Faced with global challenges, like environmental degradation, poverty, social injustice, and discrimination against marginalized societal groups, it is important to develop strategies that promote concern for the well-being of others and encourage prosocial action. Engaging in prosocial behaviors can contribute to positive social change through reducing discrimination, improving the situation and well-being of those in need, and fostering more sustainable personal lifestyles. One important factor that limits human prosociality is our ‘finite pool of worry’, the fact that humans have only finite resources, physiologically, cognitively, and socially (Linville & Fischer, 1991; Weber, 2006). Effortful and costly prosociality (Dovidio, 1984; Gneezy, Imas, Brown, Nelson, & Norton, 2012; Rand, Greene, & Nowak, 2012; Rand & Nowak, 2013; Simpson & Willer, 2008), especially towards distant and unknown others, stigmatized groups, or the natural environment, may not receive preference in the allocation of resources over self-related goals and the fulfillment of crucial personal needs. One of the most fundamental human needs is establishing and maintaining a positive self-image (Epstein, 1973; Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999; Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995). This dissertation investigates two strategies for motivating prosocial behavior that leverage this need for a positive self-image and the fact that humans are motivated to fulfill it. Paper I explores anticipated emotions in the context of pro-environmental decision making. It assess the effects of inducing people to consider their future feelings with a certain decision they are about to take. Results show that inducing people to anticipate pride from prosocial action versus guilt from inaction is relatively more effective at instilling pro-environmental motivation. Furthermore, exploratory findings point toward potential reactance to attempts to solicit prosocial behavior by prompting anticipated guilt. Papers II and III explore the potential of a values affirmation intervention to motivate prosocial behavior. Starting from self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988), paper II hypothesizes that the act of affirming one’s values may increase positive self-directed emotions (‘positive self-regard’) which can translate into downstream prosociality. It proposes a potential explanation for this effect, such that a heightened positive sense of self, stemming from engaging in the affirmation intervention, may reduce worry about the self, thus freeing up cognitive and emotional resources to engage in behaviors directed towards others. Results show that a values affirmation intervention can successfully promote prosocial behavior towards unknown and distant others in the form of volunteering time and donating real money to charity. As hypothesized, positive self-regard mediates the effect of the affirmation intervention on prosociality. Paper III extends the scope of the work to situations in which the beneficiaries of the prosocial action are members of marginalized and stigmatized societal groups, such as ex-prisoners. It tests the generalizability of the hypothesized affirmation effects in two countries, Nigeria and the United States. Results show that engaging members of the public in a values affirmation intervention can reduce discriminatory tendencies and promote prosociality towards ex-prisoners in both countries under investigation. Implications and recommendations for policy and practice are discussed in each paper. This dissertation is of high theoretical as well as applied relevance and makes important contributions to scholarship and practice. It contributes to the advancement of psychological theory as well as its application potential to help foster social change in an endeavor to address some of the most pressing and challenging social issues nations around the world face.

Why do we defend the social conditions responsible for our injustice and exploitation? We are confused when disadvantaged women of color cite personal shortcomings rather than the social system as the source of their precarity. Yet, when social philosophers take up these questions by appealing to the concept of ideology, they turn to structural accounts and dismiss theories of false consciousness outright. Accounts of false consciousness, often understood as an epistemic failing to recognize some features of our inadequate social world, meet with a host of objections. Some argue that ascriptions of false consciousness involve authoritarianism, while others criticize the concept for commitments to an implausible correspondence picture of truth. Meanwhile, dismissal of false consciousness accounts of ideology have led to the neglect of an important feature of how ideology works: in and through our own agency. Without an account of false consciousness, critics fail to account for the fact that social structures are the result of our collective consent. They also fail to address how social structures are not analyzable without turning to the self-understandings of the participants in these very institutions. This dissertation addresses issues in ideology critique that account for our agency. By preserving what is still alive in a theory of false consciousness while addressing the long-standing concerns about authoritarianism and correspondence, this project reconstructs the notion of false consciousness. It closely engages with figures in critical social theory such as Marx, Lukacs, Habermas, Haslanger, Honneth, and Jaeggi, while widening the terms of the debate to consider the relevance, for instance, of object relations psychoanalysis for social philosophers. Beyond this, this dissertation shows that false consciousness is a damaged way of relating to ourselves, to each other, and to the social world. It is characterized, I propose, by affective investment. This move helps us clarify both the phenomenology of false consciousness and what a viable form of critique could look like. Psychoanalysis offers us a new way of understanding ideology critique by directing us beyond the model of critique as judgment as part of overcoming false consciousness.