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A Hierarchical Model of Altruism and Prosociality 1 A HIERARCHICAL MODEL OF ALTRUISM AND PROSOCIALITY 1 Let´s call it altruism ! A psychological perspective and hierarchical framework of altruism and prosocial behavior Johannes Rodrigues and Johannes Hewig Department of psychology I: Differential Psychology, Personality Psychology and Psychological Diagnostics, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Germany Author Note Johannes Rodrigues: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8471-0816 Johannes Hewig: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8400-189X We have no known conflict of interest to disclose. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Johannes Rodrigues, Department of psychology I: Differential Psychology, Personality Psychology and Psychological Diagnostics, Julius- Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Marcusstraße 9-11, 97070 Würzburg, Germany. Email: [email protected] A HIERARCHICAL MODEL OF ALTRUISM AND PROSOCIALITY 2 Abstract “Altruism” is a term used by many disciplines like biology, economics, sociology and psychology that varies in its definition even by researchers in the same field. This lack of common ground concerning the definition has often led to misunderstandings due to the different approaches taken by researchers from various fields. In this work, we propose a hierarchical model of prosocial behavior that provides an overview on the hierarchical structure and position of several definitions of altruism provided by researchers from several disciplines. The highest hierarchical level is helping behavior that comprises both voluntary and involuntary behavior of benefit for others. The next hierarchical level is the general category of prosocial behavior, which is voluntary helping and yet independent from the reasons or motivation to help. The subsequent level of the hierarchy on the one hand defines different kinds of prosocial behavior in humans according to the source of general motivation being for example motivated by empathy, external rewards like reputation, or even by anger in case of costly punishment. On the other hand, on the same level, a differentiation using concepts from evolutionary perspectives grounds this very influential approach to prosocial behavior. Social interaction rules according to social exchange theory and situationally specific motivational aspects of prosocial behavior define further lower hierarchical levels. We propose this model to create a common ground for communication as well as to spread the awareness of the hierarchical differences in the different definitions of the term “altruism” in various fields of research. Keywords: altruism, hierarchical model of altruism, categorization of definitions of altruism, prosocial behavior, helping behavior A HIERARCHICAL MODEL OF ALTRUISM AND PROSOCIALITY 3 Let´s call it altruism ! A psychological perspective and hierarchical framework of altruism and prosocial behavior What is altruism? This short and seemingly easy question is not easy to answer at all. Altruism is a concept, which is defined by many different disciplines, and the perspectives taken on this term are indeed extremely different. Hence there is not only one conceptual perspective linked to the term “altruism”, instead there are many perspectives from different disciplines as well as within disciplines. For example, in psychology, a relatively narrow version would be ‘vernacular altruism’ (see Sober, 1994) implicating a selfless, prosocial behavior that is performed to help, support or do some good to another person. In contrast, a wider definition would be ‘altruistic behavior’ in economics entailing any costly behavior of benefit to another person (Fehr et al., 2002; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Fehr & Gächter, 2002). Again, a different connotation has ‘evolutionary altruism’, which denotes behavior that has a direct fitness cost to the individual and an indirect fitness benefit through relatives (Hamilton, 1964a, 1964b; West & Gardner, 2010). Each of these definitions serve an important function in their respective field. The goal of the present article is a hierarchical structure model of altruism in psychology by also providing delineating statements to show the necessary and valid differences and relations between the definitions of altruism in different fields of research as well as clarifying definitions of altruism in psychology. In this attempt, a deeper perspective on subjects that are not directly linked to the psychological perspective can only be shallow and somewhat superficial due to the scientific background of the authors. Yet we try to provide a basic framework to identify different aspects and point of views on the concept of altruism that may well be extended by other researchers having more detailed information on the respective subject matter in their disciplines, which are only vaguely addressed in this work. To exemplify the definitory problem we start with our own field, personality psychology, and we will further argue that each discipline does indeed have its own definitions for good reasons. In the A HIERARCHICAL MODEL OF ALTRUISM AND PROSOCIALITY 4 literature review and concept analysis of the term altruism Krebs (1970) used the term in the rather broad context of prosocial behavior. The latter author already mentioned that different researchers use different (partly layman´s) definitions and that new research needs to provide a meaningful and precise definition of altruism. It was also shown that meaningful differentiations of trait and state variables (i.e. a stable persistent property of an individual’s personality versus a single behavioral act) as well as of the influence of social roles and norms have to be made concerning prosocial behavior. Also, the different experimental approaches and methodologies to measure altruism were leading to quite different results for various aspects of “altruism” (Krebs, 1970). In an instructive overview, De Waal (de Waal, 2008) further added the notion that intentions are a very important aspect in the psychological perspective on altruism. Summing up the important aspects of this psychological characterization of ‘Psychological altruism’, we need to take into account the motivational aspects, the personality aspects, the situational aspects and specific interaction features as well as the experimental and diagnostic aspects of the situation, in order to get to a meaningful classification and definition of the concept of altruism. Yet, ‘Psychological altruism’ in sense of the personality psychology perspective is already a complex phenomenon, as we have to separate ‘trait altruism’ as a stable psychological personality variable, from ‘altruistic action’. The latter is an intentional behavior or situational reaction to a situational aspect with the conscious intention to help another person in general that can be defined as altruistic by specific criteria. It has to be separated from ‘helping behavior’, being any behavior that may include an implicit or explicit intention to help another person (see e.g., Bierhoff, 2010). Intention in altruistic action and helping behavior The description and definition of which kind of action a person really performed has been debated intensively in philosophy and psychology of action and it seems clear that saying a person did perform an altruistic action does necessitate an altruistic intention (for a treatment of action and A HIERARCHICAL MODEL OF ALTRUISM AND PROSOCIALITY 5 intention see Greve, 2001). Such an altruistic intention comprises two components, a cognitive content (what to do) and a feeling state (truly intending it and not only thinking of it c.f. Hewig, 2018). Now, this definition does apply to the psychological domain of intentional action whereas behaviors may generally appear without conscious intentions and a large variety of motivations or reasons may lead to what we might provisionally term helping behavior to separate this from altruistic action (see also Bierhoff, 2010). For the latter – altruistic action – a psychological definition that specifies criteria to subsume what is altruism seems necessary, whereas for the former broader conditions may apply. For helping behavior, it may even get more difficult to assess the motivational nature of the behavior if the person cannot give a reason for the behavior him or herself. Most importantly an altruistic motive is not necessary for the helping behavior. Nevertheless, it might be interesting to assess the motivational intention behind the act, as even some subconscious altruistic motivation might be leading to altruistic behavior that is not consciously executed. Having briefly addressed the importance of intentionality for the concept of altruism and “altruistic behavior”, we now want to disentangle the definition of altruism by using previous conceptualizations. We take these from different disciplines and researchers in personality psychology, getting more into detail and providing an overall concept of “altruism” as a subconstruct of prosocial behavior (see e.g., Carlo & Randall, 2002). For this purpose, we separate different kinds of conceptions of trait altruism and state altruism (altruistic action and helping behavior) according to suffixes denoting the theoretical origin as examples for the focus of their definitions in the respective research field and specific topic. As a first example, evolutionary altruistic behavior would be defined by yielding direct fitness costs and indirect fitness gains (see e.g., West & Gardener, 2010). This definition is from the field of biology and the topic of evolutionary aspects
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