Original Article
In Search of the Prosocial Personality Personality Traits as Predictors of Prosociality and Prosocial Behavior Anja Wertag1 and Denis Bratko2 1
Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb, Croatia
2
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract: Prosocial behavior is intended to benefit others rather than oneself and is positively linked to personality traits such as Agreeableness and Honesty-Humility, and usually negatively to the Dark Triad traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy). However, a significant proportion of the research in this area is conducted solely on self-report measures of prosocial behavior. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between prosociality and the basic (i.e., HEXACO) and dark personality traits, comparing their contribution in predicting both self-reported prosociality and prosocial behavior. Results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that the Dark Triad traits explain prosociality and prosocial behavior above and beyond the HEXACO traits, emphasizing the importance of the Dark Triad in the personality space. Keywords: personality, prosociality, prosocial behavior, Dark Triad, HEXACO
Prosocial behavior covers a broad range of actions that are intended to benefit others rather than oneself, such as cooperating, sharing, giving, helping, and comforting others (Batson & Powell, 2003). In order to organize research related to prosocial behavior, Penner, Dovidio, Piliavin, and Schroeder (2005) proposed a multilevel perspective of analyzing and understanding prosocial behavior. The meso level refers to studying helper–recipient dyads in specific situations and providing information on different forms of prosocial behavior as well as some circumstantial and situational factors that have an impact on the occurrence of prosocial behavior. The macro level focuses on prosocial actions within the context of groups, while the micro level is primarily concerned with origins of prosocial tendencies and etiology of individual differences in these tendencies. If prosociality is observed within the personality space, “among the major dimensions of the Big Five, Agreeableness is the single best predictor of prosocial tendencies and behavior” (Graziano & Habashi, 2015, pp. 214–242), which is not surprising, given that it encompasses characteristics such as forgiveness, generosity, helpfulness, and sympathy. However, Agreeableness is not a universal predictor of all forms of prosocial tendencies (Graziano & Habashi, 2015), and the empirical evidence concerning relations between these two is somewhat mixed. The recently developed HEXACO model accommodates important constructs that are beyond the space of the Big Five model, including different forms of altruism (for
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details, see Ashton & Lee, 2007). Namely, while three dimensions of the HEXACO model are close analogues (i.e., Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience) and the other two dimensions roughly correspond to rotated variants of their Big Five counterparts (i.e., Emotionality and Agreeableness), the biggest novelty of the HEXACO model is the sixth dimension of HonestyHumility. Honesty-Humility “represents the tendency to be fair and genuine in dealing with others, in the sense of cooperating with others even when one might exploit them without suffering retaliation” (Ashton & Lee, 2007, p. 156), while in this model, Agreeableness “represents the tendency to be forgiving and tolerant to others, in the sense of cooperating with others even when one might be suffering from exploitation” (Ashton & Lee, 2007, p. 156). Although Honesty-Humility explicitly contrasts prosocial and antisocial tendencies, Ashton and Lee (2007) propose that the general altruistic versus general antagonistic orientation is located between Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness, and Emotionality factors. More specifically, Emotionality is related to kin altruism (being related to attachment and empathy toward close others), while Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness are related to different forms of reciprocal altruism: Honesty-Humility to active, and Agreeableness to reactive cooperation (Ashton & Lee, 2007; Hilbig, Zettler, Leist, & Heydasch, 2013). On the other hand, there are some personality traits that are linked to being less likely to engage in helping behavior,
Journal of Individual Differences (2019), 40(1), 55–62 https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000276
