Time-specific environmental influences tend to contribute a lot more to individual differences in prosocial orientation and behavior. The study of prosocial emotions is an excitingly new development in the evolutionary perspective, but the initial results are pointing to the fact that guilt and shame are far more important than positive emotion of empathy and compassion in prosocial selleck behavior.Second, from the social psychology literature, we learn that the willingness to provide help (a major form of prosocial behavior) varies according to a number of conditions. The tension reduction models suggest that people help others in pain or distress, in order to relieve their own tension. Cost-reward models also appear to be a plausible explanation of how people decide to act prosocially or not [14].

When we see somebody in need of help, we will often consider the seriousness of the situation, the perceived costs of helping for self, the potential for rewards and commendations, and our own vulnerability in the course of help (especially it involves an emergency) [15]. Social experiments also demonstrate that ��bystander effects�� can stop the activation of prosocial norms. People are less likely to provide help when there are many ��bystanders�� who are close to the person who needs help, and a diffusion of responsibility occurs [16]. On the whole, people are also less likely to provide help to strangers if the helping episode is not considered an emergency, if there are many people at the scene, if helping is perceived as costly to the helper, and if we feel that we will make ourselves vulnerable through helping the other person.

The social psychology perspective addresses the situational determinants of how people may react differently to others in need (especially strangers) and tells us that prosocial norms may only be applied under ��certain�� conditions. The ��bystander effect�� reveals how alienation in a metropolitan life may stop the activation of prosocial norms, and the cost-reward model portraits people as mainly acting in their own interest. These social experiments are revealing, but still do not manage to explain very well why people have to volunteer or make sacrifice for people they do not know.Third, empirical studies Entinostat in developmental psychology show that adolescents who adopt more mature and internalized moral reasoning and have higher empathy are more likely to follow and adopt norms of social responsibility and engaged in prosocial behavior [17].