The Ways of Altruism

Why people hesitate to help: Neural correlates of the counter-dynamics of altruistic helping and individual differences in daily helping tendencies

Recent psychological and neuroimaging studies on altruism–egoism dilemmas have promoted our understanding of the processes underlying altruistic motivation; however, little attention has been paid to the egoistic counter-dynamics that prompt hesitancy to help. These counter-dynamics may involve the construction of reasons not to help based on contextual elaboration and explain individual differences in the tendency to help others in daily life. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we explored the neural correlates of altruism–egoism dilemmas during empathy-driven helping decisions, with particular attention to the counter-dynamics related to individual helping tendency traits. We used two context-rich helping decision scenarios. In the empathy dilemma (Emp) scenario, empathy-driven motivation to help a poor person was associated with a cost, whereas in the economic-dilemma (Eco) scenario, self-beneficial motivation to help a non-poor person was associated with a cost. Our results showed activation of the right anterior prefrontal cortices, supramarginal gyrus, and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) for the altruism–egoism dilemma (i.e., Emp > Eco). A significant negative effect of the helping tendency trait score was observed on PCC activation; interestingly, this effect was observed for both Emp and Eco dilemmas. The identified neural correlates of altruism–egoism dilemmas appear to be related to the construction of decision reasons based on contextual elaboration in naturalistic situations. In contrast to the classical view, our results suggest a two-stage model that includes an altruistic helping decision followed by counter-dynamics to determine the individual helping tendency.

The Influence of Tourists’ Online Value Co-creation Behavior on Consumer-Brand Relationship Quality: The Moderating Effect of Altruism

In recent years, there is the popular phenomenon of “grass planting” marketing. The value co-creation behavior of ordinary consumers KOC (key opinion consumer) in the online community is sometimes out of utilitarian intentions, which is deemed as plain people’s “grass planting” advertising in a certain degree. We collected the tourists’ data in Chinese Grand Canal National Cultural Park, analyzed the impact of value co-creation behaviors such as tourists’ experience sharing, topic discussions, and suggestions in online communities on the value of tourism experience and the quality of brand relationships under the “planting grass” marketing environment and verified the moderating mechanism of tourist altruism in it. According to the results, tourists’ online value co-creation behavior has a significant positive impact on the consumer-brand relationship quality, and experience value plays a mediating role. Tourists’ online value co-creation behavior has a significant positive impact on experience value, in which altruism plays a moderating role. The greater the tendency of altruism, the higher the impact of tourists’ value co-creation behaviors on their experience value, and vice versa. This conclusion is not only of great significance in deepening and improving theories of value co-creation, altruism, experience value and consumer-brand relationship quality, but also has important certain management enlightenment on how to combine the design of merchant value co-creation incentive mechanism with altruism in “grass planting” marketing.

Prosocial behavior and altruism: A review of concepts and definitions

The field of prosociality is flourishing, yet researchers disagree about how to define prosocial behavior and often neglect defining it altogether. In this review, we provide an overview about the breadth of definitions of prosocial behavior and the related concept of altruism. Common to almost all definitions is an emphasis on the promotion of welfare in agents other than the actor. However, definitions of the two concepts differ in terms of whether they emphasize intentions and motives, costs and benefits, and the societal context. In order to improve on the conceptual ambiguity surrounding the study of prosociality, we urge researchers to provide definitions, to use operationalizations that match their definitions, and to acknowledge the diversity of prosocial behavior.

The evolutionary foundations of resource-rational analysis

Resource-rational analysis would profit from being integrated more explicitly with an evolutionary psychological perspective. In particular, by taking more strongly into consideration the fact that efficiency considerations are a key driver of the evolution of human and animal minds, it becomes clearer: (1) why it is reasonable to assume that cognitive mechanisms trade-off accuracy against effort, (2) how this trade-off occurs, and (3) how to overcome some of the challenges of resource-rational analysis.