scholarly journals Belief in altruistic motives predicts prosocial actions and inferences

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan W. Carlson ◽  
jamil zaki
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Lay Theories ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Altruistic Motivation ◽  
Social Correlates ◽  
Prosocial Motives ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Trait Empathy

Are humans ever truly altruistic? Or are all actions, however noble, ultimately motivated by self-interest? Scientists and philosophers have long grappled with this question, but few have considered laypeople’s beliefs about the nature of prosocial motives. Here we examine these beliefs and their social correlates. In line with prior work, we find that people tend to believe humans can be, and frequently are, altruistically motivated. Moreover, people who more strongly believe in altruistic motivation act more prosocially themselves—for instance, sacrificing relatively high levels of money and time to help others—a relationship that holds even when controlling for trait empathy. People who believe in altruism also judge other prosocial agents to be more genuinely kind, especially when agents’ motives are ambiguous. Together, this work suggests that believing in altruism predicts the extent to which people both see altruism and act altruistically, possibly reflecting the self-fulfilling nature of such lay theories.

scholarly journals Belief in Altruistic Motives Predicts Prosocial Actions and Inferences

2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412110135
Author(s):  
Ryan W. Carlson ◽  
Jamil Zaki
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Lay Theories ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Social Correlates ◽  
Prosocial Motives ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Trait Empathy

Are humans ever truly altruistic? Or are all actions, however noble, ultimately motivated by self-interest? Psychologists and philosophers have long grappled with this question, but few have considered laypeople’s beliefs about the nature of prosocial motives. Here we examine these beliefs and their social correlates across two experiments (N = 445). We find that people tend to believe humans can be, and frequently are, altruistically motivated—echoing prior work. Moreover, people who more strongly believe in altruistic motives act more prosocially themselves—for instance, sacrificing greater amounts of money and time to help others—a relationship that holds even when controlling for trait empathy. People who believe in altruistic motives also judge other prosocial agents to be more genuinely kind, especially when agents’ motives are ambiguous. Lastly, people independently show a self-serving bias—believing their own motives for prosociality are more often altruistic than others’. Overall, this work suggests that believing in altruistic motives predicts the extent to which people both see altruism and act prosocially, possibly reflecting the self-fulfilling nature of such lay theories.

Empathy and Altruism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Daniel Batson
Keyword(s):  
Empathic Concern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Altruistic Motivation ◽  
Tentative Conclusion ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Interest

Do we humans ever, in any degree, care about others for their sakes and not simply for our own? Psychology has long assumed that everything humans do, no matter how nice and noble, is motivated by self-interest. Research over the past four decades suggests this assumption is wrong. The empathy-altruism hypothesis claims that empathic concern produces altruistic motivation. Results of the over 35 experiments designed to test this hypothesis against various egoistic alternatives have proved remarkably supportive, leading to the tentative conclusion that feeling empathic concern for a person in need does indeed evoke altruistic motivation to see that need relieved. This chapter attempts to clarify what role the self plays in empathy-induced altruism.

scholarly journals Perceptions of Prosocial Behavior: Understanding the Self-Presentation of Hardships Incurred During Altruistic Acts

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 308-317
Author(s):  
Jennifer Q. Xue ◽  
Kosha D. Bramesfeld
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Behavior Understanding ◽  
Prosocial Motivation ◽  
Presentation Strategy ◽  
Prosocial Motives ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Personal Sacrifice

Promoting one's altruistic motives may be an important means by which people can present themselves favorably to others. Still, promoting one's altruistic acts can be risky, as observers tend to be sensitive to factors that indicate that an altruistic act is motivated by self-interest, rather than genuine prosocial motives. Research focused on martyrdom (Olivola & Shafir, 2013; Schaumberg & Mullen, 2017) has suggested that highlighting the hardships involved in an altruistic act can enhance perceptions of prosocial motivation (the martyrdom hypothesis). However, research on bragging (Berman et al., 2015; Sezer et al., 2018) has suggest that first-person statements that highlight hardships may be perceived as self-motivated complaints, rather than genuine (the complaint hypothesis). The current study used a 2 (statement content: accomplishment versus hardship) x 2 (presentation strategy: direct statement or humblebrag) within-groups design (N = 82) to examine if self-promotional statements related to altruistic hardship increased or decreased perceptions of genuineness and prosocial motivation. Consistent with the complaint hypothesis, first-person statements focused on an altruistic hardship were perceived more as complaints (p < .001, η2 = .512) and less as prosocial acts (p = .001, η2 = .132) than first-person statements that focused on an altruistic accomplishment. These results suggest that there may be a penalty for emphasizing personal sacrifice as a means of self-promoting altruistic acts.

Levels and types of breaking the maxims: A neo-Gricean account of humor

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Attila L. Nemesi
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Cooperative Principle ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Constant Tension

AbstractOn the basis of examples drawn from seven classic Hungarian film comedies, I argue in this article that the place of humor within the Gricean–Leechian model needs to be revisited and extended towards social psychological pragmatics to account for a wider range of humorous material. Scrutinizing the relevant controversial details of Grice’s conceptual framework, my concern is to find a practical way of fitting the various forms of humor into an adequate (and not an idealistic) pragmatic theory. I propose to differentiate between two levels and five types of breaking the maxims, introducing the Self-interest Principle (SiP) supposed to be in constant tension with, and as rational as, Grice’s Cooperative Principle. Politeness and self-presentational phenomena are subsumed under the operation of the SiP which embraces and coordinates the speaker’s own personal and interpersonal purposes.

Sex Differences in Reward Allocation

1988 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 981-982
Author(s):  
Kerry C. Martin ◽  
Jay Hewitt
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Work Groups ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
High Productivity ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Reward Allocation

Men and women were presented descriptions of two dyadic work groups. In both groups, one member of the dyad did approximately two-thirds of the work. For one of the groups, subjects were asked to imagine that they were the worker of high productivity while for the other group subjects were asked to imagine that they were impartial observers. Subjects were asked to divide the rewards among the two workers for both groups. Men and women did not differ in allocation of reward when acting as impartial observers. When subjects imagined themselves as the worker of high productivity, men gave themselves a greater share of the reward than did women. It was concluded that the results were consistent with the self-interest explanation of sex differences in allocation of reward.

Not Good Enough? Exploring Relationships Between Students’ Empathy, Their Attitudes Towards Sustainability, and the Self-Perceived Sustainability of Their Solutions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan Prabhu ◽  
Mohammed Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Elizabeth Starkey
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
The Self ◽  
Empathy Development ◽  
Concept Evaluation ◽  
Trait Empathy ◽  
Evaluation Stage ◽  
Future Work

Abstract Empathy plays an important role in designers’ ability to relate to problems faced by others. Several researchers have studied empathy development in engineering design education; however, a majority of this work has focused on teaching designers to empathize with primary users. Little attention in empathy development research is given to empathizing with those affected in a secondary and tertiary capacity. Moreover, little research has investigated the role of students’ empathy in influencing their emphasis on sustainability, especially in the concept evaluation stage. Our aim in this paper is to explore this research gap through an experimental study with engineering students. Specifically, we introduced first-year engineering students at a large public university in the northeastern United States to a short workshop on sustainable design. We compared changes in their trait empathy and attitudes towards sustainability from before to after participating in the workshop. We also compared the relationship between students’ trait empathy, attitudes towards sustainability, and the self-perceived sustainability of their solutions in a design task. From our results, we see that students reported an increase in their beliefs and intentions towards sustainability and a decrease in their personal distress from before to after participating in the workshop. Furthermore, students’ trait empathy correlated negatively with the self-perceived sustainability of their solutions. These findings highlight the need for future work studying the role of empathy in encouraging a sustainable design mindset among designers.

Reasonable Self-Interest

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-85
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Hill
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Rational Requirement ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Interest Model ◽  
Moral Requirements

Philosophers have debated for millennia about whether moral requirements are always rational to follow. The background for these debates is often what I shall call “the self-interest model.” The guiding assumption here is that the basic demand of reason, to each person, is that one must, above all, advance one's self-interest. Alternatively, debate may be framed by a related, but significantly different, assumption: the idea that the basic rational requirement is to develop and pursue a set of personal ends in an informed, efficient, and coherent way, whether one's choice of ends is based on self-interested desires or not. For brevity I refer to this as “the coherence-and-efficiency model.” Advocates of both models tend to think that, while it is sufficiently clear in principle what the rational thing to do is, what remains in doubt is whether it is always rational to be moral. They typically assume that morality is concerned, entirely or primarily, with our relations to others, especially with obligations that appear to require some sacrifice or compromise with the pursuit of self-interest.

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