How personality traits shape our prosocial behaviors

Why do some people do more for their community than others? A new study from the University of Zurich, available on Psyarxiv Preprint Server, shows that personality traits such as extroversion and consent are correlated with volunteering and charitable contributions.

People who work as volunteers or give away to charity are very different. In addition to financial and social incentives, individual differences in individuality between people can explain why the people within us are more likely to contribute to the welfare of our community than others.

Researchers at the University of Zurich’s Department of Psychology looked at the links between what is called Big Five personality traits (openness, conscience, extroversion, consent, neuroticism) and the willingness of people engaged in prosocial behavior.

Their analysis was based on 29 international studies, including over 90,000 participants. It included various ways of explaining people’s personalities, covering different forms of charity.

Personality traits are important

This finding shows that two personality traits are particularly related to philanthropy. Sociability and assertion (extraversion) are positively correlated with volunteer activity. In other words, foreigners are more likely to volunteer. Consent, on the other hand, correlates more closely with willingness to give money to charity. This behavior may be explained by the fact that comfortable people tend to be more considerate and considerate of others’ emotions.

However, studies on other personality traits have yielded a variety of results. For example, there was no clear link between conscience and charity engagement. Openness and neurosis appeared to have little effect on people’s prosocial behavior.

New strategies to promote volunteer work and donation

“Our findings confirm that individual differences in personality play a role in the extent to which people are engaged in prosocial behavior and how many people are involved,” says Wiebke Breidrun, the first author and professor of psychology at the University of Zurich. She believes that a better understanding of these links will help encourage people to contribute to a common welfare based on individual strengths and motivations.

Therefore, this study provides practical guidance as well as valuable scientific insights to organizations and policymakers who wish to promote volunteer work and charitable contributions.

“This knowledge can be used to develop more targeted strategies aimed at promoting volunteering and charitable contributions,” says Christopher J. Hopwood, last author and professor of psychology.