Roles of Personality Types, Emotional Intelligence and Gender Differences on Prosocial Behavior

Abstract

Due to dearth of research on prosocial behavior (PSB) among undergraduates in Nigeria, this study investigated the influence of five –factor personality factors (FFP), emotional intelligence (EI) and gender differences on prosocial behavior (PSB) among undergraduates in Nigeria. Cross-sectional survey design was adopted to tap information from 200 randomly selected undergraduates. They responded to a carefully designed questionnaire with 4 sections. Five hypotheses were tested. The results showed that there were significant relationships between the variables of study. The first step in the hierarchical regression showed that the independent and joint contributions of age, gender, religion and educational level on PSB were not significant. The second step which involved the FFP did not have significant independent and joint contribution on PSB except for conscientiousness [R² = .34, t = 7.08; p < .01]. In the third step EI also had no significant contribution but the overall joint contribution (with other variables) to PSB increased to 35.3%. However, high EI increased PSB [t(198) = 12.36; p < .01] but gender did not have significant effect on PSB. The findings were discussed based on the existing literature and important recommendations were made.