Prosocial Motives, Emotions, and Behavior
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- ISBN 9781433805462
- Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 15 Oct 2009
- Publisher: American Psychological Association
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In recent years, psychological scientists' narrow focus on negative emotions and antisocial behavior has been broadened to include a panoply of positive emotions such as empathy, compassion, gratitude, and forgiveness and a new emphasis on prosocial, generous, altruistic behavior. At the same time, neuroscientists, primatologists, and evolutionary biologists have begun to identify the evolutionary and neurological roots of prosocial feelings and actions.
Research shows that human beings have an innate capacity for prosocial behavior, but the inclinations underlying such behavior can be blocked, inhibited, or overpowered by selfish, neurotic, or culturally engrained attitudes and values. Genes, personality, past social experiences, social and cultural identities, and contextual factors can all influence the degree to which human behavior is empathic, generous, and kind-or cruel, vindictive, and destructive.
Prosocial Motives, Emotions, and Behavior: The Better Angels of Our Nature, with a subtitle borrowed from an inaugural address by Abraham Lincoln, is a comprehensive examination, from a variety of perspectives, of the interplay of these influences.
The book is divided into five sections:
- Part I considers theoretical perspectives on prosocial behavior
- Part II illuminates the psychological processes that underlie prosocial behavior
- Part III focuses on specific prosocial emotions such as compassionate love, gratitude, and forgiveness
- Part IV examines prosocial behavior between individuals at the dyadic level and
- Part V investigates prosocial behavior at the societal level, with an emphasis on solving intractable conflicts and achieving desirable social change.
This simulating, wide-ranging volume is sure to be of great interest to psychologists, social scientists, and anyone with an interest in understanding and fostering prosocial behavior.
Phillip R. Shaver, PhD a social and personality psychologist, is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. Before moving there, he served on the faculties of Columbia University, New York University, University of Denver, and State University of New York at Buffalo. He has coauthored and coedited numerous books, including In Search of Intimacy Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes Measures of Political Attitudes Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, and Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change, and has published over 2 scholarly journal articles and book chapters. Shaver's research focuses on attachment, human motivation and emotion, close relationships, personality development, and the effects of meditation on behavior and the brain. He is a member of the editorial boards of Attachment and Human Development, Personal Relationships, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Emotion amp reg , and has served on grant review panels for the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. He has been executive officer of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and is a fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. Dr. Shaver received a Distinguished Career Award from the International Association for Relationship Research and has served as president of that organization.
