalizations of prosociality, and they greatly clarify the contradictory findings in the literature on the relationship between personality and prosocial behavior. Though previous research has indicated that incentivized experiments result in reduced prosocial behavior, we find no evidence that monetary incentivization of participants affects prosocial tendencies. By leveraging individual observations from multiple studies and explicitly modeling the multilevel structure of the data, MLMA permits the simultaneous estimation of study- and individual-level effects. The Bayesian approach allows us to estimate study-level effects in an unbiased and efficient manner, even with a relatively small number of studies. We conclude by discussing the limitations of our study and the advantages and disadvantages of the MLMA method.

‘Be the match’. Predictors of decisions concerning registration in potential bone marrow donor registry in a group of Polish young adults as an example of prosocial behaviour

“…Personality Studies confirm the thesis concerning the central role of agreeableness among the personality traits triggering prosocial behaviours (here, in the form of the decision to register as a PBMD), identified as a predictor of prosocial behaviours by the researchers (Graziano and Eisenberg 1997;Bekkers 2006;Habashi et al 2016;Hill 2016;Zhao et al 2016;Kline et al 2017). Nevertheless, in the examined group, conscientiousness also occurred to be the predictor of primary importance for making the decision to register as a PBMD, the role of which so far in moderation of prosocial behaviours, including decisions to donate has been equivocal.…”

“…3 Algorithm of construction of decision tree CART concerning registration as PBMDvariables ordered according to their normalized importance score for tree Demir and Kumkale (2013). This is in contrast with the results obtained by Kline et al (2017), where conscientiousness was not related with prosocial behaviours, and Brown and Taylor (2015), who defined the traits of conscientiousness and neuroticim as even inversely correlated with behaviours of charity and philantrophic type (e.g., donating money and decisions to provide assistance). Nevertheless, Hill (2016), while indicating the lack of a relationship between conscientiousness and attitudes towards post-mortem organ donation and intentions to donate, suggests that this variable requires further studies (especially in the group of the young, the most desired donors), which is performed in the presented study.…”

“…Personality Mixed linear model association analysis (MLMA) performed on aggregated data from 15 items, which constitute nearly 2500 individual observations, shows that the traits of the Big Five, such as agreeableness and openness to experience are significantly and positively related with prosocial behaviour, whereas none of the three remaining traits are so related (Kline et al 2017). Another study demonstrated that agreeableness was the measure of personality most closely associated with positive emotional reactions to the victims in need of assistance, and with later decisions of providing assistance to these persons (Habashi et al 2016).…”

<p>Big Five Personality Traits and Gratitude: The Role of Emotional Intelligence</p>

“…Similarly, openness to experience together with agreeableness are considered conceptually and empirically associated with prosocial behavior. 95 The existing literature 96 , 97 suggests that open and agreeable people are interpersonally trusting and susceptible to a view of positive outcomes in life. Since gratitude is a prosocial trait itself 98 which is felt in the context of receiving good things, it is therefore reasonable that it correlates with other prosocial traits.…”

Effect of Religiosity and Spirituality on Employees Prosocial Behavior With the Mediatory Role of Humanism and Ethics

“…It has been seen that mostly lower-class individuals are found to be more prosocial than the upper class because of their greater commitment to equalitarian views and feelings of compassion (Piff et al, 2010). However, acting prosocially, the role of personality has a strong impact on individuals' life (Kline et al, 2017) investigate the impact of personality on prosocial behavior by multi-level meta-analysis (MLMA) method and found that agreeableness and openness of big five traits have a significant impact. The main thing that motivates prosocial behavior is the fundamental personal need of living a meaningful life, therefore (Klein, N., 2017).…”