Because motivations for prosocial actions typically are unclear, sometimes even to actors
but especially for observers, it is difficult to study prosocial motivation. This article reviews …

Prosocial behavior involves attempting to improve others' welfare and plays a central role in
cooperative social relationships. Among the manifold processes that contribute to prosocial …

Recent studies have proposed that social norms play a key role in motivating human
cooperation and in explaining the unique scale and cultural diversity of our prosociality …

Children act prosocially already in their first years of life. Research has shown that this early
prosociality is mostly motivated by sympathy for others, but that, over the course of …

In this review, I propose a new framework for the psychological origins of human
cooperation that harnesses evolutionary theories about the two major problems posed by …

The age-old philosophical, biological, and social debate over the basic nature of humans as
being “universally selfish” or “universally good” continues today highlighting sharply …

Why do many societies moralize apparently harmless pleasures, such as lust, gluttony,
alcohol, drugs, and even music and dance? Why do they erect temperance, asceticism …

Cooperation is widespread in nature, occurring in every taxa on Earth. Nevertheless, the
contexts in which cooperation occurs—and the forms it takes—vary widely. In this Review …

The motivation to build and maintain a positive personal reputation promotes prosocial
behavior. But individuals also identify with their groups, and so it is possible that the desire …

Why do many people moralize harmless bodily pleasures, such as gluttony, masturbation,
and drinking alcohol? In four pre-registered experiments (N> 2,700), we investigated …