The Relationship Between Prosocial Behavior and Ps
The Relationship Between Prosocial Behavior and Ps
The Relationship Between Prosocial Behavior and Ps
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Article in International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences · June 2021
DOI: 10.6007/IJARBSS/v11-i6/10119
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Abstract
This study aimed to provide understanding on the significance of prosocial behavior and
psychological well-being among undergraduate students of Sultan Idris Education University
(UPSI). Undergraduate students (N=156) among 48 males and 108 females involved in this
study. This is a quantitative study that use online survey method to obtain the data. The
participants involved completed a set of questionnaire that consists of demographic
information, Prosocialness Scale for Adults, and Ryff’s Scale of Psychological Well-being. The
results of present study revealed that there is a positive correlation between prosocial
behavior and psychological well-being (r = .30), and also a positive correlation between
prosocial behavior and domain of psychological well-being of positive relations with others (r
= .429) among undergraduate students of UPSI. Additional finding proved that prosocial
behavior does have significant effect on psychological well-being of the undergraduate
students of UPSI at p < .000. These findings were found consistent with several previous
studies that have been done in various population and country other than Malaysia. Thus,
this study is beneficial for the university across Malaysia to encourage the students to involve
in any prosocial behavior in order to enhance their psychological well-being throughout their
study time.
Keywords: Prosocial Behavior, Psychological Well-Being, Positive Relations With Others,
Undergraduate Students, Academic Performance
Introduction
Psychological well-being serves as one of the important aspect in life as it can lead to adaptive
human functioning and positive life experiences (Perez, 2012). Psychological well-being refers
to the combination of feeling better and functioning well within oneself (Vinothkumar, 2015).
It is not merely refers to the absence of any disease or psychological disorder, but also refers
to a state of having a meaningful life, good interaction with others and feeling that life is under
own control (Kiefer, 2008). However, several previous studies found declined in psychological
well- being in adulthood especially undergraduate students in their first year of study due to
many reasons include experiencing psychological distress (Field, Duffy & Huggins, 2015) and
face high demands in academic coursework (McSharry & Timmins, 2017). University life can
be stressful for certain students as they need to adapt with new yet different social interaction
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and educational environment (Panahi et al., 2016). In addition, as a grown up adult, students
experiencing loss of supports from school and families, and must rely more on own resources
in doing something (Wood et al., 2018). As a result, these situations affect the student’s
overall well-being which also proved to have effect on student’s academic performance (Field,
Duffy & Huggins, 2015). According to Panahi et al. (2016), psychological well-being acts as a
foundation for student’s academic success and students those have better psychological well-
being possess better adaptive coping skills to adapt with academic stress (Freire et al., 2016).
Students are encouraged to identify any effective strategies to cope with current
demands in order to achieve optimal level of psychological well-being, as well as to achieve
satisfactory academic life (Panahi et al., 2016). It is also important to make sure that the
students receive necessary support and intervention to maintain good psychological well-
being, thus enable them to complete their degree successfully (Bewick, Koutsopoulou, Miles,
Slaa & Barkham, 2010). Prosocial behavior is one aspect that can improve psychological well-
being as there are several past researches proved that engaging in prosocial behavior can
enhance psychological well-being in various populations (Nelson et al., 2015; Kumar, 2014).
However, most of the studies were conducted in country other than Malaysia as well as
among adolescents and older adult population. Based on the reviews, there is lack of current
researches focusing on the significance of prosocial behavior and its correlation with
psychological well-being specifically among undergraduates population in Malaysia.
Prosocial behavior refers to any voluntary actions that intend to benefits others with
no immediate benefits to the helper (Padilla-Walker & Carlo, 2015). There are many different
circumstances that can represent as prosocial behavior including doing small acts of kindness
such as helping pick up stuff, as well as more sustained or formal acts like volunteering with
charitable organization (Lay & Hoppmann, 2015). Nevertheless, the terms of prosocial
behavior, helping and kindness is interchangeable (Nelson et al., 2015). Prosocial behaviors
also have been associated with several positive outcomes in life. However, surprisingly it was
also reported declined in prosocial behavior in early adulthood (Padilla-Walker, Carlo &
Memmott-Elison, 2018). Adult people are ages older than 19 years old which most of
undergraduate students in Malaysia are in the same age range (World Health Organization,
2013).
Some of past researches used self-determination theory to explain the link between
prosocial behavior and psychological well-being (Kindap-Tepe & Aktas, 2019; Kwok, Chui &
Wong, 2013). As according to self-determination theory, Kwok, Chui and Wong (2013)
suggested that well-being will be improved when the behaviors are able to satisfy the three
basic psychological needs include autonomy, competence and relatedness. For present study,
the psychological need of relatedness was closely related with prosocial behavior as it
involves social connection (Martela & Ryan, 2016; Aknin, Dunn, Sandstrom, & Norton, 2013).
Pavey, Greitemeyer and Sparks (2011) suggested that relatedness may promote prosocial
behavior because it involves connection with other people. In addition, according to Ryff’s
theoretical model of psychological well-being, positive relations with others act as one of the
component in psychological well-being. This dimension also was seen to be closed related
with prosocial behavior as this behavior involve having connection with other people by
providing helps to others (Baron & Branscombe, 2012). Prosocial behavior was proved leads
to promote social connections (Aknin, Dunn, Sandstrom, & Norton, 2013) and well-being was
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improved resulted from connecting with other people based on a study done by Weinstein
and Ryan (2010).
Hypotheses
Based on the objectives of the study, there are several hypotheses that have been proposed
including:
H01: There is no significant relationship between prosocial behavior and psychological well-
being among undergraduate students.
Literature Review
Studies on Prosocial Behavior
Many studies found positive impacts of prosocial behavior. For example, Raposa, Laws and
Ansell (2016) revealed that prosocial behavior helps to reduce the negative effects of stress
in everyday life among adult population. The result of the study showed that individuals with
higher average prosocial behavior reported had higher positive affect. Prosocial behavior
refers to one of the affiliative behavior as it involves social connection with others. The finding
of the study also suggested that affiliative behavior act as important aspects that help to cope
with stress and prosocial behavior become one of the effective strategies to buffer the
negative effect of stress for an individual.
As for study done by Alarcón and Forbes (2017), self-reported prosocial behavior
revealed negatively associated with depressive symptoms in a non-clinical adolescent sample.
The result suggested that, involve in prosocial behavior may help in reducing the depressive
symptoms. However, in contrast, the researcher suggested that no significant association
between prosocial behavior and depressive symptoms for the non-clinical adults sample as
prosocial behavior was found to be declined during adulthood. The same finding found by
Haroz and Murray (2013) conducted a study to examine the role of prosocial behavior in
reducing mental health problems. This study was conducted among adolescent who were the
survivors of war and displacement with some of them reported to have a history of abduction.
The findings consistent with previous study proved that high levels of prosocial behavior were
associated with improvement in anxiety and depression symptoms. Other results showed that
adolescents who engage in more prosocial behaviors despite of their existing depression and
anxiety symptoms may have better psychological outcomes compare to their peers who do
not engage in prosocial acts. Additional finding of this study also suggested that prosocial
behavior is associated with increased in resilience.
A recent longitudinal research done by Davis et al. (2016) also found negative links
between depressive symptoms and prosocial behavior. This study was done among U.S
Latino, an ethnic minority youth that may be at risk in experiencing high level of ethnic
discrimination which negatively affects their mental health. The findings suggested that
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prosocial behavior may help to strengthen the Latino youth’s resilience in dealing with
discrimination and in the same time may lead to better psychological adjustment. Same
finding found in another longitudinal study done by Padilla-Walker, Laura, Carlo and Nielson
(2015) which yielded evidence that depression were negatively associated with prosocial
behavior among adolescents. In short, engaging prosocial behavior can lead to decrease in
depression.
In different context, Aknin et al. (2013) use a generous spending as one form of
prosocial behavior. The result of the study showed that this prosocial behavior is emotional
rewarding for the givers. In specific, people will experience happier after spending more to
charity. Besides, people will feel happier when involve giving something to their
acquaintances especially in a situation that facilitate social connection. The study also
demonstrated that prosocial behavior may promote social connection between the giver and
recipients which act as the aspect that lead to have good feeling after doing a good deed.
Besides, prosocial behavior also was proved to predict and have positive effect on
well-being of the doer (Weinstein and Ryan, 2010) with relatedness was proved to act as the
mediator. Relatedness refers to having connection with others or experience sense of
belonging and attachment with others during doing the prosocial acts (Ryan, 2009). Similar
finding found in other study conducted by Wiwad and Aknin (2017) attempt to study the
emotional consequences of prosocial acts among the university students proved that
prosocial acts do lead to increase in well-being. In specific, recalling the other-focused helping
does lead to increase in positive affect of the performer compared to when recalling the self-
focused helping behavior. Based on the results, the researchers suggested that prosocial
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behavior is indeed emotional rewarding for the performer especially when involve focusing
on benefiting others and not focusing on benefiting oneself after doing the good deed.
Aknin et al. (2013) also examined the causal impact of prosocial behavior on well-
being among university students. The researchers use prosocial spending as one form of
prosocial behavior in this study. The results revealed that prosocial spending was significantly
increased the well-being of the performer. Significantly higher in well-being were reported
for those who recall a prosocial spending made for someone else compared to those who
recall a prosocial spending made for themselves. Additional finding also found that the
relationship between prosocial behavior and well-being was significantly positive. Another
form of prosocial behavior is volunteering (Afolabi, 2013) and there are several studies
conducted proved that volunteering is positively correlated and in the same time can enhance
psychological well-being. A study done by Son and Wilson (2012) proved that volunteering
can enhance eudemonic well-being which also refers as psychological well-being (Lee &
Taniguchi, 2015). The finding consistent with previous research done by Choi and Kim (2011)
which revealed that there was found direct positive effect of volunteering on psychological
well-being.
Based on the past researches review, prosocial behavior does provide various benefits
across culture, country and population especially can enhance psychological well-being. Most
of the previous study focuses on adolescent and older adult, and little study focus on
undergraduate student population. Therefore, these studies may help to support the current
study to test the hypotheses in examining the association between these variables among
undergraduate student specifically in Malaysia.
Method
Research Design
Study uses an online survey research design to measure the relationship between variables.
A set of questionnaire were converted into an online format in a form of Google Forms and
distributed to the targeted samples by sharing the link through any social media platform such
as WhatsApp and Instagram. The questionnaire consists of three sections which are Section
A seek for the demographic information of the respondents includes gender, age, race and
current semester, Section B is Prosocialness Scale for Adults, and Section C is Ryff’s Scale of
Psychological Well- being Inventory (42-items). First and foremost, an informed consent was
attached prior to the instruments to ask for their permission to get involved in the study
voluntarily. If the participants agree to participate in the study, they can continue to answer
the questionnaire in the next section and may withdraw at any moment. The data collected
then will be analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software Version
23.
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old (M= 22.31, SD= 1.328) which all the participants involved currently degree students from
semester 1 until semester 8 (M= 5.28, SD= 1.755). The respondents were selected based on
convenient sample as it involved drawing sample that are easily accessible and willing to
participate in this study voluntarily.
Measures
Prosocial behaviors were measured using the Prosocialness Scale for Adults, a scale that
consists of 16 items developed by Caprara, Steca, Zelli and Capanna in 2005. The scale uses
five-point Likert Scale ranging from 1 (never/almost never true) to 5 (almost always/always
true). This instrument is reliable to be used with Cronbach’s alpha value .91 (Caprara, Steca,
Zelli and Capanna, 2005). While psychological well-being were measured by using the 42-
items short version of the Ryff’s Scale of Psychological Well-being developed by Carol Ryff in
1989 (Lee & Taniguchi, 2015). A self-report inventory measure six distinct dimensions of
psychological well-being include autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth,
positive relations with others, purpose in life and self-acceptance. This inventory use six-point
Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). This scale is reasonably
reliable to be used as it has acceptable internal consistency between the subscales with alpha
ranging from .66 to .85 (Villarosa & Ganotice, 2018).
Analysis
The data obtained was analyses in a form of standardize frequency norm by using Statistical
Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software Version 23. Based on the objective of the study,
Pearson correlation analyses were conducted to study the relationship between prosocial
behavior and psychological well-being, and also the relationship between prosocial behavior
and the dimension of psychological well-being which is positive relation with others. While,
simple linear regression analysis was used to examine the effect of prosocial behavior on
psychological well-being.
Result
Correlation analysis of prosocial behavior and psychological well-being
From Table 1, the result of Pearson correlation analysis revealed that there is a positive
correlation although weak between prosocial behavior and psychological well-being, r (156)
=.30, p < .000, with two-tailed test. The result showed that there is a linear relationship
between these two variables. Thus, this concludes that the first null hypothesis (H01) of there
is no significant relationship between prosocial behavior and psychological well-being is
rejected for this study.
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Sig. (2-tailed)
N 156 .000
Psychological Well- Pearson Correlation .300** 1
being
Sig. (2-tailed) .000
N 156 156
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
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Discussion
The relationship between prosocial behavior and psychological well-being
The current study examined whether prosocial behavior have correlation with psychological
well-being among undergraduate students and results obtained suggested that there is a
positive correlation between those two even though the result showed a weak correlation.
This study proved that prosocial behavior does have relationship with psychological well-
being which consistent with several previous studies conducted in various populations
(Nelson et al., 2015; Kumar, 2014; Lay & Hoppmann, 2015).
However, current finding contradicts with a study done by Vinothkumar (2015) as the
researcher found evidence that there is no significant relationship between prosocial
behavior and psychological well-being. However, the scale used was different from present
study to measure the prosocial behavior, as well as the targeted population is different. These
might contribute to have different finding. The researcher also suggested that prosocial
behavior might be declined due to experience multiple changes during life transition as well
as was found declined in early adulthood in various study (Alarcón & Forbes, 2017; Padilla-
Walker, Carlo & Memmott-Elison, 2018). Therefore, it should be consider that the level of
prosocial behavior might be different across ages which then affect its relationship with
psychological well-being.
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Moreover, this finding may prove that having a positive relations and connection with
others can act as mediator to correlate the relationship between prosocial behaviors with
psychological well-being. This supported by previous study conducted by Weinstein and Ryan
(2010) which found relatedness act as mediator on the effect of prosocial behavior on
psychological well-being, as well as Aknin et al. (2013) found people will feel happier when
doing prosocial acts in a situation that facilitate social connection. Raposa, Laws and Ansell
(2016) also suggested that prosocial behavior acts as affiliative behaviors as it involve social
connection with others. Hence, these previous findings supported the finding of present study
that yielded prosocial behavior does have relationship with domain of psychological well-
being of positive relations with others.
In addition, prosocial behavior was found to have many positive impact in various
aspect of life include reduced the depressive symptoms (Alarcón & Forbes, 2017; Davis et al.,
2016), reduced in anxiety symptoms (Haroz et al., 2013), and last but not least is emotional
rewarding in a positive way for the giver (Aknin et al., 2013). Positive benefits of prosocial
behavior for an individual might also seem to enhance individual’s psychological well-being in
the same time, which was proved in present study. Therefore, the finding of current study
may contribute to the list of positive effect of engaging in prosocial behavior for an individual
especially for undergraduate students in Malaysia.
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studies demonstrated that the English version of both scale can be use universally across
country, some of the terms might be foreign and ambiguous for certain individuals. Most of
Malaysian students use Malay language as their main language, but the measures used in this
study are all in English. Thus, some participants might not understand certain words and
answer the questionnaires based on their understanding which then affect the total score.
Future study should consider translating the instruments into a Malay version and make a
pilot test to make sure the instrument is reasonably valid and reliable to be used in Malaysian
population. If possible, provide both English and Malay version of the instruments, and make
the participant choose based on their preference language (Ganotice Jr, Bernardo & King,
2012). In addition, this study uses a small size of sample which involved only 156 participants.
Plus, the participants were recruited only from one university which might represent selective
population of interest that can limit the generalizability of the findings across university
especially within Malaysia (Kindap-Tepe & Aktas, 2019). This would be interesting to conduct
such research to replicate the findings among undergraduate students in all universities in
Malaysia which then might help to improve Malaysian students’ psychological well-being in
overall. The need for more longitudinal research regarding prosocial behavior and
psychological well-being development across university in Malaysia also seems essential in
order to make the findings applicable across years which then help to improve Malaysian
society as a whole.
Conclusion
Present study giving a contribution on the understanding of the importance of prosocial
behavior to enhance psychological well-being especially among undergraduate students, as
the result reported that engaging more in prosocial behavior lead to have better psychological
well-being. In addition, it shows that this positive impact was mediated by having positive
connections between the giver and receiver. These provide evidence that prosocial behavior
is essential for an individual in order to function well in life especially for the students, which
in the same time can improve their social and also interpersonal skills that might benefits
them in the future.
Therefore, it is important to provide awareness on the importance of engaging in
prosocial behavior to the undergraduate students as it might help to improve and maintain
their psychological well-being throughout their study time. University or any institution of
higher education might benefits from this study to plan for effective interventions or platform
to promote students’ well-being (Jafari, 2017). As for example encourage the students to
involve in any form of prosocial behavior. The university also may use this study to plan for
future research and evaluate the impact of these aspects on academic success or additional
skills that might be useful in future, plus provide awareness regarding this topic to all
university in Malaysia.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank to Department of Human Development of Sultan Idris Education
University (UPSI) that have helped with the assistance in completing this research.
Corresponding Author
Asma Perveen, Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia.
Email: asmaperveen@fpm.upsi.edu.my
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