Johannes Rodrigues, Johannes Hewig
"Altruism" varies in its definition, even among researchers in the same field of research. This lack of common ground concerning the definition often leads to misunderstandings. In this work, we try to provide a "lay of the land" examination of the concepts prosocial behaviour and altruism used in the context of empirical research in psychology and propose a hierarchical model of prosocial behaviour that provides an overview of the hierarchical structure and position of definitions of altruism. Additionally, we implement two dimensions, tolerance for harm done to oneself or others and benefits to others or oneself, to systematize the different prosocial categories and definitory approaches on each hierarchical level. The hierarchical levels of our model include firstly helping behaviour (both voluntary and involuntary conduct benefitting others); secondly prosocial behaviour (voluntary helping, independent from one's reasons for helping); moreover and most importantly we debate different kinds of prosocial behaviour according to the source of general motivation; concepts from evolutionary perspectives; social exchange theory; situation-specific motivational aspects of prosocial behaviour and social interaction rules, as they all play important roles in the empirical research in psychology. We propose this model to offer common ground for communication within our discipline and other disciplines, and to spread awareness of the hierarchical differences in the various definitions of "altruism" in diverse fields of research.