Altruistic Vs Altruistic Motivation

(a) Many may question the intentions of people’s actions, whether it is for personal gain or truly attempting offer aid to an individual in distress. Empathy is seen as a leading factor that initiates someone help another. The main idea taken away from both readings in the difference between egoistic and altruistic motivation is the ultimate end goal of the person offering relief. An egoistic end goal refers to increasing personal gain or decreasing personal pain; while, an altruistic motivation is solely focused on increasing the welfare of the other person. After reading the two articles pertaining the existence of altruism, I find myself to lean more towards the argument that altruistic motivation does exist—with personal gain as an unintended …show more content…
The basis of the experiment was having experimenters observe a woman receive shocks in a period of trials. In the easy escape condition, participants only had to observe the first two trials as opposed to all ten trials in the difficult escape condition, in which both groups were given the opportunity to trade places with the woman. The results suggested that the difficulty of the escape condition did not affect the participants’ readiness to help with a proportion of those similar to the woman of .91 in the easy escape condition and .82 in the difficult escape condition. This indicated that participants wanted to reduce the woman’s distress rather than personal enhancement. In the second experiment, the same procedure applied except the discrepancy between personal distress and empathic concern was observed. The results displayed that slightly more empathic concern was shown than personal distress, observed through a list of adjectives participants used to describe their emotions while watching the woman be shocked. This further proves the actions of those witnessing someone in pain more altruistic than