Prosocial Tendencies Measure Revised (PTM-R)

1. Abstract

The Prosocial Tendencies Measure Revised (PTM-R) is an established multidimensional assessment instrument engineered to evaluate discrete forms of prosocial behavior among adolescents and emerging adults. Historically, empirical research conceptualized prosociality as a homogeneous, unidimensional construct, frequently collapsing heterogeneous helping behaviors under a singular index of altruism. Developed by Gustavo Carlo and Brandy A. Randall (2002; Carlo, Hausmann, Christiansen, & Randall, 2003), the PTM-R operationalizes helping actions as contextually, motivationally, and emotionally distinct behavioral repertoires. The revised instrument comprises 25 self-report items evaluated on a 5-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (Does Not Describe Me At All) to 5 (Describes Me Greatly).

The measure identifies six distinct latent dimensions: Public, Anonymous, Dire, Emotional, Compliant, and Altruistic prosocial behaviors. Across extensive psychometric investigations, the PTM-R has exhibited robust construct validity, structural stability via exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and cross-cultural equivalence across diverse demographic cohorts. Internal consistency estimates across the six subscales typically range from adequate to excellent (Cronbach’s α coefficients spanning .60 to .86 across international cross-validations), demonstrating moderate to high test-retest reliability over longitudinal intervals. By capturing motives that range from self-oriented egoistic payoffs (such as social approval in public helping) to selfless actions (such as anonymous or crisis-driven interventions), the PTM-R represents a premier psychometric instrument for developmental psychology, social psychology, behavioral sociology, and moral education.

2. Keywords

Prosocial Tendencies Measure Revised, PTM-R, prosocial behavior, altruism, empathy, social-cognitive development, moral reasoning, helping behavior, psychometrics, scale validation, public helping, emotional prosociality.

3. Authors

The Prosocial Tendencies Measure and its subsequent developmental revisions were conceived and validated by psychometricians and developmental psychologists specializing in socio-moral development:

• Gustavo Carlo, Ph.D. — Professor in the School of Education and the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Irvine (formerly Millsap Family Endowed Professor of Diversity at the University of Missouri and faculty member at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln). Dr. Carlo is a prominent scholar in prosocial development, socio-moral reasoning, and positive youth development among cross-cultural and marginalized populations.
• Brandy A. Randall, Ph.D. — Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean of the College of Graduate and Interdisciplinary Studies at North Dakota State University. Her research centers on adolescent socio-emotional adjustment, peer relationship networks, and prosocial tendencies.
• Collaborating Co-Authors on Adolescent Validation: Anne Hausmann and Stacie Christiansen (University of Nebraska–Lincoln), whose psychometric investigations established normative benchmarks for younger secondary school demographics.

4. Purpose

The foundational rationale behind the creation of the Prosocial Tendencies Measure Revised was to challenge and advance beyond the prevailing psychometric paradigm that treated helping behaviors as functionally equivalent. Prior to the PTM-R, empirical instruments—such as the Self-Report Altruism (SRA) scale—aggregated acts as disparate as donating blood, assisting an injured stranger, giving directions, and participating in public charity drives into an undifferentiated composite score. Carlo and Randall (2002) argued that such aggregate scoring strategies obscurred vital socio-cognitive, emotional, and motivational variations underpinning different prosocial acts.

From a theoretical and developmental standpoint, the primary purpose of the PTM-R is to map individual differences in prosocial behavioral proclivities across varying contextual demands and personal motivations. For instance, an individual who readily offers assistance in high-arousal, emotionally charged situations may avoid mundane, non-affective helping opportunities. Similarly, an individual driven by impression management and public recognition may exhibit frequent public helping while showing a marked aversion to anonymous philanthropy. The PTM-R disaggregates these phenotypic expressions to elucidate their differential developmental precursors, such as parental socialization, peer modeling, empathetic concern, personal distress, and moral judgment.

In applied and research contexts, the instrument serves several pivotal functions:

• Developmental and Longitudinal Tracking: Allowing researchers to chart transitions in moral motivation from early adolescence to adulthood, documenting shifts from externally regulated (public, compliance-driven) helping toward internalized (altruistic, anonymous) moral frameworks.
• Intervention and Educational Evaluation: Serving as a sensitive diagnostic and evaluative tool for service-learning programs, social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula, and community intervention initiatives designed to foster positive youth development.
• Cross-Cultural Behavioral Analysis: Facilitating comparative studies on how cultural values such as collectivism, individualism, familismo, and filial piety moderate the expression of specific prosocial domains.
• Clinical and Psychopathology Assessment: Providing baseline metrics of prosocial orientation in investigations involving conduct problems, callous-unemotional (CU) traits, social anxiety, and antisocial behavioral trajectories.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct assessed by the PTM-R is multidimensional prosocial behavior, defined as voluntary actions intended to benefit another individual or collective group, classified according to the underlying motivation, emotional context, and situational triggers. Rather than treating prosociality as an all-or-none trait, the PTM-R captures a taxonomy of six correlated yet structurally distinct latent behavioral tendencies:

1. Public Prosocial Behavior

Public prosocial behavior describes helping actions executed in the direct visual or social presence of others, primarily motivated by the desire to secure social approval, enhance reputation, and bolster positive self-presentation. Individuals high in this tendency view helping as an opportunity to gain status, peer validation, or external praise (e.g., Item 1: “I can help others best when people are watching me”; Item 4: “I think that one of the best things about helping others is that it makes me look good”). Psychometrically, this dimension is uniquely associated with high social desirability, higher self-monitoring, and lower internalized moral reasoning.

2. Anonymous Prosocial Behavior

Anonymous prosocial behavior entails acts of assistance performed without the recipient or external observers knowing the identity of the benefactor. This dimension isolates helping conducted in the absence of tangible social rewards or reputational capital (e.g., Item 8: “I prefer to donate money without anyone knowing”; Item 11: “I tend to help others in need when they do not know who helped them”). Individuals demonstrating high anonymous tendencies are characterized by internalized moral self-concepts, moral identity, and low reliance on social reinforcement.

3. Dire Prosocial Behavior

Dire prosocial behavior involves delivering aid to individuals who are in severe, urgent, or life-threatening crises. The defining criterion of this dimension is the presence of an acute emergency or heightened vulnerability (e.g., Item 6: “I tend to help people who are in a real crisis or need”; Item 9: “I tend to help people who are hurt badly”). Dire helping typically requires rapid situational appraisal, decisive action, and cognitive prioritization of physical or material relief over hesitation.

4. Emotional Prosocial Behavior

Emotional prosocial behavior encompasses helping behaviors elicited in affectively charged situations, specifically where the target of assistance is experiencing acute distress, sadness, or emotional turmoil (e.g., Item 2: “It makes me feel good when I can comfort someone who is very upset”; Item 12: “I tend to help others especially when they are really emotional”). This dimension correlates strongly with affective empathy and sympathy, reflecting a psychological disposition to alleviate the affective suffering of others through relational comfort.

5. Compliant Prosocial Behavior

Compliant prosocial behavior refers to assisting others in response to a direct, explicit verbal or nonverbal request. Unlike spontaneous helping, compliant actions are reactive rather than proactive, triggered when someone explicitly asks for assistance (e.g., Item 7: “When people ask me to help them, I don’t hesitate”; Item 18: “I never wait to help others when they ask for it”). This form of prosociality is exceptionally common across daily interpersonal interactions and is linked to cooperativeness, agreeableness, and normative conformity.

6. Altruistic Prosocial Behavior

Altruistic prosocial behavior reflects voluntary assistance motivated primarily by genuine concern for the welfare of another individual, often enacted at personal expense or without anticipation of direct extrinsic or psychological payoffs. Within the PTM-R, this subscale captures an orientation where the benefactor explicitly rejects self-gain, resume-building, or reciprocity as the guiding motive for giving (e.g., Item 24: “I often help even if I don’t think I will get anything out of helping”, alongside reverse-scored egoistic items reflecting expectations of reciprocity or extrinsic reward).

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual foundation of the PTM-R is anchored in Nancy Eisenberg’s Model of Prosocial Moral Reasoning and her developmental social-cognitive theory of prosocial behavior (Eisenberg et al., 1998, 2006). Eisenberg hypothesized that the psychological mechanisms governing human altruism undergo significant qualitative transformation from childhood through emerging adulthood. Whereas early childhood prosociality is heavily constrained by hedonistic, self-reflective, and direct reciprocity concerns (analogous to the PTM-R Public dimension), cognitive maturation facilitates the development of stereotypic, approval-oriented, empathetic, and ultimately deeply internalized moral reasoning orientations.

Carlo and Randall incorporated these theoretical insights by contrasting self-focused helping drives against other-oriented helping drives:

• The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis: Formulated by C. Daniel Batson (Batson, 1991), this hypothesis postulates that the arousal of true other-oriented empathetic concern inevitably yields an authentic, non-egoistic motivation to alleviate the victim’s plight. Within the PTM-R architecture, this process maps onto the Emotional, Dire, and Altruistic subscales.
• Negative State Relief and Egoistic Accounts: In contrast to Batson, Robert Cialdini’s negative-state relief model posits that individuals frequently assist others to terminate their own vicarious personal distress or to harvest positive social and psychological rewards (e.g., mood elevation, social adulation). The PTM-R explicitly operationalizes this divergence by separating Public prosocial actions (social enhancement) and self-benefiting expectations from genuinely self-sacrificing altruism.
• Contextual and Ecological Systems Theory: Drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological paradigm, the PTM-R acknowledges that situational cues (such as audience presence, clear verbal solicitation, or acute emergency conditions) interact dynamically with an individual’s chronic personality dispositions. Thus, prosocial actions reflect an interaction between sociocognitive capacities, affective traits, and situational affordances.

7. Validity

The Prosocial Tendencies Measure Revised has undergone extensive psychometric scrutiny to establish its construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity across varied cultural and demographic samples.

Convergent Validity

Empirical studies consistently substantiate predictable patterns of convergence between the PTM-R subscales and established personality, moral, and emotional constructs:

• Empathy and Perspective Taking: Carlo and Randall (2002) and Carlo et al. (2003) demonstrated that scores on the Emotional, Dire, Anonymous, and Altruistic subscales correlate positively and significantly with the Perspective Taking and Empathetic Concern subscales of Mark Davis’s Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; $r$ values ranging from .28 to .54, $p < .001$). Conversely, Public prosocial behavior correlates negatively or non-significantly with empathetic concern.
• Moral Reasoning: The Altruistic and Anonymous subscales demonstrate significant positive associations with internalized, sophisticated prosocial moral reasoning as indexed by the PROM (Prosocial Reasoning Objective Measure), whereas the Public subscale exhibits positive correlations with hedonistic and approval-oriented moral reasoning.
• Social Desirability: The Public subscale frequently correlates positively with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, reflecting its sensitivity to reputation and external validation. In contrast, Anonymous and Altruistic subscales correlate negligibly or moderately negatively with social desirability, confirming their independence from self-promotional bias.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity is supported by factor-analytic independence and divergent relationships with antisocial and externalizing phenotypes:

• The Public subscale uniquely associates with high Machiavellianism, narcissism, and competitive social orientations, whereas Altruistic, Emotional, and Dire tendencies correlate negatively with antisocial behaviors, aggression, and delinquency.
• Inter-correlations among the six subscales remain low to moderate (typically ranging from $r = -.15$ to $r = .52$), demonstrating that while these dimensions share broad commonality under the prosocial umbrella, they do not suffer from conceptual multicollinearity.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The PTM-R successfully predicts concrete, observed behavioral outcomes across laboratory and field settings:

• Donation Behaviors: High scores on the Anonymous subscale predict unobtrusively observed monetary donations in private experimental conditions where no social scrutiny is present.
• Volunteer Service: Longitudinal investigations (e.g., Carlo et al., 2003; Azimpour et al., 2012) establish that compliant and emotional prosociality reliably predict ongoing engagement in formal volunteer and community service activities.

8. Reliability

The PTM-R has demonstrated stable and psychometrically satisfactory reliability estimates across diverse populations, including North American, European, Latin American, and Asian samples.

Internal Consistency

In the seminal psychometric validation by Carlo and Randall (2002) involving college students, Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients for the six subscales demonstrated acceptable to good internal reliability:

• Public: $lpha = .78 – .86$
• Anonymous: $lpha = .80 – .85$
• Dire: $lpha = .63 – .74$
• Emotional: $lpha = .75 – .83$
• Compliant: $lpha = .76 – .80$
• Altruistic: $lpha = .64 – .74$

Subsequent validation studies of the PTM-R among adolescents (Carlo et al., 2003) and university students internationally (e.g., Azimpour et al., 2012; Rodrigues et al., 2017) replicated these coefficients, with composite reliability (CR) indices typically exceeding .70 for all factors, confirming solid structural stability despite relatively brief subscale item counts (ranging from 2 to 6 items per subscale).

Test-Retest Stability

Temporal stability assessments conducted over intervals ranging from two weeks to six months demonstrate notable consistency in behavioral tendencies:

• Two-week test-retest coefficients reported by Carlo and Randall (2002) were: Public ($r = .80$), Anonymous ($r = .84$), Dire ($r = .72$), Emotional ($r = .73$), Compliant ($r = .70$), and Altruistic ($r = .68$).
• Longitudinal investigations spanning twelve months show rank-order stability coefficients averaging between .45 and .60, mirroring normative developmental stability in adolescent personality traits.

9. Factor Analysis

Extensive exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) have firmly supported the theoretical six-factor structure over alternative unidimensional, two-factor, or five-factor models.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Model Fit

In structural equation modeling (SEM) evaluations, the hypothesized six-factor oblique model consistently fulfills standard empirical criteria for acceptable to excellent goodness-of-fit across adolescent and adult cohorts:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values consistently range between $.91$ and $.96$.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Values typically range from $.90$ to $.95$.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates typically fall between $.042$ and $.065$ (with $90%$ confidence intervals bounded below $.070$).
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values consistently remain below $.060$.

Alternative model comparisons confirm that collapsing the 25 items onto a single latent “general prosocial” factor yields severely degraded fit indices ($ ext{CFI} < .65, text{RMSEA} > .11$), empirically confirming that prosocial behavior cannot be adequately represented as a monolithic, unidimensional construct.

Factor Loadings

Standardized factor loadings ($lambda$) across the six latent dimensions generally range from $.48$ to $.86$, with all target items loading significantly ($p < .001$) on their respective designated factors:

• Public Items (1, 3, 5, 13): Standardized loadings range from $.68$ to $.84$.
• Anonymous Items (8, 11, 15, 19, 22): Standardized loadings range from $.62$ to $.83$.
• Dire Items (6, 9, 14): Standardized loadings range from $.54$ to $.78$.
• Emotional Items (2, 12, 17, 21, 25): Standardized loadings range from $.61$ to $.80$.
• Compliant Items (7, 18): Standardized loadings range from $.69$ to $.81$.
• Altruistic Items (4, 10, 16, 20, 23, 24): Standardized loadings range from $.48$ to $.72$ (with egoistic items reverse-scored to evaluate altruistic orientation).

Measurement Invariance

Multi-group CFA studies have established configural, metric (weak), and scalar (strong) measurement invariance across biological sex (male vs. female) and age groups (early adolescence vs. emerging adulthood). These findings confirm that observed differences in subscale means reflect true latent developmental and gender-based differences (e.g., females consistently scoring higher on Emotional, Dire, and Compliant scales; males scoring higher on Public helping) rather than psychometric measurement bias.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Prosocial Tendencies Measure Revised (PTM-R)
• Instrument Authors: Gustavo Carlo, Ph.D., & Brandy A. Randall, Ph.D.
• Initial Publication Year: 2002 (Adolescent validation: 2003)
• Administration Format: Self-administered pencil-and-paper questionnaire or computerized online survey.
• Target Population: Adolescents (ages 12–18) and emerging adults / college students (ages 18–25+).
• Completion Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes.
• Total Item Count: 25 items.
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert scale formatted as:
  • 1 = Does Not Describe Me At All
  • 2 = Describes Me A Little
  • 3 = Somewhat Describes Me
  • 4 = Describes Me Well
  • 5 = Describes Me Greatly
• Subscale Item Composition and Scoring Protocol:

  Subscale scores are calculated by averaging the numerical responses of the items assigned to each dimension (yielding a continuous mean score from 1.0 to 5.0 per subscale). Higher scores indicate a stronger disposition toward that specific mode of prosocial behavior:

  • Public Prosocial Subscale (4 items): Items 1, 3, 5, 13
  • Anonymous Prosocial Subscale (5 items): Items 8, 11, 15, 19, 22
  • Dire Prosocial Subscale (3 items): Items 6, 9, 14
  • Emotional Prosocial Subscale (5 items): Items 2, 12, 17, 21, 25
  • Compliant Prosocial Subscale (2 items): Items 7, 18
  • Altruistic Prosocial Subscale (6 items): Items 4 (reversed), 10 (reversed), 16 (reversed), 20 (reversed), 23 (reversed), and 24 (positive scoring).
    Note: In the Altruism subscale scoring, items 4, 10, 16, 20, and 23 reflect egoistic, reward-seeking, or reciprocal motivations and are reverse-scored ($1=5, 2=4, 3=3, 4=2, 5=1$) prior to averaging with item 24. Alternatively, some researchers examine these egoistic items separately as an extrinsic/egoistic helping index.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Prosocial Tendencies Measure Revised (PTM-R) was originally formulated in 2002 by Gustavo Carlo and Brandy A. Randall at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, with secondary school adolescent normative metrics published in 2003.

The instrument is placed in the public academic domain for non-commercial educational, scientific, and research purposes. No licensing fee or formal royalty is required for academic researchers, university faculty, or students wishing to utilize the measure in scholarly investigations. However, standard professional and psychometric ethics mandate that users formally cite the original authors (Carlo & Randall, 2002; Carlo et al., 2003) in all subsequent dissertations, reports, and journal publications. Commercial reproduction, integration into proprietary clinical assessment batteries, or monetization of the scale requires written permission from the primary author, Dr. Gustavo Carlo.

12. References

• Azimpour, A., Neasi, A., Shehni-Yailagh, M., & Arshadi, N. (2012). Validation of “Prosocial Tendencies Measure” in Iranian university students. Journal of Life Science and Biomedicine, 2(2), 34–42.
• Batson, C. D. (1991). The Altruism Question: Toward a Social-Psychological Answer. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Carlo, G., & Randall, B. A. (2002). The development of a measure of prosocial behaviors for late adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 31(1), 31–44. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014033032440
• Carlo, G., Hausmann, A., Christiansen, S., & Randall, B. A. (2003). Sociocognitive and behavioral correlates of a measure of prosocial tendencies for adolescents. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 23(1), 107–134. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431602239132
• Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113–126. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.44.1.113
• Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., & Spinrad, T. L. (2006). Prosocial development. In N. Eisenberg, W. Damon, & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology: Vol. 3, Social, Emotional, and Personality Development (6th ed., pp. 646–718). John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470147658.chpsy0311
• Rodrigues, J. L., Carlo, G., & Eisenberg, N. (2017). Prosocial tendencies and moral reasoning in Brazilian adolescents. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 41(3), 321–329. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025416631835
• Smith, T. W. (2006). Altruism and empathy in America: Trends and correlates. National Opinion Research Center / University of Chicago, Research Report, 1–48.

13. Items of the Scale