How far out of your way will you go? Variations in self-offering and positive affect in helping behaviour

Pro-social personality traits and helping motivations : using the concept of ego-depletion in distinguishing between intrinsically and extrinsically motivated helping

“…Also, even 40 years later, rescuers were found to engage more frequently in helping behaviours than non-rescuers. Lastly, people who score high on altruism, empathy and social responsibility consider helping Pro-Social Traits and Helping Motivations 5 situations to be more rewarding than people low in these traits, and they also report high levels of helping behaviours in real life situations (e.g., traffic accidents, Bierhoff, Klein, & Kramp, 1991), self-reports, (Kerber, 1984, Ruci, 2005 and helping behaviours in the laboratory (Penner & Orom, 2009).…”

“…From the review of the pro-social literature, helping behaviour is characterized by the innate predispositions of empathic concern (Batson et al 1989), deep-seated personal values (Piliavin, & Charng, 1990), high competence, and an internal locus of control (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1991;Staub, 1978;Rushton, 1981). Furthermore, some evidence suggest that people with high levels of altruism and empathy report anticipating feelings of enjoyment from self-reported helping behaviour (Ruci, 2005;Sprecher, Fehr, & Zimmerman, 2007;1989). Self-Determination Theory provides a similar description of intrinsically motivated behaviours.…”

“…Also, both factors have been related to the willingness to mentor others, both in laboratory and field studies (Allen, 2003). The empathy subscale of the other-oriented factor has been found to be correlated with pledging to help in real life settings (Graziano, et al, 2007) and the self-report altruism scale has been found to correlate to vignette helping (Ruci, 2005) and helping behaviour in organizational settings (Lee & Yun-Lee, 2010).…”