Weighing the moral worth of altruistic actions: A discrepancy between moral evaluations and prescriptive judgments

Девятко, Инна Феликсовна; Bykov, Andrey V.

doi:10.1080/09515089.2021.1950666

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Indeed, helping a stranger could hardly bring the same sense of bonding. At the same time, studies show that such acts are judged as having more moral value than helping kin or in-group (Deviatko & Bykov, 2021; McManus et al, 2020) since people have no special obligations to strangers and can hardly expect reciprocation from them in the future. While it is impossible to derive the knowledge of the motive from the relationship closeness with the recipient, benefiting a stranger is less likely to be guided by self-interest and thus comes closer to what could be considered a genuinely altruistic deed.…”

Section: Different Paths To Happinessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different path to happiness: The role of basic psychological need satisfaction in benefiting close and distant others

Nastina

Девятко

2023

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

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Numerous studies show that prosocial behavior leads to positive emotional outcomes for the actor, yet does it matter, who the beneficiary is? The present paper explores differential effects of helping acts towards close versus distant recipients on subjective well-being and the role that basic psychological needs play in this relationship. Two studies using event-recall ( N = 127) and interventional ( N = 305) designs in Russian samples were conducted to test our hypotheses. Study 1 showed that performing acts of kindness towards family and friends (compared to a control condition) led to higher satisfaction of the needs for relatedness and morality, while helping strangers increased only the latter. Study 2 failed to unconditionally replicate the prosocial-happiness link; however, when the need for competence was controlled for, helping both types of recipients was shown to provide higher event-level well-being outcomes. The positive effect of prosocial acts toward strong ties was mediated by relatedness and morality satisfaction, while when the recipient was a stranger, the effect was accounted for by fulfilling the needs for morality and autonomy. No significant event-level well-being differences were detected between those helping close versus distant others and no differences in positive affect, negative affect or life satisfaction emerged between the three conditions. The paper provides support for the importance of the self-perceived impact for the success of kindness interventions. We conclude with a discussion of implications for kindness interventions towards different recipients.

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Section: Different Paths To Happinessmentioning

confidence: 99%