Student pro-sociality: measuring institutional and individual factors that predict pro-social behaviour at university

Abstract

Students operate within a bounded social context and often face decisions regarding whether to pursue selfish or group-level benefit. Yet little work has examined what predicts their behaviour towards fellow students. This work addresses this gap by investigating what factors may predict students’ performance of pro-social actions at university, and how an institution may maximise such behaviour. Study 1 created the student pro-sociality scale, used to measure these tendencies in students. In study 2, 428 students from 25 UK universities took part in an online survey study using this scale ,and several other pre-existing measures of possible predictors. Analysis suggested that of those factors examined, role clarity, affective commitment, empathy, and perspective-taking emerged as the most influential. This first foray into this area can now inspire further research in finding the effective ways of fostering pro-social behaviour in students.