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Key sources of prosocial behavior - Comparison of a group of police officers with a group of Mountain Rescue Service members
FENDRICHOVÁ, Bohdana
Motivation characteristics of prosocial behavior represent a positive element of a complex labyrinth of motivation which was {--} in the former times {--} investigated within the framework of social psychology mostly with regard to its negative parts (aggressiveness, hostility, violence, social deviations etc.) On the other hand, domestic specialized publications have failed to pay a sufficient attention to the issues concerning prosocial behavior, alturism, empathy, personal predispositions and to mutual relations among these aspects. The objective of this thesis is to identify the level of empathy and certain personality factors which might influence prosocial behavior of selected groups of the Mountain Rescue Service members and Police officers. This applies to factors such as, extroversion, willingness to learn from experience of the others, towardness and conscientiousness. Majority of experts share an opinion that prosocial behavior represents a fundamental prerequisite for performance of professions aimed at helping to the others. I believe that the work of both Mountain Rescue Service members as well as of the Police officers can be rightfully considered as such. Necessary data collection was carried out using two different psychodiagnostic questionnaires. The first one - the IRI questionnaire {--} was used to define the empathy level while the second one {--} the NEO-FFI questionnaire - was used to measure five personality traits The examined group consisted of the officers from the Czech Police Criminal Investigation Department of Karlovy Vary and of the rescue workers of the Jeseníky and Krušné hory Mountain Rescue Service. The fundamental hypothesis of this work is that if compared with the police officers, the Mountain Rescue Service members show higher level of empathy, towardness and extroversion, i.e. the traits which to the higher extent correlate with prosocial behavior. From the results obtained we can derive that if compared between the examined groups, the empathy level and the personality profiles, resulting from the five-factor model (so called {\clqq}Big Five``), do not differ from each other too much since the measured values do not show any significant differences. If compared with the regular population, both sub-groups have shown higher level of conscientiousness and lower level of neuroticity and willingness to learn from the others` experience. We can not generalize the results of this research due to an insufficient size of the experimental group. However, despite of this fact, these results could become a partial step to enhance awareness in this field. According to my opinion, the objective of this thesis was duly accomplished.
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