ReviewAnimal cognition2024
The proximate regulation of prosocial behaviour: towards a conceptual framework for comparative research.
Review in Animal cognition, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Anterior Cingulate Cortex and Prosocial Behavior toward Others in Negative State.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Humans are more prosocial in poor foraging environments.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Chimpanzee groups achieve sustainable resource use in a common-pool resource dilemma.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- The perception of prosocial agents by chimpanzees and humans.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Prosociality is centred on intentions, not outcomes.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Exploring the drivers of inter- and intraspecific differences in prosociality in four parrot species.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Do goats exhibit prosocial motivation? Insights from a novel food-giving paradigm.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Wild gelada monkeys detect emotional and prosocial cues in vocal exchanges during aggression.PloS one · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Humans and many other animal species act in ways that benefit others. Such prosocial behaviour has been studied extensively across a range of disciplines over the last decades, but findings to date have led to conflicting conclusions about prosociality across and even within species. Here, we present a conceptual framework to study the proximate regulation of prosocial behaviour in humans, non-human primates and potentially other animals. We build on psychological definitions of prosociality and spell out three key features that need to be in place for behaviour to count as prosocial: benefitting others, intentionality, and voluntariness. We then apply this framework to review observational and experimental studies on sharing behaviour and targeted helping in human children and non-human primates. We show that behaviours that are usually subsumed under the same terminology (e.g. helping) can differ substantially across and within species and that some of them do not fulfil our criteria for prosociality. Our framework allows for precise mapping of prosocial behaviours when retrospectively evaluating studies and offers guidelines for future comparative work.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.