Department of Psychology, 5755Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
Department of Psychology, 6429Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
Psychol Rep. 2022 Aug;125(4):2191-2212. doi: 10.1177/00332941211013529. Epub 2021 May 26.
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 altruism and prosocially, possibly reflecting the self-fulfilling nature of such lay theories.
人类真的是利他主义者吗？或者说，所有的行为，无论多么高尚，最终都是出于自身利益的驱动？心理学家和哲学家长期以来一直在探讨这个问题，但很少有人考虑到普通人对亲社会动机本质的看法。在这里，我们通过两个实验（N=445）来检验这些信念及其社会相关性。我们发现，人们倾向于相信人类可以并且经常是出于利他动机的——这与之前的研究结果相呼应。此外，那些更强烈地相信利他动机的人自己也会表现出更多的亲社会行为——例如，为了帮助他人，他们会牺牲更多的金钱和时间——即使在控制了特质同理心之后，这种关系仍然存在。那些相信利他主义动机的人也会认为其他亲社会的行为者更加真诚善良，尤其是当行为者的动机模棱两可时。最后，人们独立地表现出自利偏见——认为自己的亲社会动机往往比别人的更利他。总的来说，这项工作表明，相信利他主义动机可以预测人们利他和亲社会行为的程度，这可能反映了这种朴素理论的自我实现性质。
