Social mindfulness: Prosocial the active way

Abstract

Prosociality is a central topic in positive psychology. An important but under-studied distinction can be made between active and reactive expressions. We suggest that the novel construct of social mindfulness represents active rather than reactive prosociality. Across four studies (N = 2,594), including a multi-wave representative sample spanning six years, social mindfulness is found to correlate with personality traits associated with prosocial and/or antisocial behavior. We find positive associations with empathy, social value orientation, and general prosocial behavior, and negative associations with moral disengagement and narcissism. Importantly, social mindfulness emerges as an active rather than a reactive characteristic that is more strongly related to HEXACO honesty-humility (active cooperation) than to HEXACO agreeableness (reactive cooperation). The association between social mindfulness and honesty-humility was found across measures six years apart. Given the well-established link between prosociality and wellbeing, emphasizing social mindfulness may be a good start to promote the latter. ARTICLE HISTORY

Objections to the HEXACO Model of Personality Structure—and why those Objections Fail

“…For example, Honesty‐Humility predicts giving in the dictator game (better than the Big Five do; see meta‐analysis by Thielmann, Spadaro, & Balliet, )—and in that game, most people give less than half of the money. Honesty‐Humility also predicts ‘social mindfulness’—that is, the tendency to act in a way that allows others to choose what they prefer—even though most people are not entirely socially mindful (Mischkowski, Thielmann, & Glöckner, ; van Doesum et al, ; van Doesum, van Lange, & van Lange, ). And as a more spectacular example, very few people have donated a kidney to a stranger, but once again, those who have done so tend to be high in Honesty‐Humility, which is the best HEXACO factor predictor of this kind of prosociality (Maynard, ).…”

Open Peer Commentary and Author's Response

“…This comment gives the impression that Honesty-Humility might predict only antisocial behaviors, and not prosocial behaviors. We reiterate here that Honesty-Humility does predict non-questionnaire measures of prosocial behaviors, and there's no evidence that Big Five Agreeableness predicts such behaviors better than does Honesty-Humility; the tendency thus far seems to be the other way around (see Thielmann, Spadaro, & Balliet, 2020;Van Doesum et al, 2020). In addition, Maynard (2019) examined kidney donors' personality using the HEXACO facet scales, and found that kidney donors tended to score high (relative to respondents in a large online sample) on the Honesty-Humility facet scales.…”

“…First, due to the differentiation of Honesty–Humility and Agreeableness, the HEXACO model clearly outweighs the Big Five—particularly Big Five Agreeableness—in accounting for prosocial behavior across different classes of social situations providing different affordances for behavior. Specifically, meta–analytic evidence (Thielmann et al, 2020) shows that whereas Honesty–Humility predicts behavior in situations (primarily) providing a possibility for exploitation, Agreeableness predicts behavior in situations (primarily) providing a possibility for reciprocity. Big Five Agreeableness, in turn, yielded comparably weak relations with prosocial behavior in all situations.…”

“…That is, not only are correlations between Agreeableness and such criteria smaller than for Honesty–Humility and exploitation–related criteria (e.g. Thielmann et al, 2020), there are also only few studies available using the HEXACO model to predict criteria in the realm of obstruction as compared to criteria in the realm of other outcome domains (Zettler et al, 2020).…”

“…accepting unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game). In contrast, Big Five Agreeableness showed intermediate and comparatively weak associations in both situations (Thielmann et al, 2020).…”