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Different types of altruistic behavior, namely help-giving, altruistic punishment, and moral courage, are identifiable and distinguishable in the literature, but little is known how they relate to each other. This is significant because understanding altruism and other-regarding behavior is important in the attempt to solve global problems of overpopulation and depletion of natural resources. Understanding the helping forms of altruism (help-giving and sharing) can be helpful, for example, when designing donation collections or recruiting volunteers. Understanding the punitive forms of altruism (moral courage and altruistic punishment) gives valuable insight on individuals participating in campaigns where there is a need to take action, for example, against polluters or governments that violate human rights. The empirical evidence presented in this dissertation demonstrate individual and cultural differences in help-giving, altruistic punishment, and morally courageous behavior. The willingness to engage in the three types of altruistic behaviors relate differently to subjectively preferred thinking style and to personality traits, both in real-life and on the Internet. The divergencies are observable between Eastern (Indian) and Western (German) cultures, where the overlap of oneself and other individuals is experienced in different levels.
Dual-processing altruism
(2013)
Altruism refers to an other-benefiting behavior that is costly but bears no direct profit to oneself. At least three different forms can be distinguished: help giving, altruistic punishment, and moral courage. We investigated the differential impact of two thinking modes, intuitive (System 1) and rational (System 2), on these three altruistic behaviors. Situational (state-related) thinking style was manipulated via experimental instructions and generally preferred thinking style (trait-related) was assessed via questionnaires. We found that of the subjectively preferred thinking styles (trait), faith in intuition (System 1) promoted sharing and altruistic punishment, whereas need for cognition (System 2) promoted volunteering in a situation that required moral courage. By contrast, we did not find a significant effect of situational thinking style (state) on any of the altruistic behaviors, although manipulation checks were positive. Results elucidate the affective-motivational underpinnings of different types of altruistic behaviors.