Altruism, a term used to define an act of selfless helping, has been an important figure in positive psychology. The term 'altruism' was introduced by Auguste Comte coined the term ‘altruism’ to portray dedication to the interests of others as an action-guiding doctrine (Paul, Miller, & Paul, 1993). Nowadays, the authors construed features of human altruism as an deliberate and voluntary act carried out to favor another person as the essential inspiration and either without a cognizant expectation of reward, in which we called it as an altruistic approach or with the conscious or unconscious expectation of reward, the pseudo-altruistic approach (Smith, 2009). However, baffling it might seem, altruism does not only exist in human but also within
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Studies has set up a solid connection amongst volunteering and health, the individuals who volunteer have lower death rates, more prominent utilitarian capacity, and lower rates of depression sometime down the road in life than those who do not volunteer. Some of these findings additionally demonstrate that volunteers who commit a “considerable” measure of time to volunteer activities are most likely to show positive health outcomes.
Based on Arnocky, Piche, Albert, Ouellette, & Barclay (2016)’s study, participants who self-reported higher altruism and were amenable to give away financial winnings has been substantiated to be more attractive to the contrary sex, as well as allegedly reported to have more lifetime sex partners, more casual partners, and engaging in sex more often within relationships even when narcissism, Big Five personality attributes, socially desirable responding and some basic demographics were controlled, thus indicating that altruists have higher mating success that non-altruists. As much as the implication that altruism can act as a predictor for mating success in humans, mating success is often related to self-esteem (Bale & Archer, 2013), while self-esteem is one of the leading predictors of psychological well-being (Paradise & Kernis, …show more content…
As much as the reliability and validity of the scales are acceptable, the results of self-reported scales might not be as accurate as to predict altruistic behavior. Limitations include incomprehensive participants and faking due to social desirability in such a way that, for example, a student might rate himself to have high altruism to be favored by others. However, altruistic behavior can also be observed from overt behaviors of individuals in impelling situations (Klimecki, Mayer, Jusyte, Scheeff, & Schonenberg, 2016). In this sense, altruism is often preferably measured with observation during proper situations with the least confounding variables, for instance, the bystander effect or social conformity, to eliminate spurious association that causes what ostensibly seems to be
Studies has set up a solid connection amongst volunteering and health, the individuals who volunteer have lower death rates, more prominent utilitarian capacity, and lower rates of depression sometime down the road in life than those who do not volunteer. Some of these findings additionally demonstrate that volunteers who commit a “considerable” measure of time to volunteer activities are most likely to show positive health outcomes.
Based on Arnocky, Piche, Albert, Ouellette, & Barclay (2016)’s study, participants who self-reported higher altruism and were amenable to give away financial winnings has been substantiated to be more attractive to the contrary sex, as well as allegedly reported to have more lifetime sex partners, more casual partners, and engaging in sex more often within relationships even when narcissism, Big Five personality attributes, socially desirable responding and some basic demographics were controlled, thus indicating that altruists have higher mating success that non-altruists. As much as the implication that altruism can act as a predictor for mating success in humans, mating success is often related to self-esteem (Bale & Archer, 2013), while self-esteem is one of the leading predictors of psychological well-being (Paradise & Kernis, …show more content…
As much as the reliability and validity of the scales are acceptable, the results of self-reported scales might not be as accurate as to predict altruistic behavior. Limitations include incomprehensive participants and faking due to social desirability in such a way that, for example, a student might rate himself to have high altruism to be favored by others. However, altruistic behavior can also be observed from overt behaviors of individuals in impelling situations (Klimecki, Mayer, Jusyte, Scheeff, & Schonenberg, 2016). In this sense, altruism is often preferably measured with observation during proper situations with the least confounding variables, for instance, the bystander effect or social conformity, to eliminate spurious association that causes what ostensibly seems to be