The Difference Of Prosocial Behavior Between Social Classes: Dual Perspective Of Giving And Receiving

Social class is an index describing a person’s position in the social hierarchy. It is influenced by both the material substance of social life (wealth, education and occupational prestige) and the individual’s perception of his or her rank in the society. In the recent years, there have been many psychologists to investigate the relationship between social class and prosocial behavior, but the difference of prosocial behavior between social classes is inconsistent among different studies(Kraus et al.,2012; Stellar, Manzo, Kraus,& Keltner,2011; Korndorfer, Egloff,& Schmukle,2015).In our study, we take into account the social class of prosocial behavior giver and recipient to investigate the difference of prosocial behavior between social classes and whether this difference will be moderated by prosocial behavior type. We assume that upper class individuals engage in more helping behavior and lower class individuals will receive more helping behavior from others, at the same time this effect will be moderated by prosocial behavior type.To test the hypothesis mentioned above, we design two studies. The first study adopts the "dictator game" to test whether the prosocial behavior of different social classes will be affected by the giver and recipient’s social class. A 2 (social class of prosocial behavior givers:upper, lower) x 2 (social class of prosocial behavior recipients: upper, lower) between-subjects design is carried out. The result indicate that:(1) the main effect of the helper’s social class is significant, in other words, the people of upper class are inclined to show more prosocial behavior than the lower ones; (2) the main effect of the recipient’s social class is significant too, that is to say, the people of lower class are more likely to receive prosocial behavior; (3) the interaction between social class of prosocial behavior givers and recipients is not significant.In order to verify the result of the first study and investigate the moderating effect of prosocial behavior type, we design a 2 (social class of prosocial behavior givers:upper, lower) x 2 (social class of prosocial behavior recipients:upper, lower) x 2 (prosocial behavior type:helping, cooperation) mixed-design, in which the social class of givers and recipients are between-subjects variables, and prosocial behavior type is a within-subjects variable. The result indicates that the difference of prosocial behavior between upper class and lower class is indeed moderated by prosocial behavior type. Specifically, no matter what the recepient’s social class is, the upper classes are more inclined to show their helping behavior than the lower ones, and no matter what the giver’s social class is, people are more likely to help the lower ones. However, it isn’t the same condition in the cooperation behavior, when the partner is a high class individual, both the upper class and lower class will show more cooperation behavior, no significant difference is found between social classes; but when the partner is a lower class individual, upper class will show more cooperation behavior than lower class.Through the two studies, we can commonly conclude that there really exists the difference of prosocial behavior between different social classes, but this difference can be moderated by the type of prosocial behavior.