The Emergency of Prosociality: A Developmental Perspective on Altruism and Other Prosocial Behavior in the Face of Disaster

Development of Prosocial Behavior

Prosocial behavior emerges in early childhood. Infants as young as 3 months prefer to watch and touch puppets that help rather than hinder each other, which suggests an early preference for prosocial rather than antisocial others (Hamlin & Wynn, 2011). Prosocial behaviors—and specifically, helping, sharing, and comforting—are observed in straightforward situations that do not require explicit cuing from adults at the end of the first year of life, and in children as young as age 18 months, these behaviors are observed in more complex situations, in which other people’s needs must be inferred (Over & Carpenter, 2009; Warneken & Tomasello, 2007). The distinct developmental trajectories put forward in the three-pronged helping, sharing, and comforting model appear early in life. Infants’ helping, for example, is unrelated to sharing and comforting observed at age 5, and performance on tasks that assess one of these behaviors tends to be uncorrelated with performance on tasks that assess the others (Dunfield & Kuhlmeier, 2013; Paulus et al., 2015). As a whole, however, helping, sharing, and comforting increase throughout early and middle childhood, driven by factors including developments in moral reasoning (Malti et al., 2016).

In early adolescence, prosocial behavior tends to decrease before it increases again, driven by emotional regulation, empathic concern, and perspective taking (Carlo et al., 2015; Padilla-Walker & Christensen, 2011). Family context influences subsequent prosociality: Having a greater say in how relations and emotions are managed in one’s family is related to a more positive prosocial trajectory in later years and to greater civic involvement in community organizations in early adulthood (Kanacri et al., 2014). Engaging in helping behavior toward one’s own community also appears to increase the frequency of discussions with family and peers and to foster overall adjustment, a sense of identity, and self-efficacy (Pancer et al., 2007). Prosocial behavior measured using a donation game was found to increase throughout adulthood, mediated by increases in empathic concern (Sze et al., 2012).

The development of prosocial behavior throughout the life span tends to be studied through laboratory testing or, more rarely, naturalistic observations. In order to obtain generalizable findings, researchers voluntarily use these approaches that minimize contextual factors that may influence subsequent actions. Emergency situations, however, include an array of context-specific factors and consequences that affect behavior. In the next sections, we provide illustrations of prosocial behavior in crisis situations, discuss contextual factors that may hinder or support it, and illustrate how the helping-sharing-comforting model can be adapted to emergencies.

Prosocial Behavior in an Emergency Context

Prosocial behavior observed in children

Youths engage in prosocial behavior not only in laboratory paradigms, but also when confronted with a variety of emergency situations. For instance, a study using a scale-based instrument to assess prosocial behavior indicated that children in a wartime context display more prosocial behavior than those unexposed to violence (Macksoud & Aber, 1996). Another study showed that children also tend to provide spontaneous material support, informational help, and emotional support (e.g., consoling other people or inquiring about their health) when confronted with natural disasters (Bokszczanin, 2012). However, because longitudinal studies have been few, little is known about how these behaviors evolve over time. In one rare study, Li et al. (2013) found that children’s altruistic tendencies measured in a donation game returned to baseline levels several months after exposure to a natural disaster.

A significant amount of research has examined how contextual factors in emergencies (i.e., causes, timeline, and geographic extent) affect children’s psychological outcomes (Fig. 1). Negative psychological outcomes include posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, generalized anxiety, and behavior problems (Adams et al., 2014; Rubens et al., 2018). Displacement from home and school, loss of home or damage to it, breakdowns in supportive networks, increased risk of abuse and neglect, poverty, and preexisting mental-health symptoms increase a child’s risk for experiencing psychological distress (Adams et al., 2014; Pfefferbaum et al., 2015). Although many young people experience psychological distress after an emergency, they may also adapt to the situation when specific factors are in place. These factors promote community-level and individual-level resilience, or “the capacity of a system to anticipate, adapt, and reorganize itself under conditions of adversity in ways that promote and sustain its successful functioning” (Ungar, 2018, p. 1). Protective factors that can mitigate negative psychological outcomes in emergency settings include both external factors, such as support from peers and caregivers, and individual factors, including adaptive coping, emotion regulation, perceived sense of control, and self-esteem (Lengua et al., 2005; Masten & Narayan, 2012; Pfefferbaum et al., 2015). These factors may help support the emergence of prosocial behavior in addition to reducing adverse outcomes (Fig. 1; Masten & Narayan, 2012). For example, one study found that greater community acceptance and sense of belonging predicted more prosocial attitudes among children affected by war and involved in fighting (Betancourt et al., 2013).

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Fig. 1.

Proposed model of emergency contexts and their psychological consequences, including prosocial behavior. Factors that increase vulnerability foster negative consequences and mitigate positive ones, whereas factors that are protective and supportive mitigate negative consequences and foster positive ones.

Specific interventions designed to help children within emergency contexts can be effective in supporting and increasing prosocial behavior: In the aftermath of a tornado, Powell and Thompson (2016) found that a psychoeducation and solution-focused program delivered to children in a small-group setting led to greater improvements in prosocial behavior (measured with scale items on helping, sharing, and comforting), compared with a control treatment. As a whole, altruism and other prosocial behaviors, both observed and encouraged during emergency situations, echo the distinct trajectories described in the developmental literature (Bokszczanin, 2012) and observed in typical contexts and play a key role in positive outcomes for affected children.

Prosocial behavior displayed by adults

Despite the common belief that adults generally engage in self-preservative behavior in the face of danger, research shows that perception of danger is largely associated with subsequent prosociality. Two recent examples highlight adults’ prosocial behavior in life-threatening situations. A recent study analyzed interviews with survivors of the mass shooting at Bataclan, a concert hall in France, in 2015 (Dezecache et al., 2021). Prosocial behavior included helping (providing instrumental help for egress), sharing (providing information about shooters’ behavior and sharing physical space to hide), and comforting (providing emotional reassurance). Further analysis suggested that the bulk of these behaviors likely reflected altruism, providing benefits to other people at a cost to oneself.

Another recent study examined court testimony from direct witnesses of the sinking of the Costa Concordia cruise ship in Italy in 2012 (Bartolucci et al., 2021). Most passengers decided to evacuate, against crew instructions. Despite a context that could have promoted competitive behavior (perceived rarity of lifeboats), prosocial behavior, including sharing crucial information and providing assistance to fellow passengers, was commonly reported (Bartolucci et al., 2021).

Research has shown that prosociality is generally very common in the aftermath of an emergency regardless of the emergency’s context, duration, and impact. The feeling of a shared common fate among victims appears to be critical in shaping prosocial behavior in a variety of emergency situations, from bombings to earthquakes (Drury et al., 2009, 2016). What happens when physical and emotional support cannot be provided in the traditional ways? Epidemics and pandemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic, highlight that humans can adapt their prosocial behavior to environmental and contextual constraints, as illustrated in Figure 2.

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Fig. 2.

Changes in individuals’ prosocial behavior in an epidemic, viewed through the lens of Dunfield and Kuhlmeier’s (2013) developmental model of three main types of prosocial behavior. Traditional forms of prosocial behavior may be interrupted or modified, and those that remain feasible may increase.

Immediate prosocial behavior displayed by individuals during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020 involved spontaneous acts of helping with daily tasks as well as comforting by showing support for essential workers through collective behaviors (e.g., clapping). Despite the lack of typical in-person social contact, interactions took place via social networks. These interactions included humor-based content driven by personal coping mechanisms and attempts to lower negative affect in other people (Amici, 2020).

The initial burst of compassion in an emergency is often referred to as a postdisaster utopia (e.g., Fritz, 1961), but the protracted nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has provided the opportunity to study prosocial behavior in the longer term. From a theoretical point of view, the pandemic has enriched the notion of what it means to act prosocially: In-person prosocial comforting was replaced by prosocial protection, as physical distancing became a new way of helping. This long-haul prosocial behavior appears to be associated with a heightened sense of social responsibility (Alvis et al., 2020). Contextual factors, however, have affected prosociality, as was found in previous research. Compared with adolescents from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds exhibited lower levels of prosocial behavior in 2019, and this difference grew larger in 2020. Having a family member who worked in contact with COVID-19 or contracted the virus further widened this gap (Terrier et al., 2021). These findings highlight the importance of taking context-related specifics into account when adopting a theoretical model of behavior.

Discussion and Implications

Emergency situations are intrinsically uncertain and have far-reaching material, economic, and psychological consequences. Both children and adults engage in prosocial behavior throughout crises. Although some context-specific factors, including those listed earlier in this review, lead to negative psychological outcomes and may hinder prosociality, others, such as strong community bonds and targeted interventions, bolster individuals and encourage altruistic and other prosocial behavior.

Dunfield and Kuhlmeier’s (2013) developmental framework of prosociality, in which helping, sharing, and comforting are independent components, can be applied to emergency situations and is not limited to childhood. We suggest that this model could be used to help professionals working with affected communities to better categorize prosocial behavior observed in a crisis situation, pinpoint which type of behaviors may be lacking compared with before the crisis, and subsequently determine what type of support or intervention may be best suited to encourage those missing behaviors on the individual and community levels.

This model is also useful because it puts novel forms of prosocial behavior during emergencies (i.e., behaviors that differ from or add to those traditionally labeled as helping, sharing, or comforting in typical contexts) in clearer view. Individuals respond to fellow victims’ negative states by providing instrumental help, sharing tangible and intangible assets, and providing emotional support appropriate to a situation’s specific context. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a timely example of how contextual specifics shape prosocial action and give rise to new behaviors that may have been hard to predict in a typical setting. This example illustrates that the three-pronged model of prosocial behavior is dynamic and can be enriched through field observation. In turn, an enriched model may provide new pathways for assessing an even more diverse set of prosocial behaviors in controlled settings.

The examples we selected also illustrate that considering research from clinical psychology, social psychology, and social work can foster a greater understanding of prosocial behavior in emergencies (Bartolucci et al., 2021; Lengua et al., 2005; Masten, 2021; Powell & Thompson, 2016). The use of a dynamic model, sustained both by laboratory results in developmental studies and by field results in a variety of disaster contexts, could assist in developing protective in situ interventions that target specific subtypes of prosocial behavior in emergency situations.

Given increasing global instability, however, in situ interventions may not be sufficient to foster long-lasting prosociality. Findings on long-term prosocial behavior in the wake of an emergency offer contrasting results depending on the context (e.g., natural disaster, war) and the type of prosocial behavior measured (e.g., sharing, instrumental helping, or community support), and provide no clear picture of how stable these behaviors actually are over time (Hartman & Morse, 2020; Li et al., 2013). Instant unity in the aftermath of a disaster is often followed by low levels of perceived social support within the affected community in the subsequent 15 to 18 months (Kaniasty & Norris, 2004). Additionally, despite the rare cases in which prosocial behavior has been shown to increase after in-school social-emotional learning programs for children and adolescents (see Caprara et al., 2014, for positive increases but Chan et al., 2021, for an opposite finding), the transfer from typical situations to emergencies remains untested.

Future research should address how to implement preventive prosocial learning and assess its efficacy in the field. This perspective goes hand in hand with a multilevel approach to children’s resilience in emergency situations (Masten, 2021). Given the increasing prevalence of disasters, communities have a role to play in implementing effective disaster-preparedness programs as well as interventions that preemptively support children’s and adolescents’ resilience, including interventions targeting prosociality. The helping, sharing, and comforting model of prosocial behavior may assist psychology professionals in developing practical interventions that cover a fuller spectrum of prosocial behaviors, with the goal of preparing future generations and strengthening communities.

Recommended Reading

Dunfield, K. A., & Kuhlmeier, V. A. (2013). (See References). Presents a comprehensive and useful classification of prosocial behavior that is based on child development research and can be used to understand and categorize helping, sharing, and comforting actions by both children and adults in typical as well as emergency situations.

Li, Y., Li, H., Decety, J., & Lee, K. (2013). (See References). Reports a unique and informative study using laboratory measures of children’s altruism before and after an earthquake.

Masten, A. S. (2021). (See References). Presents a contemporary approach to resilience that highlights the importance of family, school, community, and policy in helping children adapt to disaster situations.