Individual Orientations to Prosocial Behavior¹

Findings relating personality and demographic variables to prosocial behavior are reviewed. Original research results are then presented. These results show that different personal dispositions are related to various forms of prosocial behavior in different ways. The traditional search for general correlates of prosocial behavior is viewed as shortsighted. Attention is drawn to the relation of situational payoffs to personal dispositions, interactions among predictors, assessment of independence among predictors, and to situational shifts in personality.