altruism experiment example

Table 6. Proportion of Subjects Agreeing to Take Shocks for Elaine (Batson, Duncan, et al. 1981, Experiment 1)

In additional experiments, Batson and his associates used four different techniques to create the low- and high-empathy conditions, two techniques for manipulating ease of escape, and two different need situations (Batson, Duncan, et al. 1981; Toi and Batson 1982; Batson, O’Quin et al. 1983). The results in all of these experiments exhibited the same pattern. Intriguingly, in another experiment, Batson and colleagues attempted to break the pattern by telling the subjects that the shock level they would have to endure was the highest of four options, “clearly painful but not harmful”. They reasoned that, under these circumstances, even if high empathy subjects had an ultimate desire to help, this desire might well be overridden by the desire to avoid a series of very painful shocks. As expected, the pattern of results in this experiment fit the pattern in Table 4 .

These are impressive findings. Over and over again, in well designed and carefully conducted experiments, Batson and his associates have produced results which are clearly compatible with the predictions of the empathy-altruism hypothesis, as set out in Table 5 , and clearly incompatible with the predictions of the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, as set out in Table 4 . Even the “clearly painful shock” experiment, which produced results in the pattern of Table 4, are comfortably compatible with the empathy-altruism hypothesis; as noted earlier, the empathy-altruism hypothesis allows that high empathy subjects may have desires that are stronger than their ultimate desire to help the target, and the desire to avoid a painful electric shock is a very plausible candidate.

There is, however, a problem to be overcome before one concludes that the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis cannot explain the findings that Batson and his associates have reported. In arguing that Table 4 reflects the predictions made by the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, Batson must assume that escape will alleviate the aversive affect in both low & high empathy situations, and that subjects believe this (although the belief may not be readily available to introspection). One might call this the out of sight, out of mind assumption. Elaborating on an idea suggested by Hoffman (1991) and Hornstein (1991), an advocate of egoism might propose that although subjects do believe this when they have little empathy for the target, they do not believe it when they have high empathy for the target . Perhaps high empathy subjects believe that if they escape they will continue to be troubled by the thought or memory of the distressed target and thus that physical escape will not lead to psychological escape. Indeed, in cases where empathy is strong and is evoked by attachment, this is just what common sense would lead us to expect. Do you really believe that if your mother was in grave distress and you left without helping her you would not continue to be troubled by the knowledge that she was still in distress? We’re guessing that you don’t. But if the high-empathy subjects in Batson’s experiments believe that they will continue to be plagued by distressing thoughts about the target even after they depart, then the egoistic aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis predicts that these subjects will be inclined to help in both the easy physical escape and the difficult physical escape conditions, since helping is the only strategy they believe will be effective for reducing the aversive arousal. So neither the results reported in Table 6 nor the results of any of Batson’s other experiments would give us a reason to prefer the empathy-altruism hypothesis over the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, because both hypotheses make the same prediction.

Is it the case that high empathy subjects in experiments like Batson’s believe that unless they help they will continue to think about the target and thus continue to feel distress, and that this belief leads to helping because it generates an egoistic instrumental desire to help? This is, of course, an empirical question, and a cleverly designed experiment by Stocks and his associates (Stocks et al. 2009) suggests that, in situations like those used in Batson’s experiments, a belief that they will continue to think about the target does not play a significant role in causing the helping behavior in high empathy subjects.

Batson’s work on the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, buttressed by the Stocks et al. finding, is a major advance in the egoism vs. altruism debate. The aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis has been one of the most popular egoistic strategies for explaining helping behavior. But the experimental findings strongly suggest that in situations like those that Batson and his associates have studied, the empathy-altruism hypothesis offers a much better explanation of the subjects’ behavior than the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis.

As noted earlier, Batson and his colleagues have also designed experiments pitting the empathy-altruism hypothesis against a substantial list of other egoistic explanations for the link between empathy and helping behavior. In each case, the evidence appears to challenge the egoistic alternative, though as is almost always the case in empirical work of this sort, some researchers remain unconvinced. [ 18 ] There is however, an influential critique of Batson’s work that challenges all of his experimental work on the empathy-altruism hypothesis. It argues that empathy and its precursors alter people’s self-concept in a way that undermines the claim that their helping behavior is genuinely altruistic.

During the last three decades, psychologists have devoted a great deal of effort to exploring how people think of the self. One major theme in this literature is that people’s conception of themselves varies across cultures, and that in many non-western cultures one’s social roles and one’s relation to other people play a much more central role in people’s self-concepts than they do in the individualistic West (Markus & Kitayama 1991; Baumeister 1998). One very simple way of studying these differences is to ask people to respond to the question “Who am I?” fifteen times. Non-westerners will typically mention social groups, group roles and relationships: “I am Maasai”, “I am a person who brings fruit to the temple”, “I am my father’s youngest son”. Westerners, by contrast, will typically mention personal attributes, aspirations and achievements: “I am intelligent”, “I am a pre-med student”, “I am the fastest swimmer in my school” (Ma & Schoeneman 1997). Another theme is that people’s conception of themselves is situationally malleable—it changes depending on who we are with, where we are and what we are doing (Kihlstrom & Cantor 1984; Markus & Wurf 1987).

While this sort of situational malleability may not be surprising, a number of psychologists have suggested a much more radical situational malleability. Under certain circumstances, notably when we have a close personal relationship with another person, when we are trying to take the perspective of another person, or when we feel empathy for another person, the conceptual boundary between the self and the other person disappears; the self and the other merge. According to Arthur Aron and colleagues,

Much of our cognition about the other in a close relationship is cognition in which the other is treated as self or confused with self—the underlying reason being a self-other merging. (Aron et al. 1980: 242)

If this is true, then it poses a fundamental challenge to the claim that helping behavior directed at someone for whom we feel empathy is really altruistic. For, as Melvin Lerner memorably observed:

It seems that we respond sympathetically, with compassion and a sense of concern, when we feel a sense of identity with the victim. In effect, we are reacting to the thought of ourselves in that situation. And, of course, we are filled with the “milk of human kindness” for our own sweet, innocent selves. (Lerner 1980: 77)

A bit less colorfully, Batson notes that for “the contrast between altruism and egoism to be meaningful”, an individual providing help “must perceive self and other to be distinct individuals” (2011: 145–146). And

if the distinction between self and other vanishes then so does the distinction between altruism and egoism, at least as these terms are used in the empathy-altruism hypothesis. (2011: 148)

Psychologists who have debated the rather astonishing claim that people who provide help to others often lose track of the distinction between themselves and the person being helped have proposed several different ways of determining whether this sort of “self-other merging” has occurred. Before considering these, however, we should remind ourselves of an important philosophical distinction that will be crucial in assessing tests for self-other merging. [ 19 ] The distinction is often made using the labels “qualitative identity” and “numerical identity”. Qualitative identity is the relation that often obtains between two TV sets manufactured by the same company. They share most of their important properties. Numerical identity is a relationship that obtains between a person at one time in his life and that same person at another time in his life. If the time gap is substantial, the person at the earlier time may differ in many ways from the person at the later time. When you were a baby, you weighed less than 10 kg, spoke no language, and couldn’t walk. But you now are numerically the same person as the baby. Numerical identity can be of enormous legal and moral importance, a point nicely illustrated by the trial of John Demjanuk, the Ukrainian-born auto worker who was accused of being the sadistic Nazi concentration camp guard whose victims called him “Ivan the Terrible”. The man on trial, in 1988, differed in many ways from the concentration camp guard: he was much older, heavier, bald, and spoke English. He was obviously not even close to being qualitatively identical with perpetrator of Ivan’s crimes. What the court had to determine was not whether Ivan and Demjanuk were qualitatively identical but whether they were numerically identical. [ 20 ] What makes this distinction important for present purposes is that the sort of identity that is relevant to the debate between egoists and altruists is numerical identity, not qualitative identity. If Sophia, at age 30, sets aside a large sum of money that will be paid to Sophia at age 70, young Sophia is not being altruistic. If her ultimate goal is to ensure that old Sophia has the means to live a comfortable life, then young Sophia’s action is straightforwardly egoistic. The take-home message here is that if a test used to determine whether person A takes herself to be identical to person B is to be relevant to the egoism versus altruism debate, the test must provide evidence that person A takes herself to be numerically identical to person B , not that she takes herself to be qualitatively identical to person B .

Now let’s consider how psychologists have attempted to assess whether experimental participants feel a sense of identity with someone they might be called on to help. In one of the most influential studies claiming to show that helping is often the product of a feeling of oneness, Cialdini et al. (1997) used a pair of tests.

[P]articipants rated the extent of oneness they felt with the [person they might help] by responding to two items that were combined in all analyses to form a oneness index. The first item incorporated the Inclusion of Other in Self (IOS) Scale used by Aron et al. (1992) to measure self-other boundary overlap. It consisted of a set of seven pairs of increasingly overlapping circles. Participants selected the pair of circles that they believed best characterized their relationship with the [person they might help]. The second item asked participants to indicate on a 7-point scale the extent to which they would use the term we to describe their relationship with the [person they might help]. (1997: 484)

In a critique of the Cialdini et al. paper, Batson, Sager, et al. (1997) used three measures of self-other merging. One was the IOS Scale used by Cialdini et al. The second was a “perceived similarity” task in which “[p]articipants were asked, ‘How similar to you do you think the person …is?’ (1 = somewhat, 9 = extremely)” (1997: 500). In the third, participants rated both themselves and the target on a series of personal attributes. The “measure of merging was the mean absolute difference between ratings of self and other” (1997: 498).

It does not seem that any of these four tests of self-other merging provide a reason to believe that the participant views herself as numerically identical with another person. Indeed, both the perceived similarity test and the personal attribute rating test seem to be assessing qualitative identity rather than numerical identity. And it is far from clear what, if anything, the other two tests are measuring. So it seems that there is really no evidence at all that people in close relationships lose track of the distinction between themselves and another person. Indeed, as May notes, if someone really did believe that he exists in two obviously distinct bodies, the most natural conclusion to draw would be that he is delusional (May 2011b: 32).

While the literature on self-other merging provides little reason to believe that normal people take themselves to be numerically identical with another person, it does provide a different kind of challenge to the empathy-altruism hypothesis defended by Batson and his colleagues. That hypothesis, it will be recalled, is that empathy often causes an ultimate desire to help another person. But in the Cialdini et al. (1977) paper cited earlier, they report three studies indicating that empathy, though it does occur, is not playing any causal role in the process that leads to helping. Rather, they maintain, it is “merging”—which is used here as a label for whatever the IOS scale and the use-of- we test measure—that is actually leading participants to help. Though the Cialdini et al. paper is quite sophisticated, Batson et al. (1997) pointed out a number of methodological problems. When they conducted a pair of experiments that avoided these methodological problems, the role of empathy in producing helping behavior was clearly evident. However, most experiments exploring the link between empathy and helping behavior, including this one, use a relatively small number of participants. And the “replication crisis” that has emerged in recent years has led many to worry about the robustness of the effects reported in experiments like these (Chambers 2017). McAuliffe et al. (2018) have addressed these concerns. Their high powered, pre-registered study, run on the internet, analyzed data from 680 participants. Their findings were “unambiguously supportive” (2018: 504) of the link between empathy and helping behavior.

Batson’s answer to this question is clear.

Having reviewed the evidence from research designed to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis against the six egoistic alternatives …, it is time to come to a conclusion—albeit tentative—about the status of this hypothesis. The idea that empathy produces altruistic motivation may seem improbable given the dominance of Western thought by the doctrine of universal egoism. Yet, in the words of Sherlock Holmes, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable , must be the truth”. It seems impossible for any known egoistic explanation of the empathy-helping relationship—or any combination of them—to account for the research evidence we have reviewed. So what remains? The empathy-altruism hypothesis. Pending new evidence or a plausible new egoistic explanation of the existing evidence, we seem forced to accept this improbable hypothesis as true. (Batson 2011: 160) [ 21 ]

Batson’s research program is compelling, and he certainly has shown that the empathy-altruism hypothesis is “in the hunt”, but his findings are not conclusive. There are a number of reasonable challenges to the methodology and the conclusions in some of Batson’s studies. Setting these out in detail is a substantial project (see Stich, Doris, & Roedder 2010). But there is also a plausible egoistic hypothesis that has not been systematically explored.

In recent years, a number of authors have made an impressive case for the hypothesis that belief in a “Big God”—a supernatural being who is omniscient, morally concerned, and acts as a policing agent in human affairs—played a crucial role in the transition from face-to-face “band level” human groups made up of at most a few hundred individuals to much larger tribal groups, and ultimately to chiefdoms and nation states (Norenzayan et al. 2016). These are provocative and controversial ideas. Much less controversial is the claim that many people believe that even when no other human can observe them, a supernatural being of some sort is aware of what they are doing and thinking, and that this being may punish thoughts and behavior it disapproves of and reward thoughts and behavior it approves of, with the punishments and rewards delivered either during the agent’s lifetime or after she dies. [ 22 ] In the experiments, described in section 5.1 , designed to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis against the social punishment hypothesis, Batson and his colleagues went to great lengths to insure that participants in the “low potential for negative social evaluation” condition would think that no one knew of their decisions, and thus that no one would think badly of them or sanction them if they decided not to help. But, of course, none of the steps taken to insure secrecy would be effective in keeping an omniscient God from knowing what these participants had decided. So if we assume that many people believe an omniscient God wants them to help others in need, and that they believe Divine sanctions for not helping are more likely when the target engenders empathy, [ 23 ] the experiments do nothing to rule out a variation of the social punishment hypothesis which maintains that participants are motivated by a desire to avoid punishments administered by God.

The egoistic alternative just sketched, which might be called “the divine punishment hypothesis”, also leads to the pattern of predictions derived from the empathy-altruism hypothesis sketched in Table 5 , and the results reported in Table 6 . The bottom line is that using the Sherlock Holmes standard that Batson favors, there is still a lot of work to do. There is a family of egoistic hypotheses invoking beliefs in supernatural punishments—or supernatural rewards—that still needs to be ruled out before we accept the “improbable hypothesis” as true. [ 24 ]

In the colorful passage quoted at the beginning of section 5.4 , Batson seems to suggest that in the debate between egoists and altruists there are only two possible outcomes. If all human behavior is ultimately motivated by self-interested desires, then the egoist wins; if some human behavior is motivated by ultimate desires for the well-being of other people, then the altruist wins. However, as noted in section 2 , the dialectical landscape is more complex, for there are many desires that are neither self-interested nor desires for the well-being of other people. If any of these are ultimate desires that lead to behavior, then the egoist is mistaken. But, as Batson clearly recognizes, this would not vindicate altruism; both egoism and altruism might be mistaken.

Batson has used the term principlism for one family of ultimate desires that would support neither egoism nor altruism.

Principlism is motivation with the ultimate goal of upholding some moral principle—for example, a principle of fairness or justice, or the utilitarian principle of greatest good for the greatest number. (Batson 2011: 220)

Under some circumstances, one or another of these principles might require helping behavior, though that helping behavior would not be altruistic, since the ultimate desire motivating the behavior is to uphold the principle. On Batson’s view, we really don’t know much about principlism.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no clear empirical evidence that upholding justice (or any other moral principle) functions as an ultimate goal. [ 25 ] Nor is there clear empirical evidence that rules this possibility out. (Batson 2011: 224)

But if that’s right, then Batson’s conclusion that the empathy-altruism hypothesis is true and that people are sometimes altruistic is premature. For even if it were conceded that all the plausible egoistic alternatives to empathy-altruism have been excluded, the job of testing empathy-altruism against principalist alternatives has hardly begun. Moreover, the scope of that project may be much larger than Batson imagines.

One way to see this is to ask which action guiding principles are moral principles. [ 26 ] There is ongoing debate about this question in both philosophy and psychology (Stich 2018). Though Batson does not address that debate, the examples he offers (“fairness or justice or the utilitarian principle”) suggest that when he talks about moral principles he has a rather limited set of principles in mind. But if principlism is limited to a relatively small set of moral principles familiar from the philosophical literature, then principlism hardly exhausts the non-egoistic alternatives that defenders of psychological altruism must rule out. In recent years, there has been a growing body of work on the role of norms in human life, where norms are understood as action guiding rules that can govern just about any human activity. Researchers from a variety of disciplines have argued that norms, and a robust innate psychology for acquiring, storing and acting on norms, have played a fundamental role in shaping human culture and making humans the most successful large animal on the planet (Henrich 2015; Boyd 2018; Kelly & Davis 2018). Others have proposed accounts of norm psychology on which people have ultimate desires to comply with culturally acquired norms (Sripada & Stich 2006) and accounts of how a psychological system generating such ultimate desires might be favored by natural selection (Sripada 2008). The sorts of behavioral rules that count as norms in this literature might well include the sorts of moral principles that Batson had in mind when he characterized principlism. But these are only a small subset of the norms that these researchers have in mind. What makes all of this relevant to our current topic is that any culturally acquired norm might generate an ultimate desire to comply, and most of those ultimate desires are neither egoistic nor altruistic. Thus to make a plausible case that an episode of helping behavior is altruistic, it is not enough to rule out egoistic explanations and explanations that appeal to principlism. The defender of psychological altruism must also rule out explanations that trace the helping behavior to an ultimate desire to comply with any of the vast collection of norms that prevail in human cultures. And that’s a job that defenders of altruism have not even begun.

Another possibility is that some helping behavior might not be motivated by ultimate desires at all. Gęsiarz and Crockett (2015) argue that, in addition to the goal-directed system, behavior, including helping behavior, is sometimes produced by what they call the habitual and Pavlovian systems. The habitual system leads to actions that have the highest expected value based on previous life experiences rather than possible consequences indicated by features of the current situation. As a result, helping behavior may be repeated in the future and in circumstances in which motivating factors like the promise of rewards are absent if the behavior has been rewarded in the past. Like the habitual system, the Pavlovian system produces behavior with the highest expected value based on the past. Unlike the habitual system, however, the Pavlovian system produces behavior that has been successful in the evolutionary past, rather than in an individual’s past. This means that behavioral dispositions that have led to reproductive success in a individual’s evolutionary past may have become innate or “hard-wired” through natural selection. If it is indeed the case that some helping behavior is produced by the habitual or Pavlovian systems, then egoism is false. And if some helping behavior is egoistically motivated and the rest is produced by the habitual and Pavlovian systems, then altruism is also false.

Batson and his collaborators have accomplished a great deal. They have formulated a sophisticated altruist hypothesis, the empathy-altruism hypothesis, that can be tested against competing egoist hypotheses, and they have designed experiments making a strong case that many of those egoist hypotheses are false. But to show that altruism is true, it is not enough to show that specific egoist hypotheses can’t explain specific episodes of helping behavior. Nor would it be enough to show that all plausible versions of egoism are false. It must also be shown that episodes of helping behavior that can’t be explained egoistically can’t be explained by another process, such as principalistic ultimate motivation or ultimate motivation by a non-moral norm. In addition, the defender of altruism must show that non-egoistic episodes of helping behavior are not the product of the habitual or Pavlovian systems. None of Batson’s experiments were designed to rule out these non-egoistic options or others that might be suggested. So there is still much work to be done.

On a more positive note, it seems that Batson and his associates have shown quite conclusively that the methods of experimental psychology can move the debate forward. Indeed, one might argue that Batson has made more progress in this area during the last four decades than philosophers using the traditional philosophical methodology of a priori arguments buttressed by anecdote and intuition have made in the previous two millennia. Their work powerfully demonstrates the utility of empirical methods in moral psychology; philosophical moral psychologists debating the altruism-egoism question have always made empirical claim, and it is now evident that the human sciences possess resources to help us empirically assess those empirical claims.

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This entry expands and updates the “Egoism and Altruism” section in Doris, Stich, Phillips and Walmsley, “Moral Psychology: Empirical Approaches”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/moral-psych-emp/>. Some material in this entry is borrowed from Stich, Doris and Roedder (2010).

For helpful suggestions, we are grateful to Mark Alfano, C. Daniel Batson, William J. FitzPatrick, Adam Lerner, Joshua May, Samir Okasha, Gualtiero Piccinini, Alejandro Rosas, Thomas Schramme, Armin Schulz, Elliott Sober, Kim Sterelny, Valerie Tiberius and David Sloan Wilson. Our thanks to Zhao Wang who helped assemble and check the references.

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• Published: 23 October 2003

The nature of human altruism

• Ernst Fehr 1 &
• Urs Fischbacher 1  

Nature volume  425 ,  pages 785–791 ( 2003 ) Cite this article

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Some of the most fundamental questions concerning our evolutionary origins, our social relations, and the organization of society are centred around issues of altruism and selfishness. Experimental evidence indicates that human altruism is a powerful force and is unique in the animal world. However, there is much individual heterogeneity and the interaction between altruists and selfish individuals is vital to human cooperation. Depending on the environment, a minority of altruists can force a majority of selfish individuals to cooperate or, conversely, a few egoists can induce a large number of altruists to defect. Current gene-based evolutionary theories cannot explain important patterns of human altruism, pointing towards the importance of both theories of cultural evolution as well as gene–culture co-evolution.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge support by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the Analysis of Economic Growth, by the Swiss National Science Foundation and by the MacArthur Foundation Network on Economic Environments and the Evolution of Individual Preferences and Social Norms. We thank G. Bornstein, S. Bowles, R. Boyd, M. Brewer, J. Carpenter, S. Gächter, H. Gintis, J. Henrich, K. Hill, M. Milinski, P. Richerson, A. Riedl, K. Sigmund, E. A. Smith, D. S. Wilson and T. Yamagichi for comments on the manuscript, and M. Naef, D. Reding and M. Jörg for their research assistance.

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We call an act altruistic when it is a sacrifice that benefits others. We discuss how experiments have demonstrated that altruistic choices appear to follow the same regularity conditions as those assumed for private goods. In particular they vary rationally in response to changes in prices and circumstances. We show how experiments have distinguished between different economic models of how concern for others enters utility functions, and have explored the implications of those models for charitable giving, labour markets, and trust. We also discuss the experimental evidence for differences in altruism by gender, and work on altruism’s cultural, developmental, and neural foundations.

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Andreoni, J., Harbaugh, W.T., Vesterlund, L. (2018). Altruism in Experiments. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2789

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Helping Others, Warming Yourself: Altruistic Behaviors Increase Warmth Feelings of the Ambient Environment

Huiyuan jia, xiaofei xie.

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Edited by: Jeremy A. Frimer, University of Winnipeg, Canada

Reviewed by: Tera D. Letzring, Idaho State University, USA; Chris Loersch, University of Colorado Boulder, USA

*Correspondence: Xiaofei Xie, [email protected].

This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received 2016 Feb 21; Accepted 2016 Aug 23; Collection date 2016.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Altruistic behaviors typically improve the welfare of the recipient at the cost of the performer’s resources and energy. Do altruistic performers obtain any positive internal reward from altruistic behaviors? We conducted six experiments to explore whether altruistic behaviors could increase performer’s warmth perception of the ambient environment. The first three studies focused on crisis situations. A retrospective field study (Study 1, with Hurricane Sandy) and two laboratory studies (Studies 2a and 2b, with an earthquake scenario) found that people who helped others felt warmer of the ambient environment than people who did not. We extended to daily life situations and found that participants who performed helping behaviors in laboratory (either voluntarily in Study 3a or randomly assigned to in Study 3b) and passers-by who donated to a charity (Study 4) reported warmer perception of the ambient environment than those who did not. These findings suggested an immediate internal reward of altruism.

Keywords: altruistic behavior, altruistic performer, crisis, social distance, warmth perception

Introduction

One who watereth will himself be watered. Proverbs 11:25

When we talk about altruistic behaviors, we often talk about sacrifice and the potential costs and risks associated with it. At the individual level, altruism is often non-economic and even maladaptive to survival because the altruistic performer needs to share his/her own resources and energy with others without receiving explicit returns ( Batson, 1991 ; Myers, 1993 ; de Waal, 2008 ). When disasters signal a shortage of resources, it seems unwise to behave altruistically. However, at many times, we quote the saying the roses in her hand, the flavor in mine to encourage more altruistic behaviors. Is this quote simply a fortune cookie comment? Could those who behave altruistically literally experience the “flavor” or other positive physical feelings, as implied in this quote? In the current research, we explored the effects of altruistic behaviors on individuals’ physical feelings, focusing in particular on warmth. Warmth is a fundamental need to humans and other primates (e.g., Harlow, 1958 ; IJzerman et al., 2015a ). Moreover, warmth perception of the ambient environment is a typical variable that links the psychological and physical worlds. Specifically, we found that altruistic behaviors could lead the altruistic performer to increase his/her warmth perception of the ambient environment.

The Functional Adaptabilities of Altruistic Behaviors

Researchers have tried to recognize the functional adaptabilities of altruistic behaviors despite the self-sacrificing nature of such behaviors. The kin selection theory ( Hamilton, 1963 ; Hamilton and Axelrod, 1981 ) suggests that altruistic behaviors toward those with shared genes (i.e., offspring or relatives of the altruistic performer) could maximize genetic frequencies at the group level. The reciprocal motivation and social exchange theory suggests that an altruistic performer could expect future returns either directly from the recipient ( Trivers, 1971 ) or indirectly from a third party ( Nowak and Sigmund, 1998 , 2000 ). The above two theories both focus on the long-term benefits for the altruistic performers ( Gintis et al., 2003 ).

However, researchers have uncovered the phenomenon of altruistic punishment. Individuals chose to incur great cost to punish norm violators in a group (e.g., Henrich et al., 2006 ). Such choices were regarded as altruistic for they aimed at restoring fairness and protecting the group norm. Because there was usually no kin relative in the group and the research employed a one-shot game ( Gintis, 2000 ; Boyd et al., 2003 ; Gintis et al., 2003 ; Henrich et al., 2006 ), this phenomenon could not be explained by the two previously mentioned theories. Moreover, a neuroscientific study on altruistic punishment found that effective punishment activated the dorsal striatum. Participants with stronger activation in this brain area were willing to perform more punishment ( de Quervain et al., 2004 ). As the dorsal striatum is an important part of the reward system ( Knutson et al., 2000 ; Delgado et al., 2003 ), the findings implied that altruistic punishment could trigger immediate positive experiences for altruistic performers. This finding was consistent with earlier notions that altruistic behaviors would promote the release of endogenous opioid peptides ( Danielli, 1980 ), which contributed to the control of pain ( Basbaum and Fields, 1984 ) and the modulation of human mood and feelings of well-being ( Leknes and Tracey, 2008 ). Furthermore, these findings implied that we may focus on the internal rewarding system of human altruistic behaviors. Rather than uncover tangible returns as a result of altruistic behaviors, we would like to explore the potential positive effects of altruism on one’s psychological and physical experiences.

Researchers have found positive psychological consequences of altruistic behaviors. For example, prosocial spending including charity donations and gift giving were found to evoke happiness ( Dunn et al., 2008 ). Researchers in this field used the term “warm glow” to indicate an internal sense of satisfaction in donors after donating money ( Harbaugh, 1998 ). Altruistic behaviors also promoted self-efficacy in the elderly ( Midlarsky and Kahana, 1994 ) and enhanced positive self-evaluations ( Post, 2005 ). In the current study, we focused on the warmth perception of the ambient environment. We chose this variable for three reasons. First, warmth is a fundamental need of humans and other primates. This has been supported by earlier studies on development and attachment (e.g., Harlow, 1958 ) as well as by a recent model of thermoregulation ( IJzerman et al., 2015a ). Feeling of warmth could be a source of security ( Harlow, 1958 ) and individuals could use feeling of warmth as an indicator of social resources ( IJzerman et al., 2015a ). Research on winter depression implied that lack of warmth could be a threat to mental health (e.g., Molin et al., 1996 ). If altruism were to lead to threats against other survival-related resources such as food, compensatory feelings of warmth could be a comfort for individuals who are facing crisis situations, which could be an advantage for survival. Second, it is implied from previous research that the reward of altruism might be complicated. Reward, for instance, might be related to an internal reward system rather than simply tangible resources. Warmth perception of the ambient environment is a variable that links the psychological and physical worlds. It describes individuals’ internal reflections of the surrounding world, which could be an important facet of positive feedback of altruism. Third, coldness is a typical threat in many crises, especially in natural environments. For example, extreme cold weather in winter could cause a large amount of deaths (e.g., Webb, 2014 ; Ward, 2015 ). Coldness is also one of the most important environmental factors in mountain sports accidents ( Chamarro and Fernández-Castro, 2009 ). Compared with non-crisis situations, people are more likely to lack resources (e.g., warm food, warm clothes) in coping with coldness. Moreover, individuals may tend to amplify the threats of the crisis-situations. Such tendency was usually related to other psychological reactions toward disasters such as post-traumatic stress disorder (e.g., Heir et al., 2009 ). And the tendency could also be amplified in a social level ( Kasperson et al., 1988 ). Under extreme circumstances, individuals can do little to change the objective situation. Regulating warmth feelings of the ambient environment is potentially helpful for individuals to feel positively about the situations. We hypothesized that altruistic behaviors would increase the feelings of warmth among altruistic performers.

Altruistic Behaviors Promote Physical Warmth

Researchers have linked feelings of warmth to social behaviors and social cognitions. Recently, IJzerman et al. (2015a) proposed a social thermoregulation model. According to this model, thermoregulation is costly for a single individual; therefore, social interactions (e.g., bodily contact) are vital and economic for animals to maintain proper body temperatures. The model argues that the process of social thermoregulation has shaped high-order social cognition. Earlier theories on grounded cognition ( Barsalou, 1999 , 2008 ; Schubert, 2005 ) have suggested that abstract social cognitions are grounded in interactions with the physical world. Metaphoric models emphasize metaphoric mappings between social cognition and physical perception ( Landau et al., 2010 ). These theories help explain the connections between the social and physical worlds in human beings.

An important line of research has focused on a bidirectional relationship between physical warmth and social warmth. On the one hand, a well-known study conducted by Williams and Bargh (2008) showed that a simple manipulation of physical warmth could lead to favorable interpersonal evaluations and behaviors. In addition, Kang et al. (2011) found that physical warmth increased trusting behavior. Such behaviors were regarded conceptually as interpersonal warmth in social life. On the other hand, other studies have yielded evidence that social-related concepts raised warmth perception. For example, research found that thinking about traits and objects that were positively related to communal concepts raised perceived warmth of the ambient environment ( Szymkow et al., 2013 ; IJzerman et al., 2015b ). Moreover, neuroscientific studies have also supported connection between social warmth and physical warmth. Kang et al. (2011) found insula activation when physical warmth increased trusting behavior. Inagaki and Eisenberger (2013) ’s study also found that social-warmth and physical-warmth conditions overlapped on their activations in ventral striatum and middle insula. This overlap was specific in warmth-related positive feelings.

Furthermore, this social-physical link of warmth has been indirectly supported by the “cold” side of social life. Specifically, Zhong and Leonardelli (2008) found that recalling a past experience of social exclusion resulted in a lower estimate of ambient temperature. A social exclusion manipulation could lower skin temperature, and physical warmth experiences were more desirable and effective in comforting the participants experiencing feelings of loneliness ( Bargh and Shalev, 2012 ; Ijzerman et al., 2012 ).

Through the consistently observed relationship between social behaviors (especially positive or prosocial behaviors that foster social relationships) and feelings of warmth, we expected a similar relationship between altruistic behaviors (as typical prosocial behaviors) and warmth perception. Apart from happiness, self-efficacy or some other psychological states, altruistic behaviors could also lead to some positive consequences that are more physical related. Specifically, we predicted that altruistic behaviors would lead to an increased warmth perception of the ambient environment.

Perceived Social Distance as a Mediator

Apart from the research that confirmed a relationship between social warmth and physical warmth, many studies have identified the effects of social distance and physical distance on warmth feelings. For example, IJzerman and Semin (2010) found that a closer perception of social distance (either induced by physical distance or by similarity manipulation) resulted in a higher estimate of ambient temperature. The effects could be reasoned that there is a similar overlapping of social distance and physical interpersonal distance (e.g., IJzerman and Semin, 2009 ), and that physical warmth is usually related to physical interpersonal distance.

In a recent model, social baseline theory was built on previous theories of attachment and other related findings ( Beckes and Coan, 2011 ). The theory proposes that social relationship and social proximity is actually a baseline for human being because it is energy-saving and risk-reducing. Individuals are actually more activated when social relationships are threatened, and they have a tendency to return to “baseline.” Thus, individuals may incorporate relationship-oriented social behaviors to achieve social proximity. Because of the close link between social distance and warmth perception, social distance could be a proximal bridge between prosocial or relationship-oriented behaviors and warmth perception. Thus, we hypothesized that altruistic behaviors would increase the performers’ warmth perceptions of the ambient environment. Moreover, we predicted that this effect would be mediated by decreasing the perceived social distance between altruists and recipients.

Overview of the Current Research

In the current research, we conducted six studies to test the hypothesis that altruistic behaviors would result in a warmer perception of ambient environment and to additionally test the effect of perceived social distance as a mediator. Study 1 was a retrospective field study conducted in the context of Hurricane Sandy, revealing the relationship between altruistic behaviors and perceived warmth in a crisis. Then, in Studies 2a and 2b, we created a crisis situation in the laboratory to replicate this effect and to test the mediation effect of perceived social distance. In Studies 3a and 3b, we extended such effect and the mediation effect of perceived social distance to daily life situations using laboratory experiments. In Study 4, we conducted a field study to replicate such an effect in a real donation activity. To note, all the studies in the current research were set in a comparatively cold environment. We did not explore how this effect would manifest in a much hotter environment.

Study 1 explored the effect of altruistic behaviors on feelings of warmth in a real crisis context. Hurricane Sandy was the most destructive hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, dramatically shocking 24 states in the United States with its ferocity dating back to 29th October, 2012. After the storm crashed ashore, the rain turned into blizzard conditions along the east coast of the United States. According to news reports, the highest snowfall accumulation was 36 inches (91 cm) ( Kellogg, 2013 ). What was worse, due to the heavy snow, the heating and power systems were cut off for more than 10 days in some places in New York State. The extremely cold weather turned the recovery and reconstruction into chronic suffering. As a result, local residents were suffering the continuous stress of environmental threat in subsequent months. In this study, the sample included participants who were local residents at the time of the crisis and who experienced this crisis first-hand. We hypothesized that participants who recalled an altruistic experience (vs. those who recalled a non-altruistic experience) in the crisis would then have a memory of a warmer ambient environment.

Participants

G ∗ Power 3.1 was used to compute a priori power analyses in the study. According to Cohen’s (1992) suggestion, a power of 0.8 and an effect size that was slightly above moderate level (effect size d = 0.6) were used as the input data. The expected effect size was also consistent with previous research on similar topics (e.g., IJzerman and Semin, 2009 , 2010 ). This resulted in an expected sample size of 72. Seventy-nine local residents from the disaster areas (New Jersey State and New York State) (33 males; M a ge = 29.65 years, SD = 9.41) were recruited on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website (MTurk 1 ). They were asked to complete an online survey named “Life after Sandy Hurricane” and were each rewarded a $5 Amazon gift-card. The purpose of the survey was described as for exploring how Hurricane Sandy and the following extreme cold weather influence people’s daily life. The survey was launched within 3 months after Hurricane Sandy hit the United States while residents in the disaster areas were still suffering through the chronic recovery and reconstruction. Participants were randomly assigned to the altruistic or non-altruistic group. There were 42 participants in the altruistic group and 37 participants in the non-altruistic group.

Materials and Procedure

Participants were first informed that the survey aimed to explore how Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent extreme weather conditions influenced the local residents. Next, participants were asked to recall an experience during or after Hurricane Sandy and to write it down in detail (using at least 50 words). In the altruistic group, participants were asked to “recall an experience in which he/she did something mainly taking other people’s benefits into consideration (e.g., giving food to a homeless person on the street, offering someone a free-ride, volunteer work, etc.).” In the non-altruistic group, they were asked to “recall an experience in which he/she did something mainly taking his/her own benefits into consideration (e.g., rushing to the supermarket for necessities without thinking about how others may need the goods, refusing to offer a free-ride, ignoring neighbor’s asking for help, etc.).” Afterward, participants were asked to recall their instant feelings of the ambient environment after the experience along a 7-point scale (1 = extremely cold , 7 = extremely warm ). As control variables, the participants were also asked to report their feelings of warmth in the current environment along a 7-point scale (1 = extremely cold , 7 = extremely warm ) in addition to the estimated temperature (in degrees Fahrenheit) of the current environment.

Results and Discussion

The participants recalled warmer ambient environment after the recalled altruistic experience ( M = 4.55, SD = 1.19) than after the recalled non-altruistic experience ( M = 3.35, SD = 1.06), t (77) = 4.68, p < 0.001, d = 1.06. The effect remained significant when we included as covariates the warmth feelings and the estimated temperature of the current environment during the survey, F (1,74) = 19.93, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.21. Moreover, the warmth feelings or the estimated temperature of the current environment during the survey did not show significant group differences [warmth feelings: M altruistic = 4.40, SD = 1.08, M non-altruistic = 3.97, SD = 1.44, t (77) = 1.52, p = 0.134; environmental temperature: M altruistic = 69.55, SD = 5.99, M non-altruistic = 67.39, SD = 10.07, t (76) = 1.17, p = 0.246].

In summary, Study 1 primarily demonstrated the effect of altruistic behavior on warmth feelings in a retrospective real-world crisis. It is worth noting that the results for warmth feelings of the current environment did not reach significance, although in the same direction as for the remembered environment. This seemed not consistent with previous research when recalling a past experience of social exclusion affected current feelings of warmth (e.g., Zhong and Leonardelli, 2008 ). This was possibly due to individuals’ separation of the current feelings and remembered feelings. In addition, the study was less controlled due to the nature of the real crisis scenario. Thus, well-controlled experiments were conducted in the laboratory by measuring and manipulating altruistic behaviors, and warmth feelings were collected instantly after the behaviors.

Study 2a was designed to replicate the effect of altruistic behavior on warmth perception of the ambient environment in crisis context with three improvements. First, we created an earthquake scene in the laboratory. Participants were asked to imagine that they were stuck in an earthquake scene in which a stranger was requesting help. Second, the temperature of this laboratory-based earthquake scene was kept stable at 15°C. Third, altruistic willingness was directly measured in this study so that we could observe the relationship between altruistic willingness and warmth feelings. To match the settings of the scenario, participants took the experiment in groups of 4 and there was no former acquaintance within each group. Such design could increase a sense of reality and offer a closer simulation of the scenario. It could also be more natural to induce helping behaviors in such conditions. We expected that the participants with higher altruistic willingness would perceive higher levels of warmth of the ambient environment.

Because of the correlational nature of Study 2, a power of 0.8 and a medium level of r ( r = 0.3) were used to compute the expected sample size ( Cohen, 1992 ). This resulted in an expected sample size of 67. Study 2a took place in a university in Beijing, China. We recruited 69 college students (24 males; M a ge = 22.31 years, SD = 2.97) from the campus online forum. All participants read the informed consent document and agreed to participate in the experiment for a payment of 10 RMB (approximately $1.5).

As mentioned before, the procedure was implemented in groups of four participants with no former acquaintances. They were first guided into a preparation room where they read a brief introduction of the experiment and then led to the experiment room. The experiment room was set as a scene after an earthquake, with a constant temperature of 15°C and all lights turned off. Participants were asked to sit in a circle on the floor during the whole experiment. They each were approximately 40–50 cm apart from one another.

After ensuring that each of the four participants was ready, the laptops started synchronously to play a video containing standardized instructions leading participants through the whole experiment. Participants were asked not to interact with other participants. The first part of the video was a 40-s video clip of a real earthquake. Participants were instructed to imagine that they had just experienced the earthquake and were currently stuck in a room under a collapsed building with several tourists.

In the second part, the video displayed a questionnaire with several slides, and participants were asked to write down their responses on the paper. First, they were required to report how was their perception of the ambient environment along an 11-point scale (0 = extremely cold , 10 = extremely warm ). This was served as a pre-altruism measure of warmth perception. Perceived severity and uncertainty of the situation were also measured as control variables. Second, participants were told that “one of the tourists did not have food and had requested help.” Participants were asked to “indicate (with a whole number between 0 and 100) the percentage of food they would like to share with the tourist.” The willingness-to-help was regarded as participants’ subjective willingness of altruistic behavior. Additionally, warmth perception of the ambient environment was again measured as a post-altruism measure. Finally, participants were debriefed and then paid for their participation.

To control for individual differences in feelings of warmth before altruistic behaviors, we subtracted the pre-altruism measure from the post-altruism measure of warmth perception and used this result in analyses. Regression analysis showed that willingness-to-help was positively related to change in warmth perception of ambient environment, F (1,67) = 4.39, p = 0.040, β = 0.25. This relationship remained significant when perceived severity and uncertainty of the scenario were controlled in the first step of the regression, F (1,65) = 4.46, p = 0.039, β = 0.26.

Study 2a replicated an association between altruism and warmth perception of ambient environment, demonstrating that people with a greater subjective altruistic willingness would experience warmer feelings. However, limitations remained in the measurement of altruism. First, neither Study 1 (recalled altruistic behavior) nor Study 2a (altruistic willingness) measured actual altruistic behavior. Second, the results of Study 2a were correlational, so a causal relationship between altruism and warmth feeling was not confirmed. Third, it remained unclear why the effect of altruism on perceived physical warmth emerged.

Study 2b aimed at confirming the causal relationship between altruism and warmth perception in a crisis situation. Participants were randomly manipulated to exhibit an altruistic or a non-altruistic behavior in an experiment. We also explored a possible mediator of the relationship, hypothesizing that participants in the altruistic group (vs. the non-altruistic group) would report a warmer perception of the ambient environment because they felt a closer social distance to the help seeker. Moreover, we measured participants’ prosocial traits to control for the possible confounding effects of individual differences.

The computation of the sample size was identical to that of Study 1, resulting in a sample size of 72. Study 2b took place in a university in Beijing, China. Eighty-five university students were recruited from the campus online forum and randomly assigned to one of the two conditions (altruistic vs. non-altruistic). Five participants were excluded from the final data analysis because they responded to less than two-thirds of the assessment items. The final sample (28 males; M a ge = 22.41 years, SD = 3.04) comprised 36 participants in the altruistic condition and 44 participants in the no-altruistic condition. Participants each received a payment of 10 yuan RMB (approximately $1.5).

The settings and procedure of Study 2b were almost identical to those of Study 2a except for several important changes. First, although participants still participated in groups of four, one of the four participants in each group was actually a confederate.

Second, in addition to reading a brief introduction of the experiment in the preparation room, each participant was given a bag. They were told not to open and examine the bag until the instructions told them to do so in the experiment. The three bags for the real participants each contained ten small packs of bread (20 g each). There was no food in the confederate’s bag.

Third, the participants were guided to the experiment room, which had the same settings as in Study 2a. But after watching the first part of the video, the participants were instructed to open the bag and count the bread packs. Because participants were sitting close to each other (∼40–50 cm away from each other), they could easily notice that the confederate had nothing in the bag.

Fourth, participants were then instructed to report (1) the pre-altruism measure of warmth perception of the ambient environment and (2) control variables. Apart from the perceived severity and uncertainty of the situation, negative emotions (i.e., sadness, fear, desperation, and stress; α = 0.85) were also included as control variables.

Fifth, after the above measures were taken, participants were told that the person with no food in bag had requested help. Moreover, participants were manipulated into two groups by reading the following words: ‘ gathering everyone’s power and sharing resources with the group were the best choice in crisis’ (altruistic group) or ‘ saving one’s own resources and maximizing one’s own benefits were the best choice ’ (non-altruistic group). Each participant was asked to decide how many bread packs he/she would like to give to the help-seeker and to take the corresponding number of packs out of the bag. Participants were also instructed to write down the number on the answer sheet. This was used as the manipulation check of altruistic behavior.

Sixth, participants were asked to report perceived psychological distance with the other tourists in the situation on a 7-point scale (1 = close , 7 = distant ) and this measure of social distance was used as the proposed mediator. The post-altruism measure of warmth perception was measured identically to Study 2a. Finally, participants completed the Social Value Orientation Questionnaire as a measure of prosocial traits after returning to the preparation room.

Prosocial Trait

We used the Social Value Orientation Questionnaire ( Van Lange et al., 1997 ) to measure prosocial traits. This questionnaire contains nine multiple-choice situations. In each situation, a participant needed to choose one of three options to decide the outcomes for himself/herself and for another player. The three options in each situation corresponded to three social value orientations: competitive (seeking a larger difference between one’s own and other’s outcomes), individualistic (seeking a larger outcome for oneself), and prosocial (seeking a larger joint outcome). If the choices of six or more out of the nine situations were consistent with one of these social value orientations, participants were classified accordingly. Otherwise, the participant was designated as unclassified.

The manipulation check of altruistic behavior was successful. Participants in the altruistic condition shared more packs of bread ( M = 3.11, SD = 0.98) with the help-seeker than those in the non-altruistic condition ( M = 2.55, SD = 1.13), t (78) = 2.36, p = 0.021, d = 0.53.

In terms of change in warmth perception of the ambient environment, the result was consistent with Studies 1 and 2a. Participants in the altruistic group reported more increase in warmth feelings of the ambient environment ( M = 0.44, SD = 2.34) than those in the non-altruistic group ( M = -0.70, SD = 2.53), t (78) = 2.09, p = 0.040, d = 0.47. The effect remained significant when negative emotions, perceived severity and uncertainty of the scenario were controlled as covariates in the analysis, F (1,74) = 4.33, p = 0.041, η 2 = 0.06. 2

A Chi-square test showed that there was a tendency that the distributions of the four social value orientations (competitive, individualistic, prosocial, and unclassified) in the two groups were not balance [χ 2 (3) = 6.43, p = 0.092]. We also tested whether social value orientations affect change in warmth perception. Because social value orientation was a categorical variable, we run a 2 (experimental manipulation: altruistic vs. non-altruistic) × 4 (social value orientation: competitive vs. individualistic vs. prosocial vs. unclassified) ANOVA. Because there was no significant interactions between the experimental manipulation and the social value orientation ( p = 0.524), a custom model was run for analyzing only the main effects. Results showed that the effect of experimental manipulation remained marginally significant, F (1,75) = 3.39, p = 0.070, η 2 = 0.04. And social value orientation did not significantly affect change in warmth perception, F (3,75) = 1.50, p = 0.232, η 2 = 0.06.

Next, we examined whether perceived social distance mediated these effects. Participants in the altruistic group reported a significantly shorter perceived distance ( M = 2.53, SD = 1.00) than those in the non-altruistic group ( M = 3.16, SD = 1.46), t (78) = 2.20, p = 0.031, d = 0.50. Regression analysis showed that the group variable (the altruistic group coded as “1” and the non-altruistic group coded as “0”) was a significant predictor of warmth perception (β = 0.23, p = 0.040). However, the strength of this relationship became non-significant (β = 0.18, p = 0.105) when perceived social distance was included in the analysis. Moreover, perceived social distance had a tendency to be negatively related to warmth perception (β = -0.19, p = 0.091). The above results imply a mediation effect of perceived social distance. To further confirm the mediation effect, a 5000-sample bootstrapping analysis was conducted. Results showed that the 95% bias-corrected confidence interval for the indirect effect was [0.03, 0.61], suggesting a significant indirect effect ( MacKinnon et al., 2007 ). Therefore, the results of Study 2b confirmed that engaging in altruistic behaviors can increase the perceived warmth of the ambient environment while also suggesting that reduced social distance could be an internal process.

So, the first three studies focused on the relationship between altruism (recalled altruistic behavior, altruistic willingness, and manipulated altruistic behavior) and perceived warmth of the ambient environment. The scenarios used in these studies were all crisis situations with low environmental temperatures. The temperature setting was important because a cold environment could be an extreme threat to survival during a crisis. Thus, regulating warmth perception of the ambient environment would be of great significance.

In the following three studies, we aimed to extend these findings to non-crisis situations with cold environments. This was mainly for two reasons. First, although we explored altruistic behaviors with either real or laboratory-based crisis situations, the manipulation and observation of altruistic behaviors suffered from some limitations. We could obtain only retrospective data from real crisis, and the manipulation of altruistic behaviors was direct. Second, participants in Studies 2a and 2b took the experiments in groups, which could result in interdependence of data. Although we did not find significant influence of group in Study 2b, following studies are aimed to avoid this problem by changing the experimental design. Third, the situations used in the previous studies were crisis-related, and we would like to confirm the relationship in less-threatening daily situations.

Study 3a was designed to examine the association between altruistic behaviors and perceived warmth of the ambient environment in our daily life. We made two improvements in this study. First, we adopted temperature estimation as an additional index of warmth perception. Second, body temperature was measured as a control variable. We predicted that participants who chose to behave altruistically would report feeling warmer in the environment than those who chose not to help. In this study, we also predicted a mediation effect of perceived social distance.

The computation of the sample size was identical to that of Study 1, resulting in a sample size of 72. Study 3a took place in a university in Beijing, China and participants were college students recruited from the campus online forum. The final sample contained 64 participants (33 males; M a ge = 22.66 years, SD = 2.47). Thirty-two participants who engaged in the altruistic task were labeled the altruistic group and the rest were labeled the non-altruistic group.

The temperature of the experiment room was maintained constantly at 15°C. Seventy-one college students were recruited and completed a 10-min irrelevant decision-making questionnaire for a reward of 10 yuan RMB (approximately $1.5). After participants were paid, they were invited to participate in an additional activity organized by the Student Union of the Department of Psychology, but for no extra reward. Seven participants refused to participate and were excluded from the final analysis. Thus, the final sample contained 64 participants.

The additional activity involved two tasks for children from low-income migrant workers’ families. These children are usually regarded as a disadvantaged group in China. The first task was time-consuming and required considerable attention. Participants needed approximately 10 min to read and revise some educational materials for these children. The second task required participants to just complete a 1-min questionnaire about their understandings on these children. In this questionnaire, a 1-item measure of perceived social distance toward these children was presented along a 7-point scale (1 = extremely close , 7 = extremely distant ) with some filling items. Participants could decide whether to participate in both tasks or in the second task only. Based on their decisions, participants were labeled as altruistic or non-altruistic.

Lastly, participants were asked to finish another small survey entitled “A survey on the Laboratory Environment.” In the survey, participants were required to report their perception of the warmth of the experiment room on an 11-point scale (0 = extremely cold , 10 = extremely warm) . They were also asked to estimate the room temperature in degrees Celsius. As a control, we measured the body temperature of the participants using a non-contact infrared thermometer. Finally, participants were debriefed and thanked for their participation.

As expected, participants in the altruistic group felt the room was warmer ( M = 6.06, SD = 2.18) than those in the non-altruistic group ( M = 4.53, SD = 2.09), t (62) = 2.86, p = 0.006, d = 0.72. This effect remained significant when body temperature was included as a covariate, F (1,61) = 9.31, p = 0.003, η 2 = 0.13. Participants in the altruistic group also reported higher estimates of the room temperature ( M = 16.91, SD = 5.21) than those in the non-altruistic group ( M = 12.58, SD = 4.48), t (62) = 3.57, p = 0.001, d = 0.89. This effect also remained significant when body temperature was included as a covariate, F (1,61) = 12.34, p = 0.001, η 2 = 0.17. Moreover, there was a significantly positive correlation between feeling of warmth and estimate of the room temperature ( r = 0.36, p = 0.002). However, body temperature did not correlate with feeling of warmth ( r = -0.20, p = 0.120) or estimate of the room temperature ( r = 0.05, p = 0.671). We then examined whether perceived social distance mediated the effects of group conditions on warmth perception. Participants in the altruistic group reported a significantly shorter distance ( M = 3.66, SD = 1.54) than those in the non-altruistic group ( M = 4.47, SD = 1.32), t (62) = 2.27, p = 0.027, d = 0.57. Regression analysis showed that the group variable (the altruistic group coded as “1” and the non-altruistic group coded as “0”) was a significant predictor of warmth perception, β = 0.34, p = 0.006). This relationship weakened (β = 0.28, p = 0.024) when perceived social distance was included in the analysis. Moreover, perceived social distance had a tendency to be negatively related to warmth perception (β = -0.21, p = 0.087). The above results implied a mediation effect of perceived social distance. To further confirm the mediation effect, a 5000-sample bootstrapping analysis was conducted. Results showed that the 95% bias-corrected confidence interval for the indirect effect was [0.04, 0.89], suggesting a significant indirect effect ( MacKinnon et al., 2007 ).

In conclusion, the effect of altruistic behavior on perceived warmth and the mediating effect of perceived social distance were verified in a daily life situation. In Study 3b, we imported a stricter control of altruistic behaviors to confirm the effect of altruistic behavior on warmth perception of the ambient environment.

In Study 3b, we randomly assigned participants to an altruistic or a non-altruistic condition. Moreover, a no-task group was added as a control group to rule out the alternative explanation that non-altruistic behavior could lead to a decrease in warmth perception of the ambient environment. We hypothesized that participants in the altruistic group would report higher warmth perception than those in the non-altruistic group and the no-task group. We expected participants in the non-altruistic and the no-task groups to report equal feelings of warmth.

Because Study 3b was designed to be consisted of three groups, a power of 0.8 and an effect size f of 0.35 were used to compute the expected sample size, resulting in a sample size of 81. Study 3b took place in a university in Beijing, China. Eighty-three college students were recruited from the campus online forum. Eight of them did not finish the experiment and were thus excluded from the analysis. The final sample contained 75 participants (36 males; M a ge = 22.2 years, SD = 7.42). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions, resulting in 25 participants in each group.

Participants were led to the experiment room, the temperature of which was maintained constantly at 15°C. In the altruistic condition, participants were invited to take part in a charity activity called ‘The Love Crossing 4000 Kilometers’ to help the students from a remote town called Jimunai. This town was one of the poorest areas in China, located 4000 km from Beijing. The charity aimed to collect stationery for these students and offer them more opportunities to learn about the outside world. Each participant was invited to write a postcard for a particular student in Jimunai Secondary School to introduce an attraction in Beijing. Participants then were given a 10-RMB (approximately $1.5) cash note and were required to put the note in a charity box. Notably, all of the postcards were sent to the corresponding students, and the money was donated to the school in the name of participants after the experiment.

In the non-altruistic condition, participants were asked to read information about Beijing’s candidature for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Participants were told that the laboratory was helping to advocate the attractions in Beijing. They could choose one postcard and write down an introduction about an attraction in Beijing. In the no-task group, participants were assigned no additional task.

All the participants then were asked to complete the survey about the laboratory environment, which was identical to that used in Study 3a. In the survey, participants were required to report their warmth perception of the experiment room along an 11-point scale (0 = extremely cold , 10 = extremely warm ). As a control, we measured the body temperature of the participants using a non-contact infrared thermometer. Finally, all the participants were debriefed, thanked, and each paid 10 RMB (approximately $1.5) for their participation.

To ensure the successful manipulation of altruism, we asked another 78 participants (36 males) to read the scenarios in Study 3b and to then indicate the extent of altruism (‘To what extent do you feel you could help others if you participate in this activity?’ 1 = not at all , 5 = great deal ). Results showed that the participants in the altruistic condition reported more helping ( M = 3.63, SD = 0.75) than those in the non-altruistic condition ( M = 3.18, SD = 0.90), t (76) = 2.42, p = 0.018, d = 0.55. To exclude the possibility that the non-altruistic material would induce thoughts of competition, the participants also indicated perceived competition (‘To what extent do you feel you are competing with others?’ 1 = not at all , 5 = great deal ). No significant difference was found between the participants in the two conditions, p = 0.976. In addition, participants were required to write down 5–10 words that the reading material reminded them. We asked two experimenters who did not know the intention of the study to classify the words. Results showed that participants who read the altruistic scenario wrote down more altruistic-related words ( M = 1.06, SD = 0.17) than those who read the non-altruistic scenario ( M = 0.27, SD = 0.04), t (76) = 9.63, p < 0.001, d = 6.56. Similar results were found for caring-related words ( M altruistic = 1.13, SD = 0.70, M non-altruistic = 0.08, SD = 0.27, t (76) = 8.85, p < 0.001, d = 2.02.

One-way ANOVA revealed that the warmth perception of the participants were significantly different across three conditions, F (2,72) = 4.77, p = 0.011, η 2 = 0.12. As expected, Bonferroni post hoc analysis showed that participants in the altruistic group ( M = 6.84, SD = 1.89) felt significantly warmer in the room than those in the non-altruistic group ( M = 5.32, SD = 2.01) (95% CI of mean difference [0.19, 2.85], p = 0.019). Likewise, participants in the altruistic group felt significantly warmer than those in the no-task group ( M = 5.48, SD = 1.83) (95% CI of mean difference [0.03, 2.69], p = 0.042). However, there was no significant difference in warmth perception between the non-altruistic and no-task groups (95% CI of mean difference [-1.17, 1.49], p = 1.00). Moreover, the effect of condition remained significant when the body temperature of participants was included as a covariate, F (2,71) = 4.55, p = 0.014, η 2 = 0.11. And there was no significant correlation between feelings of warmth and body temperature of the participants, r = 0.08, p = 0.490.

With stronger causal inference in this instance, the results replicated the effect of altruism on the warmth perception of the ambient environment. By adding a no-task control group, this study showed that the effects on warmth perception was caused by an increase in warm feelings from behaving altruistically rather than a decrease from not behaving altruistically.

Studies 3a and 3b replicated in the laboratory the primary findings of Studies 2a and 2b with regard to daily life situations. Compared with crisis situations, daily situations were more naturally created. In Study 3a, altruistic behaviors were chosen voluntarily by participants whereas in Study 3b, participants were randomly led to believe that they did an altruistic behavior or a non-altruistic behavior. The results provided convergent evidence for the proposed effect that altruistic behaviors would increase the perception of ambient warmth. To note, Studies 3a and 3b were underpowered by 8 and 6 participants compared to the computed sample sizes, respectively. This was due to experimental constraints of unexpected loss of participants and was a limitation for both studies. To further confirm the relationship and to foster external validity, we conducted another study in a real life situation to explore how a common altruistic behavior, donation, affected warmth perception of the ambient environment.

Study 4 was a field experiment conducted to increase the external validity of previous work and confirm the effects of altruistic behavior on the perception of warmth of the ambient environment. The experiment was conducted with the help of the Students Association of Sunshine Volunteers at Peking University. An actual charity event was held on December 7, 2012, to collect donations for children with leukemia. A donation desk was placed on the sidewalk along the campus main street. We randomly solicited individuals to complete a short questionnaire after they passed the donation desk. We hypothesized that people who donated (the altruistic group) would feel warmer regarding the ambient environment than those who did not donate (the non-altruistic group).

Because Study 4 was a field study, a power of 0.8 and an effect size d of 0.5 (which was smaller than previous studies) were used to compute the expected sample size, resulting in a sample size of 102. A total of 108 people participated in this experiment (47 males; M a ge = 22.27 years, SD = 5.50). Of these, 55 made a donation.

Data were collected from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. during the day. The environment temperature during the experiment ranged from -7°C to 0°C. Participants filled in a short questionnaire called “Perception of Weather Conditions in Beijing,” which included items assessing warm feelings about the environment along an 11-point scale (0 = extremely cold , 10 = extremely warm) and an estimation of the environment temperature in Celsius degrees. To control for hourly temperature variations, we paired a passer-by who did not donate within 2 min after a donor completed the questionnaire.

Consistent with our prediction, results showed that the passers-by who made a donation (altruists) perceived the ambient environment as warmer ( M = 3.07, SD = 2.01) than those who did not ( M = 2.40, SD = 1.86). The difference was marginally significant, t (106) = 1.81, p = 0.073, d = 0.35. The donors also reported significantly higher temperature estimations ( M = -0.51°C, SD = 3.40) compared to the non-donors ( M = -2.34°C, SD = 3.33), t (106) = 2.83, p = .006, d = 0.54).

A Meta-Analysis

So far, we have consistently revealed the effects of altruistic behavior on physical warmth. For further verification, we conducted a meta-analysis to test the statistical replication of the experiments. The present experiments provided a good condition for such an analysis for two reasons. First, the altruistic behaviors varied in category, including sharing food with others, charitable helping, and monetary donations. Second, both college students in China and residents in America were included in the experiments, offering a significant diversity of participant populations.

Because Study 2a did not involve grouping participants, data from all other five studies were included. We used warmth perception of the ambient environment as the main dependent variable. Using Comprehensive Meta Analysis software, we entered the means, standard deviations, and sample sizes of the altruistic group and the non-altruistic group to calculate effect sizes. As shown in Table 1 , the combined z -value was 5.94 ( p < 0.001), which confirmed that altruistic behaviors increased physical warmth. Moreover, the heterogeneity test showed that the q -value was 6.24 ( p = 0.182), indicating that the effects did not differ significantly across the studies.

Results of a mini meta-analysis of the six studies.

General Discussion

Through six experiments, we found that altruistic performers were likely to feel warmer about the ambient environment than those who either refused to help or did not have a chance to help. Furthermore, results revealed that this effect was mediated by perceived social distance (Studies 2b and 3a). Moreover, this effect was confirmed in both crisis and ordinary situations amidst different experimental settings. Altruism is a complicated construct. It is usually directed by voluntary motivations and thus altruistic behaviors were just observed in Studies 2a, 3a, and 4. To confirm the causal relationship, recalled altruistic experiences as well as instant altruistic behaviors were manipulated in Studies 1, 2b, and 3b. Moreover, different instructions and cover stories were incorporated in Studies 2b and 3b. In summary, this design of series studies complemented for possible weaknesses in terms of constructing altruism and offered convergent findings.

Immediate Self-Reward of Altruistic Behaviors

While improving the welfare of others, altruistic behaviors typically deplete the energy and resources of the altruistic performers. Earlier explanations of altruism focused on its long-term return, either through genetic propagation ( Hamilton, 1963 ; Hamilton and Axelrod, 1981 ) or reciprocity ( Trivers, 1971 ; Nowak and Sigmund, 1998 , 2000 ). However, research on altruistic punishment observed the activation of the reward system of the dorsal striatum, signaling an instant satisfaction from altruistic behaviors ( de Quervain et al., 2004 ). Results from the current research have implied a potential self-reward mechanism for altruistic behaviors.

We found an immediate rewarding effect on the perceived warmth of the ambient environment after performing altruistic behaviors. In six studies, warm feelings were measured immediately after the participants reported the willingness to help and after they exhibited actual altruistic behaviors. This suggested that the increased feeling of warmth surrounding the ambient environment was an immediate reward rather than a long-term return-benefit for altruistic behavior performers. Furthermore, this effect was found to be mediated by perceived social distance, introducing a potential psychological process in this immediate reward. As mentioned in the introduction, previous research also found that altruistic behavior could result in some immediate psychological reward, including happiness ( Dunn et al., 2008 ), self-efficacy ( Midlarsky and Kahana, 1994 ), and positive self-evaluation ( Post, 2005 ). Moreover, Dawans et al. (2012) found that exposure to acute social stress could increase prosocial responses, which implied an immediate protective function of altruism in coping with acute stress. In the current research, the immediate reward was found to extend to concrete physical feelings through a psychological process.

We proposed three characteristics of the immediate reward system of altruism that were different from those of its long-term benefits. First, an immediate reward is a much more certain and spontaneous effect compared with long-term benefits. An altruistic performer may end up with no real benefits in the long run but could always obtain positive feedbacks through the immediate reward system. Second, the immediate reward could operate on the psychological or even perceptual level. Compared with the external benefits from genetic propagation and reciprocity, the internal immediate reward could serve as a direct incentive to engage in altruistic behaviors. Third, receiving an immediate reward could be a self-feedback process. For long-term benefits, altruistic performers usually need to rely on the behaviors or the survival possibilities of others. In contrast, altruistic behaviors could directly activate the performer’s psychological and physical processes on the individual level. To summarize, an immediate reward from altruism could be certain, internally perceived, and self-activated, compared to long-term benefits.

The immediate reward for altruistic performers could be very valuable. The observed results of altruistic behaviors in previous research included positive emotions and positive self-cognitions, all of which were found to be positively related with people’s subjective well-being (e.g., Bandura, 1986 ; Brunstein, 1993 ). A meta-analysis found that volunteers had lower risks of mortality ( Jenkinson et al., 2013 ). In the current research, we observed a consistent and direct connection between physical warmth and altruism. Physical warmth may be an important source of psychological energy or at least a strong comfort for individuals who were exposed to a cold environment. Specifically, individuals could perceive the environment as more secure and predictable ( IJzerman et al., 2015a ), and thus gain more confidence in coping with the environment. Thus, if the immediate reward from altruism could be valuable for the altruistic performers, they can be trusted because the reward would be more direct and certain.

In all, it suggests that altruism can not only bring long-term benefits to the performers (as explained in kin selection and reciprocity accounts) but also evoke immediate positive feelings inside the performers (as revealed in the current research). These two systems offer a better understanding of the functional adaptabilities of altruistic behaviors. Traditional economic analysis of altruism is based on a cost/utility analysis of external factors such as money, time, and probabilities of genetic propagations. We proposed to add internal utility (psychological states such as warmth perception and emotion) in the discussion of altruism. Altruistic behaviors would be evolutionarily meaningful if the increase in the internal utility offsets the reductions in external utility. Thus, the framework of altruism would be more complete when we concern both long-term and immediate benefits, as well as both external and internal utilities.

Lingering Fragrance Effect

A potential immediate self-reward system of altruistic behaviors has practical meaning in promoting people’s well-being and quality of life in both daily life and times of crisis. The effect found in the current research was a typical example of the interaction between an individual’s physical and psychological system. The saying the roses in her hand, the flavor in mine could reveal a real psychological activation effect, through which people could promote their personal physical states. Thus, we named this psychological activation effect as a lingering fragrance effect.

When facing a threat (e.g., hunger, pain, or cold), there are mainly two strategies for its removal. One is to cope with the threat immediately (e.g., put on a coat to remove coldness). The other strategy is to activate a psychological process to change the perception of the threat. As in the current research, altruistic behavior activated people’s psychological processes and changed their warmth feelings of a cold environment. During crisis, the adverse external conditions could hardly be changed because of insufficient support of food, water, and living conditions. However, individual cognitions and behaviors are pliant and controllable, offering possibilities to attenuate the threats in crisis. Hence, psychological activations or subjective adjustments could become a prospective coping strategy under such circumstances. Importantly, the experimental settings used to induce people’s real altruistic behaviors might be artificial in the current research. Moreover, we found consistent lingering fragrance effects in spite of this shortcoming. Thus we expect in real life that the lingering fragrance effect of altruistic behaviors should be amplified to benefit individuals in a more extensive manner.

To note, we focused on the effects of altruistic behaviors on individuals’ subjective feelings of warmth in the current study. And we did not found significant similar effects on individuals’ objective physical states (body temperature in Studies 3a and 3b). This also implied that the psychological reactions may be faster and more flexible than physical reactions. However, it is possible that the physical states could get feedbacks from psychological states when the timeline is extended concerning the close interactions of physical and psychological states (e.g., Edwards and Cooper, 1988 ) and the prospective treatment of biofeedback (e.g., Lagos et al., 2013 ). In addition, we have mentioned in the introduction as well as in the discussion section that an increase in warmth feelings could be helpful for individuals who were coping with cold environment. Warmth feelings could serve as an easily accessible comfort for them especially in some crisis situations. On the other hand, it could become a problem when individuals optimistically perceived the environment as warm but failed to respond to the important environmental cue about temperature. This indicates that a raise of warmth feelings may actually become a double-edge sword in some cases. And it is interesting and prospective to explore the other edge of the sword in future studies.

In summary, the lingering fragrance effect is an important perspective for understanding the strategy in coping with a threat. The interaction between physical and psychological systems makes it possible to change the physical state through the mobilization of internal psychological resources. Under the crisis circumstances with limited conditions, using a psychological resource to resist the bad impacts of a crisis could be a more reasonable or even a single possible strategy to cope with threats. As the results showed, active altruistic behavior is a significant way for people to resist the cold environment. According to the Harry Truman effect, a person’s potential can be activated under certain circumstance ( Seligman, 2002 ). Equally, a person can activate his/her own internal psychological potential to cope with the intense threat and pursue positive results.

Future Directions

The exploration of the proposed immediate self-reward model of altruistic behaviors could be expanded from two aspects. First, the crisis situations and the experimental settings in the current research were all related to coldness. In some cases, coldness could even be a significant threat to survival (e.g., Hurricane Sandy in Study 1 and the earthquake in Studies 2a and 2b). In such cases, increased feelings of ambient warmth were regarded as a reward for the individuals. The specific reward and the corresponding psychological processes might change with different adverse situations. For example, coolness could become a more comfortable state when the environment was extremely hot. Future research could help to explore different contents of the lingering fragrance effect and to offer more evidence for an immediate internal reward system.

Second, further studies could be conducted on the rewarding nature of altruism. For example, a positive cycle might be established in which increased warmth perception following altruistic behaviors result in future altruistic behaviors. Moreover, de Quervain et al. (2004) found that effective altruistic punishment was related to stronger activation of the dorsal striatum. Similarly, neuroscientific studies would be helpful in finding out whether performing an altruistic behavior would activate the same region or some other reward-related brain regions.

Ethics Statement

The research project was approved by the Ethics Committee of Department of Psychology, Peking University. Studies 3a, 3b, and 4 involved helping disadvantaged groups (i.e., children from low-income migrant workers’ families, students from a remote and poor town, and children with leukemia). All of the helping scenarios used in the studies (including refining education materials, sending postcards, and donations) were actually carried out.

Author Contributions

T-YH, JL, HJ, and XX should be considered as joint first authors as they contributed equally to the research.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to appreciate Xiaoxiao Hu for helping us with data collection. Also, many thanks to Student Union of Psychology in Peking University, Jimunai Middle School and Qizhi Ning, who offered us opportunities to conduct Studies 3a, 3b, and 4 and to help those kids who were in need. Last but not least, we would like to extend our sincere gratitude to the members of Risk and Decision-making Lab of Psychology Department of Peking University for their helpful comments and support on the research.

Funding. This work was supported by the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 91224002]; and the General Program of National Nature Science Foundation of China [grant number 71172024].

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Participants in Study 2b took the experiment in group of 4 (three participants and one confederate) and they needed to act to share food during the experiment. Although participants were asked not to interact with others, it was possible that their reactions were influenced by other participants. To rule out this effect, we run an HLM test with a contextual model. The average number of packs within each group was regarded as the contextual variable. Results showed that the effects of altruism manipulation was marginally significant, t (77) = 1.84, p = 0.069. The effect of contextual variable did not reached significance, t (77) = 0.18, p = 0.860. The results remained when negative emotions, perceived severity and uncertainty of the scenario were included in the model.

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What Is Altruism in Psychology? 8 Inspiring Examples

It can be as simple as helping a neighbor with their shopping. Or more noteworthy, putting themselves at risk to rescue a stranger, changing healthcare policies to benefit communities, or helping to rid the world of a devastating disease, impacting millions.

And yet, psychologists and philosophers argue over the motivation behind compassionate, kind-hearted, considerate, and benevolent actions.

Are these people self-less  or self-interested ?

Some believe they are driven by altruism, with no regard for themselves or their wellbeing, while others claim self-interest drives even the noblest action.

In this article, we explore the meaning of altruism and discuss whether behavior can be motivated solely by another’s wellbeing. And if so, why? We also uncover human and animal examples of altruistic behavior and the biological and philosophical implications beneath.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Strengths Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients realize your unique potential and create a life that feels energized and authentic.

This Article Contains:

What is altruism in psychology, 4 inspiring examples, the biology of altruism: 5+ interesting findings, reciprocal altruism and the animal kingdom, a note on effective altruism, pure altruism: a philosophical take, relevant resources, a take-home message.

Altruism describes behavior motivated by the goal of increasing someone else’s welfare. In contrast, egoism defines acts driven by our self-interest (Batson, Ahmad, & Lishner, 2020).

For example, the motivation behind stopping to help someone with a flat tire:

• Egoistic view – the driver stops so that they appear caring in front of their new partner.
• Altruistic view – the driver is motivated to stop by their concern for another’s wellbeing.

The underlying motivation defines whether an action is altruistic.

But, isn’t altruistic behavior commonplace? After all, many of us give to charitable appeals, visit relatives in the hospital, or help one another with loss.

Not everyone agrees.

Universal egoism

The theory of universal egoism is commonly held by psychologists, biologists, and economists, partly due to its simplicity and lack of nuance (Batson et al., 2020).

According to this model, the goal or motivation behind each act is self-benefit.

We behave in such a way to feel good about ourselves, receive material rewards, or avoid feeling shame about our actions or inaction.

• We help a friend because we do not want to lose the closeness we share with them. If we see them upset, it causes us to feel bad, so we intervene.
• We offer someone a ride because at some point we may need their help.

Even a heroic life-saving act, according to universal egoists, is an attempt to escape guilt and be seen in a positive light (Batson et al., 2020).

And yet, believing that every action is motivated by self-interest alone seems cynical and devoid of humanity, and offers a bleak view of the world.

Can we believe that there are no selfless actions?

The altruist is more generous with the motivation they attribute to such acts.

While much of our behavior is underpinned by egoistic motivation, under certain circumstances, help is given with the sole aim of improving or safeguarding the wellbeing of others – this is altruism.

If we assist someone in trouble, we are therefore not motivated by a future, unknowable reward or recognition.

But why would we engage in behavior that favors another over ourselves?

– Empathic motivation

Our actions are motivated by our emotional reactions – including empathy and sympathy – to a situation.

In a literal sense, we experience the pain of our friend’s grief, so we offer our time and help. Ongoing brain research has confirmed that mirror neurons help us represent the actions or emotions of the people around us (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2010).

When we see a starving child on a TV commercial, we feel their distress and that of their family before donating.

Empathic motivation results from a combination of our feelings – tenderness, compassion, and sympathy – and the recipient’s sadness, loneliness, and distress.

We perceive the needs of another or imagine their feelings.

Egoists counter this view by suggesting that we are still motivated by self-interest; we help another to remove or reduce our uncomfortable feelings that result from our empathy .

– Collectivism (or group selection)

The collectivist believes that the ultimate goal behind the way we act is to benefit the group, rather than oneself.

Instead of focusing on ourselves or the person we help, we are motivated to improve the wellbeing of the group to which we belong.

It is perhaps best summed up by psychologist Robyn Dawes, it is “ not me or thee but we ” (Dawes, Kragt, & Orbell, 1988).

However, when framed by egoists, the motivation to benefit the group also promotes self-interest.

– Principlism

Logically, behavior that motivates us to keep the group safe may indirectly (or even directly) harm those outside the group. Principlism, however, avoids this dilemma, suggesting that altruism is motivated by the goal of upholding a principle and is therefore universal and impartial.

However, even behavior motivated by principlism can be seen as egoism if upholding moral principles is for personal gain.

While egoism remains a strong challenge to altruism and is dominant in many social sciences, there are plenty of human and animal examples that appear to counter this stance.

Recent research supports the idea of altruism, finding that people feel happier when they engage in behavior motivated by others’ wellbeing (Aknin, Broesch, Hamlin, & Vondervoort, 2015).

Osotua – asking for help

For the Maasai herders of the Serengeti plain, asking for help – known as osotua – is part of their tradition (Holmes, 2016). It is the tribe’s custom that as long as it does not jeopardize their survival, they are obliged to help. And it could mean giving up some of their herd without expecting payback or anything in return.

According to research, similar acts of altruism also exist elsewhere – from Texan cattle ranchers to Fijians – and works because the world is unpredictable. We never know when there will be a crisis and when we will need to ask for help (Holmes, 2016).

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Air Florida Flight 90

After Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the Potomac River, the remaining passengers clung to the plane’s tail in 30-degree water.

When a helicopter from the National Park Service dropped a line to the survivors, Arland Williams , in better shape than the rest, helped each person, in turn, to attach. They were then towed to safety, one at a time.

When it was finally Williams’s chance to reach safety, the helicopter returned to find he was no longer there, succumbing to the water’s freezing temperatures.

He paid the ultimate price to save others’ lives without reward, except for the knowledge of his fellow passengers’ safety.

Bravery and altruism

In a 2019 terror attack on London, civil servant Darryn Frost used an unlikely weapon to defend others from a man wielding a knife and wearing a fake suicide vest.

Grabbing a narwhal tusk from a wall display in the room where the attack began, he chased the man onto London Bridge where police subsequently shot him. Frost’s selfless actions on that day undoubtedly saved many lives, without regard to his safety.

Wesley Autry – the Subway Hero

In 2007, Cameron Hollopeter, then 19, suffered a seizure and fell on to the tracks at a subway station in Manhattan. With a train approaching, Wesley Autry, a New York City construction worker, leaped off the platform’s edge and pinned Hollopeter to the ground. The train braked and passed overhead with inches to spare (Wesley Autrey, 2020).

Autry’s heroic act earned him New York City’s Bronze Medallion and caused a media frenzy, leading to newspaper interviews and multiple appearances on primetime TV.

But when Autry, a humble man, acted, he did it to help, not to be rewarded.

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Biologists and social scientists tend to look at life from a different perspective from psychologists and, as a result, have an alternate view of altruism.

For a biologist, altruism is not the motivation behind behavior but refers to increasing the reproductive fitness of another animal at the cost of their own (Arbia & Carbonnier, 2016).

As Richard Dawkins puts it in The Selfish Gene (2016), “An entity, such as a baboon, is said to be altruistic if it behaves in such a way as to increase another entity’s welfare at the expense of it own.”

And yet, from an evolutionary perspective, this seems counterintuitive.

After all, if most animal behavior is hereditary, how would altruistic behavior be consistently passed on to subsequent generations, when it results in fewer offspring?

But kin altruism (also referred to as the inclusive fitness theory ) suggests that helping a relative (who shares a large part of our genetic code) increases the likelihood of some of our genes being passed down (Buss, 2014).

Altruistic behavior promotes the genes rather than the individual. Research has shown that such activity decreases as the genetic variation (representative of the degree of distance within family terms) increases.

However, how does this explain altruistic behavior toward strangers who share much less genetic material?

At this point, evolutionary biologists turn to a branch of applied mathematics known as game theory .

This mathematical model shows that reciprocity – exchanging help for mutual benefit – can explain biological non-kin altruism (Buss, 2014; Arbia & Carbonnier, 2016).

Reciprocal altruism states that adaptations “providing benefits to non-relatives can evolve as long as the delivery of the benefits is reciprocated at some point in the future” (Buss, 2014).

Such behavior is likely to be repaid down the line and is therefore extremely valuable as it benefits both animals.

There are many examples within nature of animals helping others – even from different species.

Chimpanzees

When a younger chimpanzee seized control of the group from an older dominant male at a zoo in the Netherlands, the latter was not ready to retire. Working with a more youthful, up-and-coming male, he was able to challenge the new dominant male and secure some of the aforementioned mating rights he had lost when dethroned (Buss, 2014).

By working together for a common cause, both the older male and his younger partner experienced mutual benefits.

Vampire bats

Vampire bats feed on the blood of horses and cattle. Research shows that well-fed bats, living in a colony, regurgitate blood from their night’s hunting, giving it to those who are hungry and whom they have received blood from in the past (Buss, 2014).

The closer the connection between the bats, the more likely they are to share their hunting success.

Humpback whales

While the reciprocal nature of the altruistic relationship in the next example is unclear, it provides an interesting example of inter-species behavior.

In 2009 marine ecologist Robert Pitman experienced a surprising act of altruism in the frozen waters of Antarctica. When killer whales began attacking a seal, lying precariously on a small ice floe, an unlikely hero came to the rescue.

When the seal began to wash off the ice – and the killer whales prepared to attack – a humpback whale appeared. It rolled over onto its back, allowing the seal to lay on its stomach, protected. When the seal started to slip, the whale nudged it back onto its stomach (Howgego, 2016).

Why some people are more altruistic than others – Abigail Marsh

Greg Lewis wanted to make a difference in the world and use his 80,000 hours (the average number of hours in our career) as effectively as possible (Firth, 2017).

Lewis believes in effective altruism . His philosophy is to use science to understand and make decisions based on the positive effect he can have on the world.

But when he explored the impact of his plans to become a doctor, he found that his potential was better realized if focused elsewhere. By working in the public health sector – where he could direct policy and have a far-reaching effect on a population’s wellbeing – and making charitable donations based on a better salary, he could help the most people.

Using a statistical tool known as Quality Adjusted Life Years and information from the 80,000 hours website , he understood the effects of where time and money are spent and found a way of maximizing the good he could do.

For example, taking extra care driving near a school does not directly benefit a child but reduces their potential for harm (Kraut, 2016).

And yet, life is messy, and often so are our motives.

The driver may be acting altruistically by taking care around the school, while also showing some self-interest. They are perhaps driving slowly to avoid accidents and possible reputational damage or to escape a ticket for driving too fast.

Pure altruism occurs when there is a single motive.

If the driver’s only goal is the safety of the children, with no benefit to themselves, then the behavior is considered purely altruistic .

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The following book is a detailed introduction to positive psychology and provides an insightful and highly engaging chapter on altruism and empathy.

The next two books on evolutionary psychology offer a fascinating exploration of our evolved mind and the adaptations that continue to shape who we are.

• Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind – David Buss ( Amazon )
• Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction – Lance Workman and Will Reader ( Amazon )

Check out the following link for a philosophical grounding on altruism:

• Altruism – Richard Kraut ( Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy )

For those who wish to find a way of making their working life more altruistic, the following website provides information on careers that add value to people’s lives:

80,000 hours

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others develop their strengths, this collection contains 17 strength-finding tools for practitioners. Use them to help others better understand and harness their strengths in life-enhancing ways.

Daily we see small acts that appear to be motivated by altruism. And occasionally, we witness or read in the news about someone saving a life or giving the gift of time or money to change someone’s world for the better.

Such acts display the very best of being human.

When we witness a fall, a car accident, or a child about to step into oncoming traffic, there is no time to consciously deliberate the gain we might receive.

Our drive to act appears to be instinctual. We wish to stop, or at least reduce, harm.

Perhaps, our reaction, while automatic, suggests some degree of delayed (or indirect) reciprocal altruism. We hope that if one of our loved ones were in danger, someone would step in, without thought for their safety.

Whether pure altruism exists may remain a matter of philosophy. Until we can see the true, and most probably complex, motivation within our own and others’ behavior, we can only guess what goes on inside our brain.

Either way, we must strive to benefit one another and ensure wellbeing both locally and globally.

Why not take time to read articles or biographies of those who have helped others without thought for themselves, whether during war, famine, disaster, or economic crisis? See the positive in their actions and the good in the world, and consider what you could do with your time.

The roles we play in society affect those around us, even if we don’t see it. Use your time wisely, invest in daily and longer term altruism, and know the difference it can make.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Strengths Exercises for free .

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