Do People Really Behave in Altruistic or ‘selfless’ Ways? a Look into Typical Motivators of Helping Begaviours

     The idea that humans are selfish is a generally accepted view. However, in reality, many people are engaged in helping behaviours, such as giving money to the homeless on the streets, or donating to charities. However, even so, people’s motivations and intentions behind their helping behaviours differ. Some helping behaviours may not be truly altruistic, depending on the definition of ‘altruism’. Some people engage in helping behaviours with the intention of improving others’ well-being without any personal gain. (i.e. pure altruism), whereas others engage in helping behaviours because of the positive emotional gain they receive. One definition of altruism includes the criterion of high risk to the actor of the altruistic behaviour. In including this measure, it excludes the helping behaviour of people who can afford to give to others without personal risk. Therefore, living conditions, such as familial and other environmental factors, would play a significant role in whether a person has altruistic tendencies or not. On the different types of helping behaviour, I will explore why people are motivated to engage in, either helping or altruistic behaviours from the standpoint of psychology and biology, since motivating factors such behaviours have been studied mostly by those disciplines (Penner 1995). For each discipline, I will give two variables that I find to be strong motivators of altruistic or helping behaviours, followed by evidence supporting the effect of said variables. The behaviour that is being motivated and will also be clearly defined to avoid confusion. For psychology, I have will explain that belief in a just world and oneness are two of the primary motivators for altruistic or helping behaviours. I am also going to explain that, for biology, the amount of genes shared, and eligibility of people as partners, motivate those behaviours.

     In the field of psychology, motivations behind altruism and helping-behaviours have been widely studied, but the field of psychology is very broad. To narrow down the scope, I propose, more specifically, that that people’s expectations of social norms concerning social justice predict their altruistic decisions. Specifically, it seems that an egalitarian view is related to helping behaviours. Gummerum and Hanoch (2012) look at this relationship. In their study, altruism is defined as behaviour that benefits others at a cost to oneself. Specifically, they looked at how justice expectations, and other variables, predicted between inmates and non-inmates altruistic decisions in the dictator game, a game which is mostly used to assess people’s altruistic behaviour (Gummerum & Hanoch, 2012). In order to do so, the concept of belief in a just world (BJW) is used. Mainly, it is the belief that people are deserving of what they get. It also reflects the way people respond to just and not just situations. Gummerum and Hanock (2012) use BJW to look at helping behaviours. They found that inmates and non-inmates did not differ in their personal BJW. Personal BJW was positively correlated with offers in the dictator game for inmates only. Offers of higher value in the dictator game represent the strength of helping behaviour. Results suggest that pertaining to inmates, the stronger the belief in a just world, the more an inmate would exhibit helping behaviours.

Zuckerman (1975) focuses on the three studies which look at whether people who believe in a just world tend to behave in an altruistic way to make themselves more deserving in their time of need. The first one looks at the relationship between participants’ score on BJW Scale, and amount of helping behaviours they engage in before an exam. It is found that, before exams, students who scored high on that scale volunteered more to be participants for psychology studies. The second study is similar to the first one, with only one variable difference. It found that the score on the BJW scale was correlated with willingness to serve as readers for a blind student. The third study changes the latter variable again to the willingness to participate in an experiment for no apparent reward, during the week before finals. Again, a positive correlation is found. Since this article does not clearly define its idea of altruism, I will refer to the behaviours correlated with BJW is a helping behaviours. Results say that, in a time of need, people who strongly believe in a just world will engage in more helping behaviours, even though, when the helping behaviours are not related to satisfaction of the need. The results of the two articles (Gummerum & Hanoch, 2012) and (Zuckerman, 1975) show that a person’s expectations or beliefs of social norms regarding social justice commonly affect one’s decisions on altruistic or helping behaviours. The question to ponder about is whether the helping behaviours can be considered altruistic. It seems people are only executing these behaviours because they believe that it will make them more deserving of positive occurrences.