Who helps when – and why?: Individual differences, situational factors and psychological mechanisms in prosocial decision making

The symposium is arranged by the Swedish National Committee for Psychological Sciences

What happens when we face the decision of whether or not to help, or how to allocate resources when it is not possible to help everyone? In this symposium, we will approach prosocial decision making from three perspectives. (1) Individual differences – Can we predict people’s helping decisions based on their demographics, personality and values/worldviews? (2) Situational factors – To what extent does the problem at hand (e.g. natural disaster or civil war) or the characteristics of the victims (e.g. children or adults in need) influence helping? (3) Psychological mechanisms – What kinds of feelings, thoughts and beliefs motivate us to help, and do we help more when making decisions intuitively or when using a more analytical decision process? The symposium includes researchers from different disciplines who all study prosocial decision making empirically. It will reveal recent developments in contemporary helping research, which should appeal to not only researchers but also those who work in the charitable sector, policy makers and the general public.

Speakers