Associations between social class and prosocial behavior—defined broadly as action intended to help others—may vary as a function of contextual factors. Three studies examined how making prosocial actions public, versus private, moderates this association. In Study 1, participation in a public prosocial campaign was higher among upper than lower class individuals. In Studies 2 and 3, lower class individuals were more prosocial in a dictator game scenario in private than in public, whereas upper class individuals showed the reverse pattern. Follow-up analyses revealed the importance of reputational concerns for shaping class differences in prosociality: Specifically, higher class individuals reported that pride motivated their prosocial behavior more than lower class individuals, and this association partially accounted for class-based differences in prosociality in public versus private contexts. Together, these results suggest that unique strategies for connecting and relating to others develop based on one’s position in the class hierarchy.
BatsonC. D.DuncanB. D.AckermanP.BuckleyT.BirchK. (1981). Is empathic emotion a source of altruistic motivation?Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 40, 290.
2.
BauerD. J.PreacherK. J.GilK. M. (2006). Conceptualizing and testing random indirect effects and moderated mediation in multilevel models: New procedures and recommendations. Psychological methods, 11, 142.
3.
BianchiE. C.VohsK. D. (2016). Social class and social worlds: Income predicts the frequency and nature of social contact. Social Psychological and Personality Science. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/1948550616641472
4.
BoehmC. (2012). Moral origins: The evolution of virtue, altruism, and shame. New York, NY: Basic Books.
FerrisG. R.TreadwayD. C.KolodinskyR. W.HochwarterW. A.KacmarC. J.DouglasC.FrinkD. D. (2005). Development and validation of the political skill inventory. Journal of Management, 31, 126–152.
10.
FiskeA. P. (2002). Socio-moral emotions motivate action to sustain relationships. Self and Identity, 1, 169–175.
11.
FlynnF. J.ReagansR. E.AmanatullahE. T.AmesD. R. (2006). Helping one’s way to the top: Self-monitors achieve status by helping others and knowing who helps whom. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 1123.
12.
ForsytheR.HorowitzJ. L.SavinN. E.SeftonM. (1994). Fairness in simple bargaining experiments. Games and Economic Behavior, 6, 347–369.
13.
FowlerJ. H.KamC. D. (2007). Beyond the self: Social identity, altruism, and political participation. Journal of Politics, 69, 813–827.
14.
GoetzJ. L.KeltnerD.Simon-ThomasE. (2010). Compassion: An evolutionary analysis and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 351.
15.
GriskeviciusV.TyburJ. M.van den BerghB. (2010). Going green to be seen: Status, reputation, and conspicuous conservation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 392–404.
16.
GuinoteA.CotziaI.SandhuS.SiwaP. (2015). Social status modulates prosocial behavior and egalitarianism in preschool children and adults. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, 731–736.
17.
HartD.EdelsteinW. (1992). The relationship of self-understanding in childhood to social class, community type, and teacher-rated intellectual and social competence. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 23, 353–365.
18.
HollingsheadA. B. (1975). Four factor index of social position. Unpublished manuscript, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
19.
HorbergE. J.KrausM. W.KeltnerD. (2013). Pride displays communicate self-interest and support for meritocracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 24.
KorndorferM.EgloffB.SchmukleS. C. (2015). A large scale test of the effect of social class on prosocial behavior. PLoS One, 10, e0133193.
23.
KrausM. W.CoteS.KeltnerD. (2010). Social class, contextualism, and empathic accuracy, Psychological Science, 21, 1716–1723.
24.
KrausM. W.KeltnerD. (2009). Signs of socioeconomic status a thin-slicing approach. Psychological Science, 20, 99–106.
25.
KrausM. W.PiffP. K.Mendoza-DentonR.RheinschmidtM. L.KeltnerD. (2012). Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor. Psychological Review, 119, 546–572.
26.
KrausM. W.StephensN. M. (2012). A road map for an emerging psychology of social class. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6, 642–656.
27.
KusserowA. (2004). American individualisms: Child rearing and social class in three neighborhoods. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
28.
LareauA. (2011). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
MillerJ.KahleS.HastingsP. D. (2015). Roots and benefits of costly giving: Children who are more altruistic have greater autonomic flexibility and less family wealth. Psychological Science. Advanced online publication. doi:10.1177/0956797615578476
31.
MorrisS. B.DeShonR. P. (2002). Combining effect size estimates in meta-analysis with repeated measures and independent-groups designs. Psychological Methods, 7, 105.
32.
OakesJ. M.RossiP. H. (2003). The measurement of SES in health research: Current practice and steps toward a new approach. Social Science & Medicine, 56, 769–784.
PiffP. K.KrausM. W.CôtéS.ChengB. H.KeltnerD. (2010). Having less, giving more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 771–784.
35.
RandD. G.NowakM. A. (2013). Human cooperation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17, 413–425.
36.
RechtmanL.JordanH.WagnerL.HortonD. K.KayeW. (2014). Racial and Ethnic Differences across Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Cases from Three State and Eight Metropolitan Area Surveillance Projects (P7. 101). Neurology, 82, P7–P101.
37.
RitterR. S.PrestonJ. L.HernandezI. (2013). Happy tweets: Christians are happier, more socially connected, and less analytical than atheists on Twitter. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5, 243–249.
38.
SargeantA.WestD. C.FordJ. (2001). The role of perceptions in predicting donor value. Journal of Marketing Management, 17, 407–428.
39.
SaslowL. R.WillerR.FeinbergM.PiffP. K.ClarkK.KeltnerD.SaturnS. R. (2013). My brother’s keeper? Compassion predicts generosity more among less religious individuals. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4, 31–38.
40.
SchallerM.CialdiniR. B. (1988). The economics of empathic helping: Support for a mood management motive. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 24, 163–181.
SperberD.BaumardN. (2012). Moral reputation: An evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Mind & Language, 27, 495–518.
43.
StellarJ.ManzoV.KrausM. W.KeltnerD. (2012). Class and compassion: Socioeconomic factors predict responses to suffering. Emotion, 12, 449–459.
44.
TangneyJ. P. (Ed.). (2012). Self-conscious emotions. In LearyM. R.TangneyJ. P. (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (2nd ed., pp. 446–478). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
45.
TracyJ. L. (2010). Pride. In WeinerI.CraigheadW. E. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of psychology (4th ed., pp. 1284–1286). New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
46.
TrautmannS. T.van de KuilenG.ZeckhauserR. J. (2013). Social class and (un) ethical behavior a framework, with evidence from a large population sample. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 487–497.
47.
WeiningerE. B.LareauA. (2009). Paradoxical pathways: An ethnographic extension of Kohn’s findings on class and childrearing. Journal of Marriage and Family, 71, 680–695.
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
