The content of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers as the source of antisocial and prosocial learning.

As the youth crime rate continues to climb in the United States, concerned parents and government officials wonder how much television is influencing our nation\u27s children. Research most often reported by the media says that violent action shown on television can cause the same kind of action by children who watch those kinds of programs. The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers children\u27s television program has specifically been under attack by parents. CNN estimated that over 100 acts of violence per episode are being shown -- although no research supporting this figure could be found for documentation. The present study investigates the frequency of antisocial (violent) and prosocial (helpfulness) acts shown on The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers television program. The sample consists of 1O episodes, ranging from some of the very first episodes up until the release of the Power Rangers movie in 1995. The number of violent actions (hits, kicks, punches and other physical attacks) recorded in this study were much less than those reported by the media. CNN had reported more than 100 violent acts per episode. This study reports 43.9. On average, prosocial words/actions, which are rarely reported by the media, occurred 9.1 times per episode; problem-solving actions were shown 4.4 times per episode; conflict showing bad winning over good happened 16.1 times per episode; and conflict showing good winning over bad was shown 5.3 times per episode. There were more than four times the number of violent actions recorded in this study than there were prosocial actions. The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers appears to have the possibility of being more harmful than helpful to a child\u27s social development. This study supports the contention that television content may have prosocial as well as antisocial effects on children\u27s behavior

Socioeconomic Status and Media Exposure as Factors in Empathic Development.

The current study examined the empathic attainment of young children (mean age 7 years) as a function of the child\u27s socioeconomic status. Further, the potential intervening variable of violent media representations within product advertisements is assessed within and between the observed socioeconomic status groups. Three critical dimensions of empathy were assessed: cognitive, affective and behavioral. Participants were 200 volunteers recruited from public and private schools in a small region in southern Appalachia. Respondents were rated on their response to animated video clips depicting an individual in emotional distress. Results suggest that media exposure has significant effect on measures of affective empathy and prosocial behavior with lower scores being obtained by children after viewing an action oriented commercial as opposed to a prosocial commercial message prior to the presentation of the target vignette. The degree to which the media presentation affected empathic responding was found to be associated with participants\u27 socioeconomic status

Can Facebook Aid Sustainability? An Investigation of Empathy Expression within the \u3cem\u3eHumans of New York\u3c/em\u3e Blog

This qualitative study offers a novel exploration of the links between social media, virtual intergroup contact, and empathy by examining how empathy is expressed through interactions on a popular social media blog. Global leaders are encouraging individuals to engage in behaviors and support policies that provide basic social foundations. It is difficult to motivate people to undertake such actions. However, research shows that empathy intensifies motivation to help others. It can cause individuals to see the world from the perspective of stigmatized group members and increase positive feelings. Social media offers a new pathway for virtual intergroup contact, providing opportunities to increase conversation about disadvantaged others and empathy. We examined expressions of empathy within a popular blog, Humans of New York (HONY), and engaged in purposeful case selection by focusing on (1) events where specific prosocial action was taken corresponding to interactions on the HONY blog and (2) presentation of people in countries other than the United States. Nine overarching themes; (1) perspective taking, (2) fantasy, (3) empathic concern, (4) personal distress, (5) relatability, (6) prosocial action, (7) community appreciation, (8) anti-empathy, and (9) rejection of anti-empathy, exemplify how the HONY community expresses and shares empathic thoughts and feelings

Co-Creating Community-Based Solutions through Social Media in Estonia during the COVID-19 Pandemic

In this study, we aimed to explore and describe the prosocial behaviour of the community during the COVID-19 crisis in Estonia on Facebook, using mixed-method content analysis.This article focuses on the role of social media in co-creation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of Facebook (FB) as a modern communication technology in times of crisis. Our goal was to learn how Facebook as a social media channel can be a tool and accelerator that allows people to find solutions to social problems in communities experiencing crises. The focus of the research is on finding solutions in co-creation for vulnerable target groups, including the elderly, people with disabilities, and other people who need support. This research expands on the role and potential of using FB as a communication platform to enhance co-creation.We used Kaun and Uldam’s (2018) model as a theoretical framework for this study. The study is characterised by a descriptive and exploratory research design. We studied the prosocial behaviour of the community on Facebook through a three-stage mixed method content analysis of existing data, including posts and comments on FB pages, using both quantitative (descriptive statistics) and qualitative (thematic analysis) data analysis methods. Our findings suggest that Facebook as a social media channel could be successfully utilised as a tool for sharing calls to action, activating citizens to co-create solutions, and disseminating results.Keywords: prosocial behaviour; co-creation; community support; Facebook; COVID-19

The ‘anti-social’ nature of prosocial research; a psychosocial critique

This article provides a critical review of recent psychological articles on prosocial behaviour. Even though it focuses on a specific section of this literature – giving to charities and prosocial responses to humanitarian disasters – the paper aims to offer a wider critique as it interrogates the epistemological and methodological underpinnings of the prosocial literature as a whole. It aims to illustrate how the problematic aspects of traditional quantitative, deductive, experimental research in prosocial behaviour in general, when applied to giving to charities, preclude a deeper and more complex understanding of a phenomenon quintessentially social and altruistic. I identify three specific issues that make mainstream approaches to prosocial behaviour problematic and limited in scope. The first relates to the insularity of mainstream psychology and the lack of contextualisation of its findings, in particular the problematic neglect of ideological and socio-historical factors in prosocial behaviour. The second relates to mainstream psychology's disregard for the role played by conflict, contradiction and ambivalence, in attitudes and decision making as well as in the emotional aspects of prosocial behaviour. The third looks at the constraints imposed by scientifically inspired methods, how they predetermine the range of participants' responses and make it hard to apply the findings to real life situations. I claim that these epistemological and methodological constraints severely limit the applicability and comprehensiveness of current research. The discussion of these issues is woven through the review and uses some specific studies to illustrate the limitations imposed by these constraints. Throughout the paper I also argue for the need to incorporate a psychosocial approach to research into prosocial behaviour

Exploring, understanding, then designing: twitter users’ sharing behavior for minor safety incidents

Social media has become an integral part of human lives. Social media users resort to these platforms for various reasons. Users of these platforms spend a lot of time creating, reading, and sharing content, therefore, providing a wealth of available information for everyone to use. The research community has taken advantage of this and produced many publications that allow us to better understand human behavior. An important subject that is sometimes discussed and shared on social media is public safety. In the past, Twitter users have used the platform to share incidents, share information about incidents, victims and perpetrators, and used it to provide help in distressed locations after an attack or after a natural disaster. Public safety officials also used Twitter to disseminate information to maintain and improve safety and seek information from the crowds. The previous focus of the research is mainly on significant public safety incidents; but, incidents with less severity matter too. The focus of this dissertation is on minor incidents and the aim is to understand what motivates social media users to share those incidents to maintain and increase public safety through design suggestions.This dissertation is comprised of three completed studies. The first study attempts to understand motivations to share public safety incidents on social media under the collective action theory lens. Collective action theory assumes that rational people will not participate in a public good unless there is a special incentive or an external motivation for them. In this study, public safety is considered as the public good. This study tests people’s willingness to share incidents on social media if: the victim is someone they know, if the location of the incident is close, and if there is some coercion to influence users willingness to share. General support is found for the hypotheses and collective action theory.In the second study, the focus is on internal motivations that stem from being prosocial. An established scale that measures six different traits of prosocial behavior is used. It is hypothesizes that prosocial behavior is positively related to decisions to share incidents on social media. The study also tests other mediating variables, namely: following news outlets on Twitter, following public safety officials on social media, frequency of tweeting/retweeting. Partial support for prosocial tendencies effect on decisions to share is found. The study also discoveres that the three mediating variables (number of public safety official accounts followed, news exposure on social media, and tweet/retweet frequency) fully mediates the relationship and that they have a significant positive effect on decisions to share. The third and final study complements the previous two and helps conclude the previous findings. A 2X2X2 online experiment design is conducted. The three manipulations are the availability of location information, platform authority availability, and availability of sender authority. The study hypothesizes that the three interventions will produce a significant positive relationship with decisions to share on Twitter. It is found that location information has no effect on sharing minor incidents on Twitter, however, participants are more likely to use a fictitious button that increases local exposure to minor public safety tweets. It is also found that the authority of the sender has a significant effect on decisions to share. On the other hand, platform authority does not show an effect on decisions to share public safety incidents on Twitter

Eliciting Behavior From Interactive Narratives: Isolating the Role of Agency in Connecting With and Modeling Characters

A key component differentiating interactive storytelling from non-interactive media is agency, or control over character choices. A series of experiments show that providing agency over a character increased the user-character connection, which then increased engagement in a character-consistent charitable act. Findings were observed in technologically simple online narratives that controlled for navigation/controller differences, graphics, sounds, lengthy play, and avatar customization. Effects emerged even though users did not practice these acts by making their character behave charitably. Findings were robust across happy and unfortunate endings and across first-, second-, and third-person narrative perspectives. Findings suggest promise for developing inexpensive ‘‘storygames’’ to encourage supportive behaviors

Social capital and deceased organ donation

This chapter examines the link between deceased organ donation and social capital from a theoretical standpoint.In this chapter, the theoretical links between deceased organ donation and social capital theory are examined and evaluated

Morality and Prosocial Behavior: the Role of Awareness, Responsibility and Norms in the Norm Activation Model

This paper examines the relationships between variables included in the Norm Activation Model of prosocial behaviour (NAM). Specifically, we evaluate the strength of two commonly used interpretations of this model, namely the NAM as a mediator model and the NAM as a moderator model. Five studies focussing on a variety of prosocial intentions and behaviours provide most support for the NAM as a mediator model. Furthermore, these studies validate past research by showing that variables included in the NAM are powerful in explaining a diversity of prosocial intentions and behaviours in the social as well as in the environmental context