Emotional, cultural and cognitive variables of prosocial behaviour Manuel Martí-Vilar 1 & Lucas Serrano-Pastor 1 & Francisco González Sala 2 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract In order to promote wellbeing in current society, it is necessary to understand which variables predict prosocial behaviour. The objectives of this research were: 1) To establish prosociality as a phenomenon which is related to emotional, contextual and cognitive factors. 2) To establish a model for emotional intelligence which explains prosocial behaviour in Spanish university students. 3) To determine which factors in individual culture explain, to a larger extent, prosocial behaviour. The sample was composed of 180 Spanish college students aged 18 to 25 (135 women; mean of age = 21.17; standard deviation = 1.53). Correlation analysis showed a positive relationship in emotional intelligence, individual culture and criminal thinking. The regression analyses showed that the mixed model of emotional intelligence is the best predictor of prosocial behaviours. Regarding individual culture, high levels in collectivism and long term orientation, and low levels in distance to power, were the best predictors of these behaviours. These findings confirm the importance of understanding prosocial behaviour as a multidimensional phenomenon. Keywords Prosocial behaviour . Emotional intelligence . Criminal thinking . Individual culture Introduction In recent years, the study of variables which can explain prosocial behaviour (PB) has emerged as a subject of great interest. Understanding these variables is crucial in promoting behaviours of assistance, solidarity, tolerance and cooperation among people within a society and, at the same time, it allows preventing and reducing anti-social behaviours (Redondo et al. 2016). A PB can be defined as the wilful behaviour of helping others, regardless of the objective (Eisenberg and Fabes 1998; Beck et al. 2004). Auné et al. (2014) carried out a conceptual revision of the construct and concluded that it is “a complex phenomenon which involves individual actions based on beliefs and feelings, and which describes the way these individuals are oriented towards the others when engag- ing in solidarity behaviours” (p. 23). Multiple research papers have tried to understand the com- plex phenomenon of PB. Its connection with emotional, cogni- tive and contextual processes has been the subject of study in order to explain its development, evolution and action (Redondo and Inglés 2010; Martí-Vilar 2010; Auné et al. 2014; Arias 2015; Matsumoto et al. 2016; Shahrier et al. 2016). According to Diazgranados (2014), people who have a high level of emotional and social competence are more conscious of themselves, their emotions and the needs of others. These skills favour the development and mainte- nance of relationships which are constructive and mutually satisfactory, thus increasing the probability of having prosocial behaviour. This positive link between emotional intelligence and PB can be found in recent studies (Afolabi 2013; Kesari et al. 2014; Ruckmani and Balachandra 2015; Kaltwasser et al. 2017; Guo et al. 2018). Mayer and Salovey (1997) define emotional intelligence as the ability to identify emotions when the human being can Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-0168-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Francisco González Sala Francisco.Gonzalez-Sala@uv.es Manuel Martí-Vilar manuel.marti-vilar@uv.es Lucas Serrano-Pastor lucas.serrano.pastor@gmail.com 1 Departamento de Psicología Básica, Facultad de Psicología, Universitat de València, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 21. 46010, València, Spain 2 Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de Psicología, Universitat de València, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 21. 46010, València, Spain Current Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-0168-9