Wisdom and prosocial behavior

Prosocial behavior is crucial for tackling global challenges such as climate change, poverty, and conflict, yet people often prioritize personal benefits over the common good. A classic philosophical proposition is that prosocial behavior benefits from psychological wisdom — a concept characterized by cognitive and behavioral scientists by expression of intellectual humility, open-mindedness towards different ways in which events may unfold, as well as consideration and integration of diverse viewpoints. We investigate the relationship between these features of wisdom and prosocial behavior in an incentivized donation experiment, as well as self-reported real-world behaviors such as blood and charity donations across 13,500 households in nine European countries. Our findings reveal that greater expression of wisdom was systematically aligned with contributions to climate change mitigation, donating blood and money to charitable causes, compliance with rules and behaviors to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, voting in parliamentary elections, volunteering and being a member of an environmental group. These results were robust across experimental conditions varying vantage point (self-focused or other-focused), when examining wisdom in reflections specific to climate donation decisions, or reflections on one’s personal life experiences, or when accounting for effect socioeconomic characteristics, personality, and values of prosocial behavior. Finally, the association was observed in each of the country samples, albeit with varying strengths.