Prosocial Behavior and Big Five-Factor Model of Personality: A Theoretical Review

The manner in which one acts or behaves in response to environment, person or stimulus that is external or internal, covert or overt and voluntary or involuntary is the behavior of an individual. Behavior is determined by his or her personality (is the set of psychological traits and mechanisms with the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influences his or her interactions with, and adaptation to, the intra psychic, physical ,and social environments). Personality is determined by various factors, these factors are examined by different researchers and psychologists, various models came out of it, Big Five-Factor Model (Costa & Mc Crae,1995 ) is one among them .An individual possessing specific traits behave specially in the society. Individuals moving towards people and society when they are in need are performing prosocial behavior (refers to acts that are positively valued by society).In our culture helping others is socially valued. Thus helpful responses are a form of prosocial behavior. Empirical work has been done to examine the relationship of prosocial behavior and personality traits. This paper presents the theoretical review of the relationship between prosocial behavior and Big Five-Factor Model of Personality, from last fifteen years.