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Back to the future: A way to increase prosocial behavior

Previous studies suggest a link between future thinking and prosocial behaviors. However, this association is not fully understood at state and trait level. The present study tested whether a brief future thinking induction promoted helping behavior in an unrelated task. In addition, the relation be...

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Autores principales: Cernadas Curotto, Patricia, Sander, David, d’Argembeau, Arnaud, Klimecki, Olga
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9342755/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35913942
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272340
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author Cernadas Curotto, Patricia
Sander, David
d’Argembeau, Arnaud
Klimecki, Olga
author_facet Cernadas Curotto, Patricia
Sander, David
d’Argembeau, Arnaud
Klimecki, Olga
author_sort Cernadas Curotto, Patricia
collection PubMed
description Previous studies suggest a link between future thinking and prosocial behaviors. However, this association is not fully understood at state and trait level. The present study tested whether a brief future thinking induction promoted helping behavior in an unrelated task. In addition, the relation between mental time travel and prosocial behaviors in daily life was tested with questionnaire data. Forty-eight participants filled in questionnaires and were asked to think about the future for one minute or to name animals for one minute (control condition) before playing the Zurich Prosocial Game (a measure of helping behavior). Results revealed that participants in the future thinking condition helped significantly more than participants in the control condition. Moreover, questionnaire data showed that dispositional and positive orientation toward the future and the past was significantly associated with self-reported prosocial behaviors. The present findings suggest that thinking about the future in general has positive transfer effects on subsequent prosocial behavior and that people who think more about the past or future in a positive way engage more in prosocial behavior.
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spelling pubmed-93427552022-08-02 Back to the future: A way to increase prosocial behavior Cernadas Curotto, Patricia Sander, David d’Argembeau, Arnaud Klimecki, Olga PLoS One Research Article Previous studies suggest a link between future thinking and prosocial behaviors. However, this association is not fully understood at state and trait level. The present study tested whether a brief future thinking induction promoted helping behavior in an unrelated task. In addition, the relation between mental time travel and prosocial behaviors in daily life was tested with questionnaire data. Forty-eight participants filled in questionnaires and were asked to think about the future for one minute or to name animals for one minute (control condition) before playing the Zurich Prosocial Game (a measure of helping behavior). Results revealed that participants in the future thinking condition helped significantly more than participants in the control condition. Moreover, questionnaire data showed that dispositional and positive orientation toward the future and the past was significantly associated with self-reported prosocial behaviors. The present findings suggest that thinking about the future in general has positive transfer effects on subsequent prosocial behavior and that people who think more about the past or future in a positive way engage more in prosocial behavior. Public Library of Science 2022-08-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9342755/ /pubmed/35913942 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272340 Text en © 2022 Cernadas Curotto et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Cernadas Curotto, Patricia
Sander, David
d’Argembeau, Arnaud
Klimecki, Olga
Back to the future: A way to increase prosocial behavior
title Back to the future: A way to increase prosocial behavior
title_full Back to the future: A way to increase prosocial behavior
title_fullStr Back to the future: A way to increase prosocial behavior
title_full_unstemmed Back to the future: A way to increase prosocial behavior
title_short Back to the future: A way to increase prosocial behavior
title_sort back to the future: a way to increase prosocial behavior
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9342755/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35913942
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272340
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