Interventions stimulating prosocial helping behavior: A systematic review

This systematic review of the literature aims to identify, analyze, and synthesize studies assessing the effectiveness of interventions stimulating prosocial behavior. It concentrates on helping behavior and covers experimental and quasi-experimental research concerning interventions carried out in different settings. This review was performed in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. Of the initial sample of 4,653 publications found in databases, 49 articles met our inclusion criteria and were classified as eligible for data extraction and narrative synthesis. The studies included in the review assessed 63 interventions, most of them targeted at children and adolescents. We distinguished three strategies stimulating prosocial behavior: behavioral, cognitive, and emotional. This review is informative for both researchers and practitioners. It provides researchers with methodological guidelines concerning how to conduct studies on the effectiveness of prosocial interventions, and it provides practitioners with guidelines on empirically tested strategies for stimulating prosocial helping behavior.