Prosociality predicts connectedness with nature and soil

Prosocial propensity refers to an individual’s general inclination to act for the benefit of others. Notably, psychological research has often defined “others” narrowly, limiting the term to humans. However, some authors argue that the concept of “others” should be expanded to include the natural word. Previous research has demonstrated that an individual’s prosocial propensity underpins their connectedness to nature (also referred to as “connectedness with nature” or “nature relatedness”). Accordingly, the main objective of this study was to examine the relationship between prosocial propensity and soil connectedness in a sample of Chilean farmers (n = 166). Altruism was used as an indicator of prosocial propensity to examine its association with a newly developed Inclusion of Soil in Self measure, inspired by the well-known Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS) measure, thereby assessing the relationship between prosocial tendencies and connectedness to soil. First, a Rasch model was used to compute scores for the altruism scale. The Rasch residuals explained 10% of the variance, suggesting that the scale adequately captured a single underlying construct. Then, correlation analyses revealed that prosocial propensity was positively associated with connectedness to both nature (r = 0.22, p < 0.01) and soil (r = 0.24, p < 0.01). These associations remained robust when controlling for income, education, age, and gender. This study contributes to the growing body of evidence that environmentalism is an indicator of prosociality, and that connectedness to nature and soil may reflect a domain in which prosocial tendencies are expressed.