The functioning of societies depends strongly on people's willingness to be considerate and helpful to others in general. People may have different beliefs about who are the most prosocial ones. Scientists have debated about the question of whether people from higher or lower social classes are more prosocial.

In the social and behavioral sciences, there are two conflicting perspectives. One group of theorists argue that people from lower social classes are more prosocial, because they learn to share risks by connecting and being helpful (a risk management perspective). After all, they are the ones who often live in environments with fewer resources, greater threat, and more uncertainties and have to adapt in ways to build and sustain interdependent networks of mutual aid. Another group of theorists emphasize the notion that people from higher social classes often have greater resources, material and immaterial, that help them develop and maintain prosociality as a basic orientation to others in general (a resource perspective).

In a large-scale meta-analytic study published in Psychological Bulletin on April 1, a research team led by Dr. LUAN Shenghua from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has shed new light on a long-standing debate in the social sciences: Are people from higher or lower social classes more prosocial?

Analyzing 1,106 effect sizes from 471 independent studies with a combined sample of 2.34 million participants, the study found that individuals from higher social classes exhibit slightly greater prosocial behavior than those from lower social classes. This small but consistent effect was observed across age groups—including children, adolescents, and adults—and held true for both subjective assessments of social class and objective measures such as education level, income, and occupational prestige.

"Although the effect is small, that higher social classes are more prosocial is quite stable across different age groups of people, as well as whether social class is based on their beliefs or on objective indicators that are commonly used in research," said Dr. WU Junhui, first author of the study.

There are two remarkable twists. First, the positive relationship between social class and prosociality is stronger for measures focusing on costly prosocial behavior than on prosocial intentions. This is in line with the resource perspective that people varying in social classes do not differ much in their intentions but primarily in their ability to do so.

"This provides some further support for the notion that higher social classes are more prosocial because they are more capable of doing so," said Dr. LUAN Shenghua, corresponding author of the study. "When it comes to their basic goals in life, the lower and higher social classes may be more or less equally prosocial."

Another twist is that the positive relationship between social class and prosociality is significant under public conditions when others can take notice of it. Interestingly, individuals from higher social classes are not more prosocial under private or less observable conditions.

This is an intriguing finding, even though it was addressed in only a few studies. It is possible that higher social classes learn to connect to people outside of their own groups. For example, they tend to have broader and more diverse social networks than those from lower social classes. It is also possible that higher social classes are a bit more focused on the reputation gains that they can derive from public forms of helpfulness and generosity, according to the researchers.

This study was supported by fundings from the CAS Youth Innovation Promotion Association, the Scientific Foundation of the Institute of Psychology of CAS, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the European Research Council, among other sources.