A THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF ALTRUISM AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP

Abstract

This article presents a theoretical analysis of altruism in international psychological literature based on 20 English-language publications issued between 1964 and 2026. It distinguishes prosocial behavior as a broader category from behavioral, preference-based, and psychological conceptions of altruism. A prosocial outcome establishes benefit to another but not altruism by itself; the latter additionally concerns cost to the actor, other-regarding preferences, or the ultimate goal of improving another’s welfare. The primary focus is on psychological accounts based on empathy, mood regulation, identification with the recipient, personal norms, reputation, and mixed motives. The debate involving Batson, Cialdini, and Maner illustrates why observed helping does not by itself reveal why a person helped. Research on personal norms, situational context, charitable giving, and neural reward responses further shows that similar behavior may arise from different psychological processes. Evolutionary biology and behavioral economics are used only as comparative perspectives: fitness consequences and resource allocation answer different questions and cannot be treated as direct measures of psychological motive. Evidence of benefit, personal cost, or experienced reward can narrow the range of explanations, but a stronger inference requires designs in which competing accounts predict different patterns of behavior as cost, observability, reciprocity, and the relationship to the recipient vary. A methodological table specifies what each type of evidence supports and what remains unknown. The article concludes that researchers should match the term altruism to what their data directly establish and state the limits of any inference about motive.