What are two sets of characteristics that have been identified in prosocial personality orientation?

Personality traits reliably predict helping behavior across a variety of settings and points in time (Eisenberg and Fabes, 1991, Oliner and Oliner, 1988, Penner et al., 1995, Rushton, 1981, Staub, 1978). Individual differences in empathetic concern and social responsibility are often considered to be the core of the ‘pro-social personality’. Empathic concern is the capacity to recognize and understand the emotional states of others by experiencing the emotions of another person within oneself (Batson et al., 1987, Penner et al., 1995, Preston and DeWaal, 2002, Stinson and Ickes, 1992), and is associated with the tendency to engage in real-life helping behaviors (Bierhoff, Klein, & Kramp, 1991). Social responsibility is an internalized predisposition that describes a person's propensity to display concern for the welfare of others and ascribe responsibility for others to the self (Eisenberg et al., 1989, Penner and Orom, 2009). People who score high on social responsibility are more likely to act on their internalized obligation on behalf of other people by engaging in pro-social behaviors regardless of whether others will reciprocate their acts (Carlo et al., 1991, Eisenberg et al., 1989, Penner et al., 1995). A cluster of other characteristics, comprised of perspective taking, other-oriented moral reasoning, and mutual concerns moral reasoning, are also considered important elements of the pro-social personality in that they are similar to, and support, dispositional empathy and social responsibility (Graziano and Eisenberg, 1997, Penner et al., 1995). Individuals who score high on these seven aspects of the ‘pro-social personality’ are more prone to engage in helping behaviors (Davis, 1994, Eisenberg et al., 2002, Penner et al., 1995).

Social psychologists debate whether helping can be ‘truly altruistic’ or whether helping is ultimately directed at self-benefit. Two schools of thought have emerged. Proponents of altruistic motivations proposed the empathy-altruism hypothesis (see Batson et al., 1987, Batson, 1991). According to this view, witnessing another person in distress produces empathic concern (e.g., sympathy, or compassion) that motivates people to help to relieve the other person's distress. In such an instance, helping is considered altruistic because it is performed out of a consideration of another's needs and involves other-regarding sentiments and the benefit of the person in need (Piliavm & Chamg, 1990). Thus, “if benefiting the other is the ultimate goal and the self-benefits are unintended consequences, then the motive for helping is altruistic” (Batson, 1991, p. 65).

Proponents of psychological egoism (Baumann et al., 1981, Cialdini et al., 1997) assert that people behave in ways that benefit themselves when helping. The egoistic approach is strongly associated with the negative-state relief model (Baumann et al., 1981, Cialdini et al., 1987, Cialdini et al., 1973), which proposes that the empathic concern that arises when witnessing someone in need creates personal distress (negative mood, alarm) that needs to be removed. Thus, it is the egoistic desire to manage personal distress that causes the individual to engage in helping behavior, and not the empathic concern for the person in need (Cialdini et al., 1973, Manucia et al., 1984).

Many have theorized that it is difficult or unpleasant to behave in ways that are inconsistent with one's personality (Little, 2008, Moskowitz and Coté, 1995, Vohs et al., 2005). Such non-habitual behaviors may require suppression of attractive behavioral alternatives, overcoming physiological predispositions, difficult decisions, regulating dissonance if contradicting the self-concept, reputational concerns if there are observers, etc. A variety of processes plausibly make it harder to behave counter-dispositionally. From the perspective of self-determination theory, intrinsically motivated behaviors arise via the expression of innate psychological needs in a social context, are carried out of free will, are enjoyable, and performed in the absence of reinforcements or rewards. In contrast, extrinsic behaviors arise from a desire to obtain an external reward (Deci and Ryan, 1985, Moller et al., 2006). Behaviors that arise via intrinsic or extrinsic motivations place different self-regulatory demands on people. Situations where individuals can exercise their free will, act on their inner predispositions without feeling pressured by external outcomes (e.g., intrinsically motivated behaviors) result in autonomous regulation, which is enjoyable and easy (Deci et al., 1999, Moller et al., 2006). On the other hand, when people feel coerced, controlled, or have to overcome internal resistance in order to perform a behavior (e.g., extrinsically motivated behaviors) the resulting regulation is controlled regulation (Muraven, Rosman, & Gagne, 2007).

Research findings suggest that autonomously regulated behaviors are less demanding, in terms of self-regulation, compared to behaviors that result from controlled regulation (Moller et al., 2006, Muraven et al., 2007). Specifically, across three experiments Muraven, Rosmann and Gagne (2007) found that people who feel forced to exert self-control, compared to individuals who felt more autonomous, performed more poorly on subsequent self-control tasks (e.g., the Stroop task).

The reduced performance of participants in the experiments conducted by Muraven et al., (2007) is thought to occur due to the phenomenon of ego-depletion. Ego depletion is “a temporary reduction in the self's capacity or willingness to engage in volitional action (including controlling the environment, controlling oneself, making choices, and initiating action), caused by prior exercise of volition” (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998, p. 1253). To be clear, depletion is thought to occur only when regulation is effortful (i.e., the result of controlled regulation), for example, when tempting alternatives are suppressed (Kuhl, 2000). The same objective behavior might even be vitalizing, rather than depleting, if it stems from autonomous regulation (Martela, DeHaan, & Ryan, 2016).

Although supported by many studies, the validity of the ego-depletion paradigm has recently become the subject of an ongoing, and unresolved, debate in the face of failed replications and concerns about publication bias (e.g., Carter and McCullough, 2014, Hagger et al., 2010, Hagger et al., 2016). However, insofar as this model of self-regulation is accurate, the results presented by Muraven et al., (2007) suggest that exerting controlled self-regulation temporarily reduces the capacity to engage in acts of volition to a greater extent than exerting autonomous self-regulation. Our research builds on this reasoning.

Helping behavior is characterized by a predisposition towards empathic concern (Batson et al. 1987), deep-seated personal values (Piliavm & Chamg, 1990), and an internal locus of control (Eisenberg and Fabes, 1991, Rushton, 1981, Staub, 1978). Furthermore, people with high levels of dispositional altruism and empathy report anticipating feelings of enjoyment from self-reported helping behavior (Sprecher et al., 2007, Williamson and Clark, 1989). These behaviors are therefore likely to arise from intrinsic motivation in the altruistic individual, and many studies suggest that intrinsically motivated behaviors require less inhibitory control and involve fewer self-regulatory efforts (Moller et al., 2006, Muraven et al., 2007). Conversely, egoistic helping is thought to arise from more effortful, controlled self-regulation (Manucia et al., 1984) to obtain external rewards (Cialdini et al., 1973) or to avoid guilt and social criticism (Batson, 1991, Freeman, 1997). It follows that egoistic helping would pose higher cognitive demands on the individual and require more self-regulatory efforts. Thus, we assume that individuals high on pro-social traits are likely more intrinsically motivated to engage in helping behavior while individuals low on pro-social traits are likely more extrinsically motivated to engage in helping behavior. Based on this rationale, and the relationship between controlled and autonomous self-regulation and ego-depletion, we hypothesized that helping behavior will require less self-control for those high on pro-social traits than those low on pro-social traits.

On the other hand, alternative predictions could also be derived from the literature. For example, Lanaj and colleagues (Lanaj, Johnson, & Wang, 2016) reasoned that the self-imposed internal pressure to benefit others experienced by those high on pro-social traits would strain their limited resources of self-control to a greater extent than it would for those low on pro-social traits. It is not always easy to behave in ways that support one's values. Additionally, there is evidence to suggest that engaging in behavior that is counter to one's dispositional tendencies does not always strain self-regulatory resources. In one example, dispositional introverts who acted counter-dispositionally (i.e., like extraverts) in a laboratory based experiment did not exhibit diminished performance on a subsequent Stroop task; however, dispositional extraverts who acted counter-dispositionally did demonstrate decreased performance (Zelenski, Santoro, & Whelan, 2012; see also Gallagher, Fleeson, & Hoyle, 2011). Despite the plausible rationale for alternative hypotheses, we initially predicted that helping behavior would require less effortful self-control for the dispositionally pro-social.

Across two experiments, the present research tests the hypothesis that helping behavior is less ego-depleting for individuals high in pro-social personality traits than for individuals low in pro-social personality traits. This hypothesis is premised on the tenable assumption that helping behavior is intrinsically motivated for those high in pro-social traits and extrinsically motivated for those low in pro-social traits. Previous research has found that the type of self-control associated with intrinsically motivated behavior (autonomous regulation) is less depleting than the type of self-control associated with extrinsic motivation (controlled regulation). Therefore, helping behavior should be less ego-depleting for those high in pro-social traits than for those low in pro-social traits. Studies 1 and 2 were designed and run concurrently so as to test this hypothesis with complementary experimental procedures. We expected to observe that those high on pro-social traits, when compared to individuals low on pro-social traits, would be less depleted following a helping task (Study 1) and would be more likely to engage in helping behavior when in a depletion state (Study 2).