Hart Rona, Hart Dan
School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RH, UK.
Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, 116 Edgbaston Park Road, Birmingham B15 2TY, UK.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2023 Feb 18;13(2):186. doi: 10.3390/bs13020186.
The scholarly field of organizational prosociality is experiencing a renewed interest, yet despite its long track record, researchers still disagree on the definitions of primary concepts. Two umbrella terms, prosocial behaviors and kindness, are particularly baffling, as they are defined similarly, at times used synonymously, yet the differences between them are unclear. Consequently, the field suffers from conceptual ambiguity, which hampers its development. In this brief critical paper, we provide a review of the definitions of prosocial behavior and kindness, in an attempt to semantically untie the text, unpack the context, and discuss the subtext that underlies these concepts. Our analysis suggests that the two concepts overlap in their emphasis on dispositions and actions that aim to promote the welfare of others. However, acts of kindness and prosocial behaviors differ in actors, their target recipients and scale. Acts of kindness are performed by an individual and directed at a person or a small group, while prosocial behaviors can be performed by a person or an organization, and can be directed at a person or a group, but may also be directed at a much larger entity: an organization, community, nation, or society at large.
组织亲社会行为这一学术领域正重新受到关注，然而，尽管其有着悠久的历史记录，但研究人员对于主要概念的定义仍存在分歧。两个总括性术语，即亲社会行为和善意，尤其令人困惑，因为它们的定义相似，有时甚至被同义使用，但它们之间的差异却不明确。因此，该领域存在概念模糊性，这阻碍了其发展。在这篇简短的批判性论文中，我们对亲社会行为和善意的定义进行了综述，试图从语义上解开文本、剖析上下文，并讨论这些概念背后的潜台词。我们的分析表明，这两个概念在强调旨在促进他人福祉的性情和行为方面存在重叠。然而，善意行为和亲社会行为在行为主体、目标受众和范围上有所不同。善意行为由个人实施，针对个人或一小群人，而亲社会行为可以由个人或组织实施，可以针对个人或群体，但也可能针对更大的实体：一个组织、社区、国家或整个社会。
