Transcript

A person’s motivation to help someone else in need may vary, depending on the circumstances.

On one hand, they might selfishly think “What’s in it for me?”. According to the arousal: cost-reward model, when someone observes a person in distress, they may experience physiological tension followed by a quick and automatic evaluation of the potential consequences of lending a helping hand.

For example, negative consequences, such as being criticized, as well as favorable outcomes, like receiving money and praise, can ultimately influence a charitable act.

Likewise, individuals may decide to help to make themselves feel better. According to the negative state relief model, the victim’s needs are secondary to them alleviating their own depressed mood.

Both of these theories describe egoism—the motivation of considering potential costs and rewards before coming to the aid of others.

In contrast, people may engage in altruism—improving the welfare of someone else for selfless reasons—without any regard to personal gains or consequences. In this type of behavior, the individual’s actions are attributed to the emotional connection felt with the target.

In the end, the underlying drive to help could be uniquely egoistic or altruistic, or even a combination of the two. Based on recent research, the likelihood of assisting others is linked to certain personality dimensions, including agreeableness and differences in emotional processing.

Importantly, the path between selfish acts and selflessness is not set in stone; behaviors can shift in response to cultural experiences and approaches, such as compassion training.

Abstract

Voluntary behavior with the intent to help other people is called prosocial behavior. Why do people help other people? Is personal benefit such as feeling good about oneself the only reason people help one another?

Research suggests there are many other reasons. Altruism is people’s desire to help others even if the costs outweigh the benefits of helping. In fact, people acting in altruistic ways may disregard the personal costs associated with helping. For example, news accounts of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York reported an employee in the first tower helped his co-workers make it to the exit stairwell. After helping a co-worker to safety, he went back in the burning building to help additional co-workers. In this case the costs of helping were great, and the hero lost his life in the destruction (Stewart, 2002).

In addition, researchers argue that altruism is a form of selfless helping that is not motivated by benefits or feeling good about oneself. Certainly, after helping, people feel good about themselves, but some researchers argue that this is a consequence of altruism, not a cause. Other researchers argue that helping is always self-serving because our egos are involved, and we receive benefits from helping (Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, & Neuberg 1997). It is challenging to determine experimentally the true motivation for helping, whether is it largely self-serving (egoism) or selfless (altruism). Thus, a debate on whether pure altruism exists continues.

This text is adapted from OpenStax, Psychology. OpenStax CNX.