Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Psychology Of Altruism: A Phenomenological Study Of Christian Leaders, Joshua G. Belk

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Altruism is fundamentally a part of Christianity, but this phenomenon has never been researched from the perspective of Christian leaders. More than simple kindness or generosity, altruism can be defined as actions and behaviors which place a person’s own interests subordinate to another’s. This qualitative study interviews 31 Christian leaders to establish an understanding of what altruism is in the context of Christian faith. The study found that Christian leaders’ experiences with altruism redefines what was previously known about the phenomenon and its role in our lives. Examining the Christian rationale of altruism provides a richer conception of altruism and …

I Am Not A Hero: Heroic Action Divorces The Hero From The Political Community, Ari Kohen, Brian Riches, Andre Sólo

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Most people who perform a heroic act will, afterward, deny that their actions were heroic and claim that anyone would have done the same, even though that is demonstrably false (and, often, others were present who failed to act heroically at all). The literature on the psychology of heroism has never investigated why this is. This theoretical paper proposes an answer and seeks to provoke exploration of a previously unexplored topic. We note that people who undertake heroic action face a unique conflict: they embody their community’s highest values, while simultaneously breaking norms to stand apart from that community. We …

Sense Of Purpose And Sustaining Attention, Jiayi Yu

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

The dissertation investigated the interplay between an elevated sense of purpose moderated by heightened altruistic motivation and sustained attention in a college undergraduate population. Drawing on existing literature highlighting the positive effects of purpose on well-being and cognitive abilities, the study introduced an experimental design to explore the causal relationship between purpose and attention. Participants were recruited from the undergraduate population of a Christian liberal arts university in the Pacific Northwest. A continuous performance test (CPT) —the AX-CPT paradigm—was utilized to assess sustained attention. The experimental group was prompted with the opportunity to earn a monetary donation for a humanitarian …

Putting The 'A' In Prosocial: Development And Validation Of A Measure Of Trait Altruism, Laura K.D. Johnson Msc

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Trait altruism reflects the tendency to perform behaviours with the goal of improving another’s welfare. Altruism is commonly measured using scales that assess how frequently the test-taker has performed specific prosocial actions. However, these scales assume that these behaviours are altruistically motivated and fail to consider what is known in the literature about the attitudes, values, and emotions that characterize altruistic individuals. Accordingly, altruism research would benefit from a new scale that draws upon the large body of interdisciplinary research and follows current best practices in scale development, as summarized in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 presents a review of the …

Adaptation Of Three Psychological Measurement Instruments Assessing The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Fear Of Covid-19 Scale, Coronavirus Anxiety Scale, And Altruism, Angela Oktavia Suryani, Laura Fransisca Sudarnoto, Benedicta Prihatin D. Riyanti

International Conference on Assessment and Learning (ICAL)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been going on for more than two years and has caused problems for the world community. One of the impacts of COVID-19 is psychological barriers, including decreased well-being, increased stress, anxiety, depression, loss of family members, and being laid off. Is there still energy in a difficult situation like this to give empathy and have a sense of wanting to help without reward (altruism)? The psychological condition of the impact of COVID-19 is the background for the need to carry out valid and reliable psychological measurements. This study aims to identify the psychometric properties of three …

Hurting To Helping: Regret As A Potential Motivator Of Helping Behavior, Chandler Ann Findley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has suggested that emotions can influence people’s motivation to engage in prosocial behaviors. Even negatively-valenced emotions, like sadness, guilt, and shame, have been shown to motivate prosocial behaviors. Exploratory analyses of a previous study indicated that regret may also motivate increased prosocial intentions, but no research has been published to experimentally test whether feelings of regret may motivate prosocial behaviors. Therefore, the present research seeks to experimentally manipulate participants’ current emotional state to empirically examine whether regret motivates greater helping behavior than other, similar negative emotions that have already been demonstrated to motivate prosocial behaviors in humans. These …

Predicting Altruism With Personality “Beyond” The Big Five, Sereena Dargan

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Research investigating individual differences in personality and altruistic behaviour has focused predominantly on traits described within the Five-Factor Model (FFM). The objective of the present study was to explore the role of age, gender, and 10 personality traits outside of the common FFM in predicting altruism. An online survey including the Supplementary Personality Inventory (Paunonen, 2002), the Self-Report Altruism Scale (Rushton et al., 1981), and the Compassionate Altruism Scale (O’Connor et al., 2015) was completed by 256 participants. Regression analysis revealed the SPI to account for significant variance in both measures of altruism. Specifically, age, integrity, and risk-taking positively predicted …

Moral Circles And Mind Perception Shift Perceptions Of Effective Altruism, Kyle Fiore Law

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Across a re-analysis of an existing dataset (Study 1; N = 96) and a higher-powered new study (Study 2; N = 300), we reveal that moral valuation of environmentalism over humanitarianism predicts less favorable moral judgments of effective altruism (i.e., welfare-maximizing socially distant altruism directed at humans) that is performed at the exclusion of helping animals in need. Furthermore, this relationship is explained by tendencies in mind perception to dehumanize outgroup members and stigmatized humans, rather than tendencies to anthropomorphize animals (Study 2). These findings reveal that granular versus aggregate individual differences in moral circles and mind perception may be …

Choice Overload, Information Acquisition, And Gift Incentives In An Altruistic Context: Economic Experiments Exploring Decision Making In Charitable Giving, Jessica Adach White

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contains three essays on economic experiments concerning altruistic motives. The first chapter, “Choice Overload and Charitable Giving: Can There Be Too Much of a Good Thing?” concentrates on the effects of list sizes of charitable options on an individual’s decision making. The second chapter, “Is No News Good News? Motivated Reasoning in Charitable Giving,” focuses on the impact of information acquisition on an individual’s altruistic contributions. Finally, the third chapter, “Thank You, but No Thank You: Gift Incentives in Charitable Giving,” investigates gift incentives and their influence on donating behavior.

In the first chapter, “Choice Overload and Charitable …

Volunteer Motivation Of Individuals In Rural Pacific Northwest, Lenea Kindred Pierzchanowski

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Volunteering is a selfless social action in which an individual chooses to participate through personal motivations. These actions of public service are a combination of need-based vacancies within organizations and unpaid compensation for filling those needs. The purpose of this research was to identify motivational attributes of individuals who volunteer in the identified rural area using one-on-one semi-structured interviews through the lens of the volunteer process model, in addition to the social identity, ecological, and social capital theories. The 15 participants for this study were over the age of 18, fluently spoke and read English, and had been a volunteer …

Functional Altruism Among Agreeable And Narcissistic Donors: Evidence From Crowdsourced Fundraisers, Kelsey M. Drea, Mitch Brown, Donald F. Sacco

Faculty Publications

Given the increasing popularity of crowdsourced fundraisers, understanding how characteristics of funding initiatives and donors influence donations has critical real-world implications. Across two studies, we identified potential situational factors most conducive to successful crowdsourcing while also determining whether individual differences in various personality factors predicted differing levels of donation. Participants in Study 1 (MAge = 19.99; 309 women, 75 men) viewed descriptions that manipulated donation type (organizer donation, anonymous donation, no donation) and type of fundraiser (self-organized, other-organized), and reported their willingness to donate to an individual’s medical treatment and completed inventories assessing Big Five personality traits. In Study 2 …

Trait Conscientiousness And Agreeableness In Relation To Positive And Negative Mood Self-Perceived Altruism, Justin Thomas Robertello

MSU Graduate Theses

While much research has been done on altruism and people's perceptions of the altruistic tendencies of others, perception of altruism as it relates to self, especially in relation to the influence of internal states, lacks similarly extensive investigation. This study aims to explore how the stable internal states of personality and the fluid states of mood play a role in our own perceptions of our altruistic tendencies. Participants were provided with a personality questionnaire and exposed to image sets designed to induce positive or negative mood. The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) was administered post mood induction to verify …

Refinement Of The Spitefulness Construct, Arturo Covarrubias-Paniagua

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In this research we reviewed the current definition of Spite in the psychology field and the current and historical definitions of Spite in other related fields. Given the narrow contemporary definition of spite used by psychological researchers, the first aim of this study was to provide a comprehensive and refined conceptualization of spite that differentiates it from similar aggressive behaviors, along with delineating conditions in which spite may arise. The second aim of this study was to create a measure of trait spitefulness and a measure of engagement in spiteful behaviors. A total of 156 respondents participated in this study, …

Tripping Over The Other: Could Psychedelics Increase Empathy?, Emily Blatchford, Stephen Bright, Liam Engel

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

There is increasing evidence that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is effective for a range of psy-chological conditions. There are likely numerous mechanisms of action that contribute to these clinicaleffects. One such mechanism of action might involve psychedelics increasing levels of empathicfunctioning. This paper synthesises research concerning the relationship between psychedelics andempathy, emphasising neuroscientific and clinical contexts. We conclude that neuropsychological andclinical evidence imply psychedelics could lead to increased empathic functioning. The effects of psy-chedelics on the 5-HT system, default mode network, neural connectivity and ego dissolution areimplicated in these changes. Changes in empathic functioning also likely relate to increases in thepersonality trait …

It Does Not Cost The Earth To Be Kind, Svetlana Feigin

Animal Sentience

The COVID-19 crisis is a wake-up call on a global scale. What lessons we learn from this crisis will determine our survival as a species. The global health crisis calls for individual and collective changes in our agricultural practices and our consumption habits. Most important, it is a call for us as a species to move towards an empathic way of living and interacting with nature.

Goodness In Gaming: A Survey On Gamers And Their Altruism, Daniel Amaral

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The psychological inquiry into the effects of videogames and the internet on behavior is still a relatively new field. The question of whether playing violent videogames directly contribute to violent behavior, particularly in reference to its influence in mass shootings, is an important one that needs answers. A plethora of research purportedly shows the negative effects of (violent) videogames, but research showing positive effects, particularly on prosocial behaviors within the virtual world and reality, are less common. If specific videogame preferences are associated with altruistic behaviors, such a finding could elucidate how videogames might contribute to prosocial behavior. In this …

Empathic Anger And Personal Anger In Response To Fairness Violations: Relations To Self And Other-Oriented Motivation And Behavior, Athena H. Cairo

Theses and Dissertations

Prosocial behavior research has shown that empathy-elicited compassionate concern often motivates actions performed with an ultimate goal of helping others even at cost to oneself, whereas empathic distress motivates low-cost help with an ultimate goal of helping oneself. Less is known about the motivational outcomes of empathic anger felt when witnessing injustice or harm to others. Though empathic anger predicts third-party compensation and punishment, it is unclear whether this motivation is ultimately self or other-oriented. Three experimental studies examined the empathic anger-altruism hypothesis, that empathic anger evoked when witnessing another being treated unjustly would evoke altruistic motivation to help the …

Altruism In The Human Species: A Meta-Ethnography, Josh Tedrow

CUP Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this meta-ethnography was to explore the theories surrounding human altruistic behavior. I began by selecting a series of empirical and theoretical sources for review. After reading the empirical materials, I summarized empirical studies within categories such as the observed psychological, biological, and social factors associated with altruism. I then reviewed the theoretical literature and established the similar trends in the discussion about the social application of altruism. The trends that I found were reciprocal altruism, the importance of small-group function in facilitating large-group function, and that group function is imperative for a successful future of humanity. After …

The Light Triad Scale: Developing And Validating A Preliminary Measure Of Prosocial Orientation, Laura K.D. Johnson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Most research on prosocial behaviour focuses on situational factors rather than individual differences. Empathy, compassion, and altruism are three constructs related to prosocial behaviour that also overlap theoretically. However, prosocial traits are rarely studied together, and measures of prosocial orientation are lacking. To address this gap, the Light Triad Scale (Light-3) was developed to assess individual differences in prosocial orientation. Three subscales with 12 items each, assessing empathy, compassion, and altruism, were created using existing measures of each construct. Items were selected according to theory and literature. The Light-3 was then administered to a sample of undergraduate psychology students at …

Prosocial Behaviors: Their Motivations And Impacts On Organizational Culture, Jennifer C. Vieweg

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

According to the International Corrupt Perceptions Index 2017, more than six billion people are living countries that are plagued by corruption (International Corrupt Perceptions Index, 2017). In an altruistic model of leadership, leaders act with the express intent of helping other people (Johnson, 2015). Within this model, good works manifest themselves as prosocial behaviors or “voluntary behavior(s) intended to benefit another and consisting of actions that benefit others or society” (Schminke, Arnaud, & Taylor, 2014, p. 730). These prosocial behaviors can create collaborative and inspirational environments (Axelsson & Axelsson, 2009), facilitate collectivism (Clarkson, 2014), and contribute to the long-term sustainability …

Hypocrisy And Corruption: How Disparities In Power Shape The Evolution Of Social Control, Omar T. Eldakar, J. Oliver Kammeyer, Nikhil Nagabandi, Andrew C. Gallup

Biology Faculty Articles

Altruism presents an evolutionary paradox, as altruistic individuals are good for the group yet vulnerable to exploitation by selfish individuals. One mechanism that can effectively curtail selfishness within groups is punishment. Here, we show in an evolutionary game-theoretical model that punishment can effectively evolve and maintain high levels of altruism in the population, yet not all punishment strategies were equally virtuous. Unlike typical models of social evolution, we explicitly altered the extent to which individuals vary in their power over others, such that powerful individuals can more readily punish and escape the punishment of others. Two primary findings emerged. Under …

Sacrificial Dynamite: The Convergence Of Developed Empathy And Ongoing Relational Experience With God: A Grounded Theory, Toran Scott

Dissertations

This grounded theory study examined how participants described and reflected on their lives and what led them to choose sacrifice. The study was grounded in a Christian understanding of sacrifice, defined as the willful giving up of one’s positions or possessions for the sake of serving others. Using in-depth, open-ended interviews and follow-up interviews to co-construct meaning, participants were asked to reflect on their childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood to reflect on and describe any messages, relationships, or experiences that they thought contributed to their eventual choice to sacrifice. The interviews were free-flowing and filled with beautiful and engaging stories. …

A Clean, Green New Zealand? An In-Depth Look At The Personal Experiences Of Animal Rights Activists, Svetlana Feigin, Richard Glynn Owens, Felicity Goodyear-Smith

The Qualitative Report

This study explored personal experiences of animal rights and environmental activists in New Zealand. The stories of participants provided insight into the challenges activists face in a country where the economy is heavily dependent on animal agriculture. A qualitative methodology was utilised and several major themes emerged: (1) emotional and psychological experiences, (2) group membership, (3) characteristics of activism and liberation, (4) the law and its agents, and (5) challenge to society. Participants of the study represent a group of individuals engaged in acts of altruistic offending triggered by exposure to the suffering of non-human animals. Their moral philosophy and …

The Empathy Mitigation: Empathy And Its Impact On Pain Perception And Altruistic Motivation, Amanda Daly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Empathy and its impact on pain perception has been studied narrowly with the focus being on participants receiving empathy during a pain procedure. This study reversed the focus and ran a standard cold pressor test (CPT) in the context of an empathy frame structured to elicit an empathic response for others from participants. It was hypothesized that the group receiving the empathic frame would have longer CPT times due to alterations in pain perception from empathy activation and these subjects’ self-reported state-trait empathy level would positively correlate with the increased times. 85 subjects participated with a control group of 43 …

Mesotocin Influences Pinyon Jay Prosociality, Juan Duque, Whitney Leichner, Holly Ahmann, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Many species exhibit prosocial behavior, in which one individual’s actions benefit another individual, often without an immediate benefit to itself. The neuropeptide oxytocin is an important hormonal mechanism influencing prosociality in mammals, but it is unclear whether the avian homologue mesotocin plays a similar functional role in birds. Here, we experimentally tested prosociality in pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus), a highly social corvid species that spontaneously shares food with others. First, we measured prosocial preferences in a prosocial choice task with two different payoff distributions: Prosocial trials delivered food to both the subject and either an empty cage or a partner …

Developing A Social Media Behavior Scale, Heather O. Cissel

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When the topic of social media usage arises, the connotation is usually negative, with a focus on the negative impact both on the individual and on society (Greysen, Kind, & Chretien, 2010). In response to these perceived negative effects, some researchers have created a Social Media Disorder Scale (Van Den Eijnden, Lemmens, & Valkenburg, 2016) in order to address a diagnostic cutoff for social media disorder. However, relatively less research has been focused on measuring the potentially positive effects of social media on the individual and on society. In an effort to address this issue, the aim of the present …

The Altruistic Self, Nathan Dougherty

Dialogue & Nexus

Altruism as a purely naturalistic phenomenon self-defeats the term altogether; however, theology also makes unsubstantiated claims that some behaviors are purely selfless. I will first define various conceptual forms of altruism and then offer explanations of the term from neurological, evolutionary and psychological investigations. Despite the position that altruism can be reduced to a fantastical impossibility bearing neither the arms of science nor theology, it is also a fallacy to separate it from a religiously derived supernatural altruism that carries no implications for the realm of morality.

Correlational Study Between Conservatism And Altruism, Aleksander Mansdoerfer

Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal

This study was designed and executed with the intention to discover if there was a relationship between the amount of altruistic acts they have performed, and the attitudes towards political topics. Participants were registered voter’s in the United States and were not asked any demographic questions. This study purely focused on the responses to an Altruism Personality Assessment and a Political Attitudes Questionnaire. This study concluded with the discovery of no correlation between the amount of Altruistic acts they have performed in their life and their political opinions. It was discovered this study used an Altruism Assessment Scale that incorrectly …

Enhancing Student Altruism Using Secure Attachment Messages (Sam) In Lecture, Kelly Campbell, Stephany Ramos

Psychology Faculty Publications

In this brief report, we examine whether students’ (N=230) willingness to help individuals in distress (altruism) would be augmented after viewing Secure Attachment Messages (SAM) during lecture in a college racism course. Students were presented with SAM in alternating weeks as part of the PowerPoint presentation slides. In each of the weeks, their likelihood of engaging in altruistic behaviors was assessed using hypothetical scenarios and a student response system, Top Hat Monocle. We predicted that the SAM would prompt students to think of their attachment figures and enhance their feelings of security, which would increase their willingness to engage in …

The Influence Of Books, Television, And Computers On Empathy And Altruistic Behavior In Young Children, Alicia Breyer

Scripps Senior Theses

The rising prevalence of media use and the decreasing use of books create a need for research on the positive learning effects these platforms may have on children. This study will explore how learning platforms (specifically books, television, and computers) in early childhood affect development of social awareness – in particular, empathy and altruistic behavior. The researcher will recruit approximately 192 participants, ages 3 to 5, and randomly assign them to one of three groups: book readers, television viewers, and computer gamers. The subject of the platform will be kept consistent through the use of the children’s television program Daniel …