Greater Emotional Gain from Giving in Older Adults: Age-Related Positivity Bias in Charitable Giving

The Concept of Prosociality in Later Life and Its Dimensions: A Scoping Review

Objective: The aim of this study was to clarify various aspects and dimensions of the prosociality concept in later life as an important concept that gains significance in people as they age. This concept has been expressed through a variety of dimensions in different studies. Method : This is a scoping review of the relevant literature on the concept of prosociality and its dimensions in later life, including quantitative and qualitative studies. The required data were collected from Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, ProQuest, and Google Scholar databases between the years 1987 and 2022. Results: First, 877 articles were identified, and after the screening phase, 57 eligible studies were reviewed. Two main categories, prosocial dispositions and prosocial behaviors, and seven subcategories were extracted. The subcategories of prosocial dispositions include empathy, prosocial norms, innate tendencies, and generative desires. Prosocial behaviors subcategories include informal spontaneous helping, formal planned helping, and pro-environmental behaviors. Conclusion: The various aspects and dimensions of the prosociality concept in later life identified in this study can be used as a basis for assessing and planning the promotion of prosociality among older adults.

Team Ownership and Philanthropy in Professional Sport: A Perspective on Organizational Generosity

Corporate philanthropy (CP) is a vehicle for businesses to create a social impact in communities where their operations are located. An overlooked aspect of this phenomenon is the role and function played by CP influencers within firms—particularly organizational principals/owners. Using an upper echelons perspective, this study explores the relationship between team ownership and the level of CP in the professional sport context. To this end, longitudinal data of philanthropic giving of 94 U.S. professional sport teams in the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL were collected. We also collected team owner characteristics such as individual/family ownership, age, tenure as team owner, other charitable work, educational background, and connection to community from a variety of publicly available sources. The findings revealed that team owner age, ownership tenure, and previous philanthropic involvement contributed to increased charitable giving in professional sport team corporate foundations. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the paper.

Investigating adult age differences in real-life empathy, prosociality, and well-being using experience sampling

While the importance of social affect and cognition is indisputable throughout the adult lifespan, findings of how empathy and prosociality develop and interact across adulthood are mixed and real-life data are scarce. Research using ecological momentary assessment recently demonstrated that adults commonly experience empathy in daily life. Furthermore, experiencing empathy was linked to higher prosocial behavior and subjective well-being. However, to date, it is not clear whether there are adult age differences in daily empathy and daily prosociality and whether age moderates the relationship between empathy and prosociality across adulthood. Here we analyzed experience-sampling data collected from participants across the adult lifespan to study age effects on empathy, prosocial behavior, and well-being under real-life circumstances. Linear and quadratic age effects were found for the experience of empathy, with increased empathy across the three younger age groups (18 to 45 years) and a slight decrease in the oldest group (55 years and older). Neither prosocial behavior nor well-being showed significant age-related differences. We discuss these findings with respect to (partially discrepant) results derived from lab-based and traditional survey studies. We conclude that studies linking in-lab experiments with real-life experience-sampling may be a promising venue for future lifespan studies.

Towards an active and happy retirement? Changes in leisure activity and depressive symptoms during the retirement transition

Objectives: Retirement is a major life transition in the second half of life, and it can be associated with changes in leisure activity engagement. Although theories of retirement adjustment have emphasized the need to find meaningful activities in retirement, little is known about the nature of changes in leisure activity during the retirement transition and their association with mental health.Methods: Based on four annual waves of the 'Health, Aging and Retirement Transitions in Sweden' study, we investigated the longitudinal association of leisure activity engagement and depressive symptoms using bivariate dual change score models. We distinguished intellectual, social, and physical activity engagement.Results: We found increases in all three domains of activity engagement after retirement. Although level and change of activity and depressive symptoms were negatively associated, the coupling parameters were not significant, thus the direction of effects remains unclear.Conclusion: The results highlight the need to consider the role of lifestyle changes for retirement adjustment and mental health.

Beyond money: Nonmonetary prosociality across adulthood

Empirical evidence suggests that self-reported prosociality and donations increase with age. The majority of this research was conducted using monetary donations as outcome measures. However, on average older adults hold a significant advantage in financial and material assets compared to younger adults, effectively lowering the subjective cost of small monetary donations. Are older adults also more prosocial when donating a nonmonetary resource that is of equal or even higher value for them compared to younger age groups? A first study (N = 160, 20-74 years) combined data from self-report measures, affective responses, and hypothetical donation decisions to compute a single prosociality factor. Conceptually replicating findings from Hubbard, Harbaugh, Srivastava, Degras, and Mayr (2016) on monetary donations, results suggest that nonmonetary prosociality also increases with age. However, these differences depended on the domain of the donation. Data from two further behavioral studies (Study 2: N = 156, 18-89 years; Study 3: N = 342, 19-88 years) that were analyzed using Bayesian statistics provided evidence that older adults are not more prosocial than younger and middle-aged adults when donating a small amount of their time (in service of a donation to charity). In summary, the three studies suggest that older adults are not consistently more likely to behave prosocially than younger or middle-aged adults in nonmonetary domains. These findings point to the importance of moving research on prosociality and aging beyond financial donations and further explore the role of resources and perceived costs of prosociality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Do We Become More Prosocial as We Age, and if So, Why?

Older adults contribute—through charitable donations or volunteering—more to the common good than younger adults, an age difference that has profound society-level implications. Yet the reasons for this difference are not well understood. Evidence suggests that a purely altruistic concern for the common good is a major motivation for prosocial behavior and that this concern increases across adulthood. We argue that this finding, and prosocial behavior in general, is better understood using a value-based decision framework than through traditional dual-process accounts. Following the value-based decision approach, we derive specific hypotheses about life-span changes in motivation or resources as factors that explain why older adults show an increased concern for the well-being of other people.

Nudging Altruism by Color: Blue or Red?

Altruism can be spontaneously aroused by environmental factors. However, the mechanism behind these factors is subject to debate. We carried out a study of laboratory experiment using computer-based Mouselab method to determine the mechanism. We found that different colors altered the altruistic behaviors of people. Specifically, blue enhanced altruism, whereas red discouraged altruism. We used a process-tracing technique to monitor the selection of an adaptive strategy and demonstrate that different colors can simulate changes in information acquisition and then lead to the corresponding behaviors. The results suggested that the decision heuristic plays a mediating role in the link between colors and individual altruistic behaviors.