Why Do People Have The Incentive Help Others? How Does Doing Such A Thing Benefit?

Kendra Cherry is an author and educator with over a decade experience helping students make a sense of psychology. She has published thousands of articles on diverse topics in psychology. One of her article is “Why Do We Risk Our Well-Being to Help Others?”. The author highlighted the issue of what causes people to take risks of their own life, own health and well-being to help other people. The author always repeated the word “altruism” which gives a meaning of behavior that shows you care about other people and their interest more than you care about yourself. The author’s argue the idea of what makes people desire to help other people. She curious about why someone being kind to others, is it because of the reward, the negative feeling,

Altruism is a concept in which the individual sacrifices regard for themselves in the interest of another. The ethics of altruism state that a person should act in a matter where their self-sacrifice yields the greater well being on the whole. To put that statement in the form of a fundamental principle of rightness, an action is right if and only if (and because) the action brings a net-gain of well being to anyone except the individual performing the action. The altruistic mentality of an individual according to this moral theory means that any action that they undertake should be in the interest of others rather than themselves. The ethics of this concept also state that relationships of greater value to the individual carrying out an action should come second in priority to those they have with strangers since the close relationship has a much more meaningful connection to a person’s life. In these situations, the only morally correct way of acting is in the way that defeats the well being of the agent of an action for the sake of others.

Bartel (1976) defines prosocial behaviour as ‘behaviour that intentionally helps or benefits another person’. Batson (1987) defines altruism as ‘helping another person for no reward, and even at some cost to oneself.’ This definition of altruism seemingly depicts the behaviour as selfless, however there is a wealth of research which suggests that this is not the case.

As there are many assumptions on social exchange, one of the assumptions to know is that people are motivated by self-interest. Meaning that we seek things or relationships that are beneficial to ourselves. Like weighing the cost and rewards of a relationship or product that is bought for a purpose. Thus, we, as human being finds more pleasurable to engage in a relationship or interactions that will be more beneficial and rewarding, while avoiding the least cost or punishment. When people choose to help others, they do so because of personal gain they expect to obtain from doing so. An example could be that someone might feel that their job takes advantage of them and therefore, that person decides to quit the job and look for another job if they think that they could get a better job for the same about of effort. An example of this explanations is that my co-worker, who worked with me at Taco Bell decides to quit her job at Taco Bell because she felt that there was just too much work and the customers are mean. Instead she found another job

Next, Szalavitz bolsters her previous statement that people can benefit from selfless acts by presenting statistics and facts discovered by a study from BMC Public Health. To give the reader a sense of reality, Szalavitz offers a reminder that genuine and regular benevolence is required to reap such rewards. Next, she mentions a few more health benefits that one can acquire from helping others before describing the harm it can incur. Szalavitz continues her argument by describing a more general danger of benevolence and recognizes the limited verification of the research findings. She concludes the article with statistics of how people are being encouraged to volunteer around the world and establishes the purpose of helping others in the first

Altruism refers to the concern for the welfare and well being of others without personal gains or

Prosocial behavior refers to "voluntary actions that are intended to help or benefit another individual or group of individuals" (Eisenberg and Mussen 1989). This definition refers to consequences of the people who do the actions rather than the motivations behind those actions. These behaviors include a broad range of activities: sharing, comforting, rescuing, and helping. Though prosocial behavior can be confused with altruism, they are, in fact, two distinct concepts. Prosocial behavior refers to a pattern of activity, whereas, altruism is the motivation to help others out of pure regard for their needs rather than

Various theoretical approaches have highlighted the role of motivation in prosocial behaviors with many maintaining that prosocial behaviors that are more autonomous and intrinsically driven positively impacts the subjective experience and well-being of the helper and promotes continued engagement in the prosocial behavior (Finkelstein, Penner, & Brannick, 2005; Grube & Piliavin, 2000; Lee, Piliavin, & Call, 1999; Piliavin & Callero,

In today’s world people are rather selfish and ungrateful, they help those who will eventually be helpful as well. They help others only with a desire and motive that they will also be helped in the future i.e. they will be repaid for their assistance. On the other hand, some individuals help others to only show their society and community that they are good people and are helping people although they do not necessarily intend to do it full

Batson, C. D. (1991). The Altruism Question: Toward a Social-Psychological Answer. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

One of my strength is trying my best to help someone without expecting anything in return. Some people help others because they might receive a favor from that person one day or the person might give them money. Many people ask me what my motive behind helping people? My answer is simple, I don’t help people because I have to, but I help people because I think it is a privilege that God give me to further glorify his name. One of my weakness is when I hear a parent or anybody talking bad or negative about a kid. For example, strangers might gossip about "Mrs. X kid" is such a bad kid, or "Mrs. Y" might repeatedly tell her kid, why are you so bad? Why can’t you be like the other kids at school? Not knowing that words are powerful, therefore,

In order to consider the reciprocity someone is due people create implicit theories based off of a few key facts. Will this person provide help? Do they deserve my help? Despite the belief that helping is a good deed or the moral thing to do, it is not completely selfless. The resources available influence the motivation to provide help to another. The consideration of what has been done in the past ensures a system of checks and balances. In situations where the likelihood of reciprocal behavior is ambiguous, participants are likely to create and consult implicit theories when making the decision to help. The stronger good characteristics like fairness and kindness are the more likely they are to engage in helping behaviors.

First, it is important to understand what altruism is. Altruism is any act carried out by an individual in order to benefit another individual. [1, 2] At first glance,

I characterize effective altruism as planning and strategizing on how to do good for the world. This can be done through a career, political advocacy, or charitable giving. This contrasts with how people usually do good acts for the world, which, according to Matthews, is donating to a charity whenever we feel like it, many times on a whim to make ourselves feel good, but not doing it as a calculated measure to move towards solving a problem. They do not take the time to research the data and develop a strategy to solve the problem.

Cooperative behaviour has been and may still be a mystery to psychologists and evolutionary theorists. Cooperation has an altruistic nature that benefits other people, not closely related, while it is detrimental to the person who is performing it (Trivers, 1971). Therefore, according to natural selection cooperation should have been disappeared long time ago, as it is not beneficial for short-term survival of the individual. However, altruistic cooperation is not always disadvantageous if the sacrifice is awarded in the future, it can be an evolutionary stable strategy. This type of altruism is known as reciprocal altruism, which can be as beneficial for helper as recipient. Reciprocal altruism can be viewed as symbiosis.