The Sociocultural Appraisals, Values, and Emotions (SAVE) Framework of Prosociality: Core Processes from Gene to Meme Dacher Keltner, 1 Aleksandr Kogan, 2 Paul K. Piff, 3 and Sarina R. Saturn 4 1 Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720; email: keltner@socrates.berkeley.edu 2 Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, United Kingdom; email: ak823@cam.ac.uk 3 Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720; email: ppiff@berkeley.edu 4 School of Psychological Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331; email: sarina.saturn@oregonstate.edu Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2014. 65:425–60 The Annual Review of Psychology is online at http://psych.annualreviews.org This article’s doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115054 Copyright c  2014 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved Keywords prosociality, altruism, cooperation, trust, elevation, compassion, empathy Abstract The study of prosocial behavior—altruism, cooperation, trust, and the re- lated moral emotions—has matured enough to produce general scholarly consensus that prosociality is widespread, intuitive, and rooted deeply within our biological makeup. Several evolutionary frameworks model the condi- tions under which prosocial behavior is evolutionarily viable, yet no unifying treatment exists of the psychological decision-making processes that result in prosociality. Here, we provide such a perspective in the form of the socio- cultural appraisals, values, and emotions (SAVE) framework of prosociality. We review evidence for the components of our framework at four levels of analysis: intrapsychic, dyadic, group, and cultural. Within these levels, we consider how phenomena such as altruistic punishment, prosocial con- tagion, self–other similarity, and numerous others give rise to prosocial be- havior. We then extend our reasoning to chart the biological underpinnings of prosociality and apply our framework to understand the role of social class in prosociality. 425 Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2014.65:425-460. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by University of California - Berkeley on 01/08/14. For personal use only.