Effects of psychosocial stress on prosociality: the moderating role of current life stress and thought control

Abstract

To date, only a few studies have examined whether and when stressed individuals are still prosocially motivated and willing to help others, which is in contrast to the relevance and importance that helping others has for our society. The present study investigates the impact of affective and biopsychological acute stress responses on prosociality (prosocial motivation, helping behavior) under controlled laboratory conditions. In addition, it was examined whether this relationship is affected by individuals’ current life stress and the cognitive ability to keep stress-related thoughts at bay. To induce acute stress responses (heart rate, negative affect, salivary alpha-amylase, cortisol), 55 individuals (28 women, M = 24 years old, SD = 4.53) were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Current life stress (cortisol) was assessed over two days of participants’ everyday lives. Thought control ability was assessed with the think/no-think paradigm and was additionally manipulated after the acute stress intervention (TSST) via instructions. The results showed that acute stress was positively associated with prosociality. Specifically, negative affect was positively related to prosocial motivation and salivary alpha-amylase was positively associated with helping behavior. Current life stress moderated the relationship between salivary cortisol and helping behavior: the association was positive at low levels of current life stress. The instruction to control one’s thoughts but not participants’ general ability to do so reduced stress responses (negative affect). In sum, the findings suggest that prosociality increases following acute stress and that this effect depends on the level of current life stress. Additionally, adopting the strategy of controlling stress-related thoughts was found to be promising for attenuating individuals’ stress responses.

Keywords:

• Stress
• prosociality
• prosocial motivation
• helping behavior
• thought control
• attentional deployment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 The study was preregistered (AsPredicted #45244). In the preregistered version, empathy was included in the study model. However, analyses revealed that the corresponding scale (Koller & Lamm, 2014) was not reliable. Therefore, and due to space limitations, we decided to report these analyses in the supplement. Additionally, we removed donation frequency as indicator of prosociality, as we assumed that it would be biased due to financial needs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge the financial support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg within the funding programme “Open Access Publication Funding”

Notes on contributors

Lisa Hensel

Lisa Hensel, MSc Psychology graduated from Ulm University in Germany in 2018. She is currently working on her PhD under the supervision of Cornelia Niessen at the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nürnberg on the relationship between stress and prosociality.

Nicolas Rohleder

Nicolas Rohleder, Ph.D. graduated from University of Trier in Germany, in 2003. He is a psychologist with a focus on biological and health psychology. His main research interest is on the pathways between Central Nervous System (CNS) states such as stress, depression, and trauma and pathophysiological changes in the organism. He currently directs the chair of Health Psychology at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Cornelia Niessen

Cornelia Niessen is a full professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen‐Nürnberg, Germany. She received her Ph.D 2002 from the Technical University of Berlin. Her research focuses on human adaptivity in the context of work, occupational health psychology, and cognitive functioning.