Social Psychology: Prosocial Behavior
Social psychology is one of the wide topics in sociology that have been widely studied. Social psychology is the study of human behavior in a social context. Stangor (2013) has described social psychology as the scientific study of how people think, feel and behave around people and how people’s feelings, thoughts and behaviors are influenced by these people. It aims at studying and explaining how individual personalities change due to social groups. Social psychology helps one understand how individuals fit in the society. Social psychology exists in our daily life. When we make friends, when we argue with friends, how we live with people and relate with them, are all examples of social psychology. There are different study areas in social psychology and they are; prosocial behaviors, prejudice, discrimination and diversity, self and social behavior, social influence, cultural links, psychology of gender and violence, conflict resolution and peace. In this paper I will discuss prosocial behavior.
Prosocial behavior is the opposite of anti-social behavior. While anti-social people will exclude themselves from the society, are selfish and don’t contribute much in conversations, prosocial people are philanthropic, obedient and cooperate with others. Prosocial behavior has been described as the phenomenon where people help each other, either willingly or with a hidden motive. Prosocial behavior should not be confused with altruism, which is helping others with the motive of the well-being of the affected person. Altruism is a prosocial behavior but prosocial behavior is not altruism.
Prosocial behavior studies began after the murder of a young woman in New York as her neighbors watched. In 1964, a young lady aged 28, was stabbed. She was Catherine Susan “Kitty” Genovese. Kitty worked in a bar and when she was returning home in