Role models have a profound impact on other people’s lives. Despite their prevalence in our society, however, the psychology of role models themselves remains surprisingly unexplored. We examine how being a role model for others influences the role model’s motivation and behavior. Focusing on the foundational aspect of role model as an inspirational comparison standard that others learn and emulate, we hypothesize that role models are more aware of their social impact on others, and in turn, make them more prosocial. We test these hypotheses in four studies using a variety of methods. Study 1 uses international archival datasets (N=39,936 individuals from 27 countries) to establish the role model-prosociality link. Studies 2-4 are pre-registered experiments (total N=1,378 adults) which demonstrate that (a) role models are more prosocially motivated, (b) behave more prosocially, and (c) awareness of their social impact mediates the role model-prosociality link.
