Belief in Altruistic Motives Predicts Prosocial Actions and Inferences

Abstract

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

Too Good to be Liked? When and How Prosocial Others are Disliked

“…The different motives for prosocial behavior are, at least in parts, reflected in perceivers' beliefs about motives of others, which in turn affects evaluative judgements of prosocial others (Carlson and Zaki, 2021). Dependent on the perceived motives, perceivers may, for example, conclude that outstandingly prosocial individuals are seeking attention from others for their good deeds.…”

“…We readily admit that other mechanisms may account for the derogation of prosocial targets. In light of the limited evidence on the causes of dislike of prosocial targets (see Parks et al, 2013), we focus on these two aspects as they reflect two complementary sources of potential dislike: (a) the role of the perceiver (i.e., dislike results from the social comparison component) and (b) the role of the target (i.e., dislike results from the (perceived) motives of the prosocial target; for beliefs about the motives see, Carlson and Zaki, 2021). Before outlining our research, we elaborate on both postulated mechanisms, that is, social comparison and perception of communal narcissism.…”

Psychological Selfishness

“…People do not judge routine behaviors (e.g., buying food, doing laundry, or watching a film) as selfish (Carlson & Zaki, 2018). More importantly, in contrast to psychological egoism, people tend to believe that humans can be, and frequently are, altruistically motivated (Carlson & Zaki, 2021; Gebauer et al, 2015). Finally, as suggested earlier, some motives that researchers explicitly highlight as selfish, such as helping others out of a desire to enhance one’s own emotional well-being (Cialdini & Kenrick, 1976), seem to be perceived as consistent with altruism (Barasch et al, 2014; Carlson & Zaki, 2018).…”

The tainted altruism effect: a successful pre-registered replication

“…On the other hand, selfish motives are viewed as unobjectionable when confined to the monetary market, where behaviour is expected to be based upon reciprocity. The tension between different exchange categories may cause observers to view as inauthentic prosociality caused even in part by extrinsic motives [ 16 ]. The findings presented above regarding judgements of Deceptiveness seem notably congenial to this interpretation, suggesting that some observers readily put the worst possible interpretation on behaviours not easily allocated to the realm of one of these markets or the other.…”