Motivazioni prosociali e comportamenti volontari: una review

[Autom. eng. transl.] Thought and reflection on what drives man's solidarity action permeates humanity's reflections from antiquity to Freud (1856-1939). The study of why and in what conditions people help or engage in prosocial behavior has its contemporary roots in social psychology (Schroeder, Penner, Dovidio and Piliavin, 1995). Although it is difficult to give an unambiguous answer because it is dependent "on theoretical approaches and methodological apparatuses assumed by researchers and scholars" (Marta and Scabini, 2003, p. 19), the experts agree on the need to study the subject investigating the motivation. Since the motivations are universal structures that guide similar actions (Snyder and Cantor, 1998), in fact, studying them can help to understand why people act in a similar way in as many contexts. In the light of this theoretical background, the motivations have assumed a central role in the study of helping behaviors and, specifically, of voluntary prosocial actions. The studies on the subject have progressively widened and complexized the focus on the role of motivation: at first only indicating the characteristics of personality (in the dichotomous sense altruism / egoism) as motivations of the action, and proposing only later the analysis of the interaction between dispositional and situational features. This enlargement has favored a broader view of the motivations, which recently led some scholars of this topic to the need to speak, to explain the prosocial and voluntary behaviors, of motivational functions underlying them. The same prosocial behavior can, therefore, undergo different motivations, peculiar to the person who performs the voluntary gesture and the phase of the life cycle in which she finds herself. The data highlight the intrinsic validity of this orientation: the motivations are a dynamic constellation of interacting forces that, day after day, modifying themselves and adapting to the needs of the volunteers and to the situation in which they find themselves, contribute to the duration of the commitment. The contribution is divided into two parts: the first is devoted to an excursus on the concept of motivation; the second, through a look at some research data, outlines the centrality of motivations in different contexts: volunteering, blood donation, emergency.