Altruism In It's A Wonderful Life

In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, egotism-motivated altruism and empathy-motivated altruism can be compared. Gratitude and forgiveness are two important aspects to notice in the movie, especially of egotism or empathy motivated them. Altruism is defined as a behavior that is done aimed at benefiting another person (p.288). Altruism can either be done with egotism as a motive or empathy as a motive.
Egotism-motivated altruism is where the goal is to achieve a level of personal benefit by performing certain behaviors and actions. The idea with this is that a person wants to help because it benefits them. Some forms of egotism-motivated altruism are where the helping person receives public praise or a monetary reward, this also comes with self-praise

I can see more empathy-motivated altruism in this movie. For example, George and Mary use their honeymoon money to help the bank that was going to foreclose is a great example. George and Mary showed how they were willing to give their own money to help others in need when they could have used that money for themselves. George also opens Bailey Park, which was housing that was financed by the bank so that people who could not afford Mr. Potter’s housing were able to live in decent homes. That is also another example of empathy-motivated altruism. Going back to when George was a child, he jumped into a frozen pond to save his little brother from drowning, leaving him deaf in one ear. That shows how he has always been a caring person at heart, and looked after others before he looked out for himself. George used to work at a drug store as a child, his boss Mr. Gower was upset after his son died from the flu and accidentally added poison into a child’s prescription. George stopped him from doing this, he could have just minded his own business but he was concerned about his boss’ mental stability and took it upon himself to stop him from making a huge mistake. This shows George’s outward compassion and empathy for

Throughout the movie, we can see many examples of egotism and empathy. George was the primary source of empathy-motivated altruism, he showed us how giving to others for their benefit and not our own is the most important. Mr. Potter was a very egotism-motivated altruistic person, he did not care about helping other people for their own good, he only did it for himself and to gain more money. The whole movie shows flashbacks of George doing things that were altruistic, and that is important to note because that led to him to believe that he could forgive himself and not commit suicide. An important aspect of the movie is to realize that altruism can motivate gratitude and forgiveness. Our actions and altruism can help people to see why they should also be altruistic in the things that they