Altruism And Altruism

Altruism, or the act of helping someone with no expectations, is a part of everyday life. The debate on whether or not it exists is highly debated, but I am more concerned with what factors affect a person displaying altruism. Some factors to consider are gender, age, heritability, or simply if empathy for others, effects people’s tendencies to be altruistic.

The first factor that has an effect on altruism is a person’s age. A two-part study done by Midlarsky and Hannah (1989) displays patterns of altruistic behavior depending on a person’s age. The authors of this studied defined empathy in a pervious study as, “a behavior that benefits, despite apparent costs and in the absence of extrinsic rewards for the helper” (Midlarsky & Hannah, 1989). To test for their definition of empathy they conducted two naturalistic studies. Participants that were observed ranged from the age of 5 to above the age of 75. In both studies a women was put in a booth that could only allow one person to participate at a time. Around the booth there were posters asking for donations to support a charity that helped children who had birth defects. “The study was designed to investigate the relation between age and donations” (Midlarsky & Hannah, 1989). The experiment was carried out over two weeks and in several different locations. The first study found that when participant were given the choice to donate money the groups from 35 to 64 years of age donated significantly more than all of the younger groups. They also found that participants between 65 and 74 gave the most donations including those observed that were over the age of 75. The authors found this finding strange so they decided to repeat the study but instead of collecting money they would a...

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...s were both positive and negative. After all the activities were concluded the results revealed patterns between empathy and altruism. The results from the data revealed that there was a significant difference in the outcomes for others between the no empathy group and both the high and low empathy groups. This finding means that those who had been given any kind of empathy condition were more altruistic towards others than those who had no empathy towards the other participants. This supports the Van Lange’s idea that empathy activates altruistic motivation. A connection between empathy and selflessness was not found and there was no significant correlation between empathy and justice either.

Gender is another factor in the effects on altruism. It has been found in many studies that girls are perceived to be more altruistic both their own peers and older adults.