Özet:

Psychology, which studies a person’s feelings, thoughts and behaviors, also studies a person’s pro-social behavior (positive social behavior) from various aspects. The most commonly defined behavior of assisting without waiting for a response is also an important place in this literature. When the literature is studied, it appears that different types of behavior, such as mutuality and aid behavior, sacrifice, and sacrifice, are used to replace each other. In addition, the concept of "altruism" in English literature has been found to be translated into the Turkish literature in the form of concepts such as "diversity", "sensitivity", "alturism" as well as close concepts such as "sensitivity" and "sensitivity". This has caused a complexity in literature. However, it is important to clearly draw the boundaries and positions of the concepts in order for the theory, research and application areas to sit on a solid basis. Therefore, the article aims to define and determine the position of heterogeneity in specific pro-social behaviors. In the article, referring to the information about pro-social behaviors, the definitions of the otherhood are included. In other pro-social behaviors, a map of the concept of secondary behavior has been drawn out by paying attention to the nuances between the concepts close to each other to determine the place of secondary behavior. It is based on a clear definition of the other. At this point, pro-social behavior is a shadow concept, the behavior of helping is under it, the other is a kind of behavior of helping, and the other is a more specific state of helping. Then the criteria to be taken into account in the identification of other pro-social behaviors are determined. The article presents a definition quarter that contains these criteria that can be used when defining pro-social behaviors. This cetvel includes the concepts of pro-social behavior, assisting behavior, cooperation, social responsibility, sacrifice, devotion, mutuality and assertion.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

Özet:

Investigating emotions, thoughts, and behaviors of human being, psychology studies pro-social behavior from various perspectives. Since altruism is related to sociality and morality it is discussed mostly in social psychology and psychology of religion. But recently, altruism has attracted attention in general psychology with the development of positive psychology. This has led to be published many studies on altruism in the literature. These studies include different approaches to definition and scope of altruism. Altruism, generally, defined as helping without expectation of personal benefit, takes an important place in the literature. Altruism is used synonymous with some concepts like helping, self-sacrifice, and îsâr (which is used in Turkish literature with the meaning of helping others even the person himself in need). Yet the determination of borders and locations of concepts is necessary to build psychological theory, research, and practice on firm basis. This paper presents information about pro-social behavior and definitions of altruism. Then it mentions nuances of other pro-social concepts in order to determine the location of altruism. It presents a concept map of altruism and definition chart for pro-social behaviors as well. The term altruism in different languages has similar roots as seen in the Table 1. The usage of altruism in other languages consists of a term with the meaning of “other” (alter, gayr, özge, el) and a suffix (-ist, -ci, -sever, -kâm) with the meaning of "centered". So altruism bases on being “other centered”. In Turkish literature one can find different versions of the term altruism like elsever, diğerkâm, diğergam, özgeci, altruist, and, altürist. Therefore, researchers should be careful about these terms and make a search on them all. On the other hand, there are some concepts like “helping” (yardım etme), “care others” (diğerlerini düşünme), and “self-giving” (özveri) used as synonymous with altruism (Güney, 2010: 139). “Self-sacrifice” (fedakârlık) is also frequently used equal to altruism (see Hablemitoğlu ve diğ. 2010). Îsâr is another term used with the meaning of altruism as well (see Sancaklı, 2006). However, there are nuances among these concepts. For instance, helping is wider than altruism and caring others may not indicate an action but altruism does. Likely, altruism is a voluntary behavior while self-sacrifice may be involuntary under the influence of some reasons like social norms (Özdoğan, 2005: 178). With the lexical meaning of “preferring someone or something to other” îsâr is defined as “using one’s own means for the benefit of others even if she/he is in need” (Çağrıcı, 2000: 490). However, being in need is not a necessity for altruism (Durmuş, 2003: 19). Varieties of definitions of altruism provide us to see the common and different point of views. There is a consensus of the fact that altruism depends on an action of a person for the benefit of others (Bedosky, 2005: 17). Namely altruism is a type of helping behavior without expecting any personal gift or benefit. Yet there is dissidence on conceptualization and scope of pro-social behavior, helping, altruism and îsâr. What this article concludes from these discussions is pro-social behavior is a broad band term. Helping is a type of pro-sociality and altruism is a type of helping. Îsâr is a specific form of altruism as shown in the diagram 1 below. Diagram 1. Concept Map of Altruism After mentioning the definition and scope of altruism it is required to determine the location of altruism among other pro-social behaviors. Like altruism, there are a plenty of different definitions for other pro-social behaviors. After a detailed literature review this study detected that these definitions are made depending on the actor’s intention, aim, interaction, state, target and behavior type. Here is a definition chart for pro-social behaviors. As a conclusion, this paper asserts that altruism is to help others for the benefit of her/him. It depends on being “other centered” instead of being “self-centered”. Îsâr is a specific form of altruism that means to help others even the actor herself/himself is in need. This paper also presents a range of criteria to define pro-social behaviors. It is expected that this definition chart will contribute to eliminating the confusion of concepts in the literature.