Abstract: The dual-process framework has generated two opposing accounts of prosocial decision-making. The reflective model posits that prosocial behavior requires deliberative control to override selfish intuitions, whereas the intuitive model of prosociality proposes that prosocial tendencies are themselves intuitive, with deliberation potentially triggering self-interested calculation. Despite their opposing conclusions, both models share the implicit assumption of single-intuition activation followed by deliberative correction. The Social Heuristics Hypothesis (SHH) advanced this debate by reconceptualizing intuition as the internalization of socially adaptive rules, yet it struggles to explain decisional conflict and the inconsistent direction of deliberative effects. The Hybrid Model addresses these limitations by proposing that multiple intuitive responses can be activated in parallel, with behavior initially determined by the competition among intuitions based on their relative strength, and deliberation serving as a flexible conflict-regulation system.
This review offers three interconnected contributions. First, we construct a hierarchical cognitive framework that integrates “Heuristic Formation - Multi-Intuition Competition - Deliberative Regulation”. Unlike previous reviews that treat SHH and the Hybrid Model as separate or competing accounts, we argue that they address distinct but complementary levels of explanation. SHH (alongside its extension, the Internalized Heuristics for Self-Preservation theory) answers where intuitions come from - the source layer. The Hybrid Model answers how those intuitions operate online during a decision - the processing layer. The integration forms a complete explanatory chain: long-term social experience shapes an individual's intuition library (source), which then enters real-time competition in specific decision contexts (processing), with deliberation flexibly intervening to resolve conflict (regulation). This layered framework reconciles seemingly contradictory findings - such as why time pressure promotes cooperation in some samples but not others, or why deliberation sometimes increases and sometimes decreases prosociality - by tracing behavioral differences back to variations in individuals' intuition library structures shaped by divergent social experiences.
Second, we reconceptualize the role of deliberation. Drawing on the multifunctional account of deliberation, we characterize deliberation not as a predetermined corrector of default intuitions, but as a context-sensitive cognitive “toolkit” with four dynamically configurable functions: control (suppressing inappropriate intuitive responses), generation (constructing novel responses when intuitions are absent or conflicting), justification (providing post hoc rationales for chosen responses), and regulation (monitoring and allocating cognitive resources). Crucially, these functions are not mutually exclusive; individuals may flexibly switch between or combine them within a single decision episode depending on the intensity structure of competing intuitions. This reframing moves beyond the traditional “correction” metaphor and opens new avenues for investigating when and how deliberation contributes to prosocial behavior.
Third, we translate this integrated framework into empirically testable propositions. We outline concrete experimental designs for manipulating the relative strength of prosocial versus selfish intuitions - using social distance, personal cost, identifiable victim information, and emotion induction - paired with the two-response paradigm and process-tracing measures (mouse-tracking, eye-tracking, EEG components such as N2 and P3). We further propose that the internalization of intuitions is itself plastic: brief positive or negative social interactions can update the baseline strength of cooperation versus defection heuristics, and cross-cultural variation in moral foundation network shapes which intuitions are preferentially activated. These propositions move the literature beyond post-hoc explanations toward falsifiable predictions.
In applied terms, the framework suggests a dual-pathway intervention strategy. At the immediate level, choice architecture can temporarily boost specific prosocial intuitions (e.g., highlighting victim faces to activate empathy, or using descriptive norms to trigger conformity). At the structural level, policy, education, and cultural narratives can create environments that consistently reward cooperative behaviors, gradually strengthening the baseline advantage of prosocial intuitions in future competition. Together, these pathways offer a mechanism-based approach to promoting prosocial behavior that complements existing training-focused interventions.
In sum, this review does not merely add another model to the prosocial decision-making literature; it offers a principled way to integrate the origins, online competition, and dynamic regulation of intuitions within a single framework. By shifting the research focus from “which processing mode dominates” to “how multiple intuitions are activated, compete, and interact with deliberation,” thus offering a more inclusive theoretical architecture for reconciling previously inconsistent findings and for guiding future empirical work on the cognitive mechanisms of prosocial behavior.

Key words: prosocial decision-making, reflective model, intuitive model of prosociality, social heuristics hypothesis, hybrid model