My main interest is in the how’s, why’s, and wherefore’s of human prosociality.
My PhD research focuses on two specific aspects of human prosociality. Firstly, what are the effects of material security vs. scarcity. My first paper was an analysis of global data showing that higher levels of wealth were associated with higher levels of reported prosociaility. You can find it here.
My background in fundraising has contributed to an interest in how prosocial behaviour manifests in real-world contexts. Economic games are great for control and manipulation, but many of the scenarios they employ are a long way from everyday situations (Galizzi & Navarro-Martinez, 2018). In addition, experimental paradigms tend to focus on single individuals or dyads, whereas many decisions about prosociality happen in group contexts (Penner, 2005). I created a multi-player online game based on social foraging therory (Giraldeau and Caraco, 2000), and has attributes which take it closer to the kind of decisions humans would have evolved to solve (Mobbs et al, 2018). We will use data from this behavioural task in conjunction with brain-imaging to probe computational and neural mechanisms of these decisions.
Finally, but somewhat fundamentally, a couple of years ago I took a philosophy of science course. The assignment resulted in an essay entitled ‘A philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of prosociality in Psychology’. It led me to thinking more critically about how prosociality is conceptualised and operationalised in research. Only 74% of journal papers about prosociality contain any kind of definition of their object of study and there is considerable inconsistency about how it is used (Pfattheicher et al, 2021). It seems almost too obvious to say that clear definitions and consistent operationalisation are fundamental building blocks of doing any scientific research, but this is an issue in psychology generally (Fried & Flake, 2018; Kuhbandner & Mayehofer, 2024). I think some work in this area would be beneficial to prosociality research.
If you’re interested in this topic and would like to discuss more, do get in touch.
Paul Vanags 