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Perceptual Broadening Leads to More Prosociality

A link between perceptual processing styles and (pro)social behavior has gathered supporting empirical evidence to show that people raised or trained in traditions of collectiveness, compassion, and prosocial beliefs are biased to the global level in perceptual processing. In this research, we studi...

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Autores principales: Mukherjee, Sumitava, Srinivasan, Narayanan, Kumar, Neeraj, Manjaly, Jaison A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6167552/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30319514
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01821
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author Mukherjee, Sumitava
Srinivasan, Narayanan
Kumar, Neeraj
Manjaly, Jaison A.
author_facet Mukherjee, Sumitava
Srinivasan, Narayanan
Kumar, Neeraj
Manjaly, Jaison A.
author_sort Mukherjee, Sumitava
collection PubMed
description A link between perceptual processing styles and (pro)social behavior has gathered supporting empirical evidence to show that people raised or trained in traditions of collectiveness, compassion, and prosocial beliefs are biased to the global level in perceptual processing. In this research, we studied the reciprocal link – whether contextually broadening perceptual scope of attention via global processing could make people more prosocial. We hypothesized that global processing linked previously to an interdependent compassionate self-orientation would make people more prosocial, compared to local processing. Four experiments manipulated perceptual scope through a Global-Local task using hierarchical stimuli. It was found that participants who performed a global processing perceptual task volunteered to donate more money across different donation frames, compared to those who performed a local processing task. While previous research showed prosocial mindsets lead to perceptual broadening, the current results suggest that perceptual broadening also leads to more prosociality, thus establishing a reciprocal link between perceptual broadening (attentional scope), and acting prosocially. It is proposed that perceptual scope of attention is one of the generic cognitive processes that underlie prosocial decisions. Explanations based on scope of attention can potentially be used as a framework that enables researchers to link the effects of different contextual cues on prosocial decisions.
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spelling pubmed-61675522018-10-12 Perceptual Broadening Leads to More Prosociality Mukherjee, Sumitava Srinivasan, Narayanan Kumar, Neeraj Manjaly, Jaison A. Front Psychol Psychology A link between perceptual processing styles and (pro)social behavior has gathered supporting empirical evidence to show that people raised or trained in traditions of collectiveness, compassion, and prosocial beliefs are biased to the global level in perceptual processing. In this research, we studied the reciprocal link – whether contextually broadening perceptual scope of attention via global processing could make people more prosocial. We hypothesized that global processing linked previously to an interdependent compassionate self-orientation would make people more prosocial, compared to local processing. Four experiments manipulated perceptual scope through a Global-Local task using hierarchical stimuli. It was found that participants who performed a global processing perceptual task volunteered to donate more money across different donation frames, compared to those who performed a local processing task. While previous research showed prosocial mindsets lead to perceptual broadening, the current results suggest that perceptual broadening also leads to more prosociality, thus establishing a reciprocal link between perceptual broadening (attentional scope), and acting prosocially. It is proposed that perceptual scope of attention is one of the generic cognitive processes that underlie prosocial decisions. Explanations based on scope of attention can potentially be used as a framework that enables researchers to link the effects of different contextual cues on prosocial decisions. Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-09-25 /pmc/articles/PMC6167552/ /pubmed/30319514 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01821 Text en Copyright © 2018 Mukherjee, Srinivasan, Kumar and Manjaly. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Mukherjee, Sumitava
Srinivasan, Narayanan
Kumar, Neeraj
Manjaly, Jaison A.
Perceptual Broadening Leads to More Prosociality
title Perceptual Broadening Leads to More Prosociality
title_full Perceptual Broadening Leads to More Prosociality
title_fullStr Perceptual Broadening Leads to More Prosociality
title_full_unstemmed Perceptual Broadening Leads to More Prosociality
title_short Perceptual Broadening Leads to More Prosociality
title_sort perceptual broadening leads to more prosociality
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6167552/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30319514
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01821
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