Focusing attention on a multiplicity of issues surrounding the study of behavior is timely and important. Some scholars believe that, across various sub-disciplines of the field, social psychology actually has contributed a great deal to our understanding of behavior and its antecedents. From this perspective, there is considerable utility in drawing together such work in one place. Other scholars suggest that, though there has been great progress elucidating the internal cognitive, affective and motivational underpinnings of behavior, much less research focuses on external behavior itself....

The Oxford Handbook of Prosocial Behavior provides a comprehensive review of the current literature on when and why people act to benefit others. It provides a comprehensive overview of the field to give both the casual reader and the neophyte to the field some perspective about fundamental questions (what, why, when, and who) relative to prosocial behavior. Taking a multi-level approach, the chapters represent the broad spectrum of this multi-faceted domain. Topics range from micro-level analyses involving evolutionary and comparative psychological factors to macro-level...