Table of ContentsIntroductionLiterature Review and HypothesesProsocial Behavior and AltruismCultureAltruism and CultureExpected ResultsDiscussionReferencesThis article aimed to examine the effect of prosocial behavior on ingroup and outgroup members, in particularly in altruism, across cultures. We hypothesize that for individuals in an individualistic culture, altruistic behavior would remain the same whether or not the beneficiaries were related to the participant. For individuals in a collectivist culture, we hypothesize that altruistic behavior would be more prevalent if the beneficiaries were related to the participant, and diminished if the beneficiaries were not related to the participant. The practical and theoretical implications of the expected results are discussed in more detail in this article. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essayKeywords: cross-cultural study, altruism, group membership, individualism, collectivism, Hofstede, prosocial behaviorIntroductionThere is a greater chance of giving than of receiving. Humanity is a predominantly social species, even engaging in ruinous behavior for the benefit of others. Interestingly, a myriad of scientific studies have also shown that acts of altruism do wonders for your health. According to Post (2005), altruistic behaviors are correlated with better health and mental well-being and contribute to longevity through better mental and physical health. In the 1980s, the term "the Mother Teresa effect" was coined after a study showed that watching an altruistic act – in this case, a brief film of Mother Teresa spending time in an orphanage – participants showed significant improvements in their state of mind. immune system (McClelland and Kirshnit, 1988). Existing research does not provide much evidence for the association between prosocial behavior and Hofstede's cultural dimensions of individualism-collectivism. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of related studies indirectly assess their relationships and the information reported by these studies is mostly inconsistent. Literature review and hypotheses Prosocial behavior and altruism The concept of altruism falls within a broader class of prosocial behavior that is “defined by society as beneficial to others and to the political system in place” (Wright, 2015) . This includes a range of behaviors intended to benefit others. An important distinction to make is that while helping concerns the results of an action, the concept of altruism involves the motivations that underlie the behavior to produce an action. Classic definitions in psychology consider internal motivation to be a defining and important characteristic of altruistic helping (Brown & Gaertner, 2008). Altruism is a deep and sophisticated anomaly in human behavior, and therefore the term has been used in other ways in order to accommodate internal motivation. specific analysis on different research contexts relating to the needs of other disciplines. For example, Fischbacher and Fehr's (2003) definition of altruism in economics states that “the definition of altruism is costly acts that confer economic benefits on other individuals.” On the other hand, altruism in biology refers to behaviors that reduce personal reproduction (Clavein & Chapuisat, 2012). Therefore, with different definitions of altruism in other scientific fields, it is important to establish a definition within psychology beforeto explore this phenomenon further. According to the International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Wright, 2015), altruism is defined as “behavior intended to benefit others, even when this action risks being sacrificed for the well-being of the actor” ( Monroe, 1996). In the book, he helps us understand altruism and details some critical aspects of the concept of altruism. First, altruism should involve action, whereby possessing only thoughts of good will without action does not represent an act of altruism. Second, the action must seek to achieve an objective or result. Third, the action must improve the well-being of others, whether unintentionally or not. Fourth, the concept of altruism posits that intentions/motives matter more than consequences. This means that an altruistic act that results in negative consequences should also be considered altruistic. Fifth, it identifies with a possible reduction in the actor's well-being. Batson (2014) points out, however, that altruism does not necessarily involve self-sacrifice, but is inherently sacrificial. Finally, actors should not expect rewards following an altruistic act. In the existing literature, there is a significant lack of empirical research in the psychological literature between altruism and culture. A vast majority of existing research explores the relationship between a person's nature and altruism, including various factors such as age (Blakey, Mason, Cristea, McGuigan, & Messer, 2019) and physical attractiveness (Farrelly , 2017). Thus, there is still a gap and importance in understanding a person's upbringing – their environment – ​​and how altruism can manifest among different cultures. Culture According to Hofstede (2001), he defines individualism and collectivism in terms of a social norm such as “individualism”. represents a society in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after only themselves and their immediate family" while "collectivism represents a society in which individuals, from birth, are integrated into a strong and coherent group. -groups which, throughout people's lives, continue to protect them in exchange for unconditional loyalty. Individualism is therefore the tendency of people to value the individual over the group, prioritizing personal goals over collective goals. On the other hand, collectivism prioritizes group goals over personal goals, even though both personal and collective goals are considered important (Triandis, 1989). This dynamic implies that motivations for individual gains are stronger in individualistic cultures while collectivist cultures motivate the individual to achieve group benefits through cooperation. Although this research uses the concept individualism-collectivism to refer to two types of cultural ideology, it also engages an individual's cultural characteristics. orientation through the concept of self-concept, as proposed by Markus and Kitayama (1991). Two types of self-construal proposed by Markus and Kitayama are the independent and interdependent construct. Independent self-construal refers to people who view their self-image as autonomous and constant across different contexts. Internal attributes are considered more important than societal norms. The people of North American countries are some examples of cultures that maintain an independent view of the self. The interdependent self-construal refers to people who view themselves as connected to others and theirsocial context. Individuals perceive themselves as part of a surrounding social relationship and recognize that their behaviors are determined by the thoughts, feelings, and actions of other members of the relationship. This is exemplified in East Asian cultures. As a result of this variation in self-construal, culture then exerts varying effects on cognition, emotion, and motivation (Markus & Kitayama, 2001). Altruism and Culture Several traits of a collectivist culture seem to hint at the possibility that individuals in such a society may possess higher levels of altruism than members of an individualistic culture. First, by referring to the definitions of individualism and collectivism, according to which "ties between individuals are loose" and "people are embedded in strong, cohesive in-groups", comparisons can be made regarding motivations for helping behaviors. This means that in individualistic societies, individuals are more concerned with their own personal well-being than with the collective goal, whereas it is in the collective interest for an individual within a collectivist society to participate in prosocial behavior to achieve a goal. collective objective. This is supported by a study by Mullen and Skitka (2009) who found that people who grew up in collectivist societies are more familiar with the idea of ​​helping others, while people who grew up in individualistic societies have tendency to adopt helping behaviors more rarely. This suggests that members of a collectivist culture may demonstrate a higher degree of altruism than those from an individualistic culture, less concerned with helping others and more concerned with their personal well-being. Second, the willingness to participate in prosocial behavior may depend on the level of sympathy an individual experiences, and the situations that elicit a sympathetic response may differ for each individual depending on their cultural orientation. According to the book – Empath and its development (Strayer, 1990) – Eisenberg and Miller define sympathy as “an emotional response arising from the emotional state or condition of another that is not identical to the emotion of the other person. 'other, but consists of feelings of sadness or worry for another'. In their book, they make a distinction between altruistically (sympathetic) motivated helping and selfishly motivated helping. From the point From an altruist's perspective, the altruist's goal is to reduce the distress of others and failure to help comes at a cost, with little benefit to the altruist On the other hand, yes. the motivation for helping is primarily selfish (reducing one's personal distress), this goal can be more easily achieved by escaping rather than helping. Therefore, the situation in which an individual treats a situation as helping motivates. Altruistic or selfishly motivated help would be deferred based on the individual's personality and life experience, among other factors, that exist within a predominant culture. This is supported in the same study by Mullen and Skitka (2009) through two points. The authors noted that a sympathy-eliciting situation (or lack thereof) may determine willingness to engage in prosocial behavior and may be culturally variable. Additionally, individuals were more likely to help when sympathy was elicited and especially unlikely to help when sympathy was not elicited, regardless of cultural context. Therefore, although the factors that elicit sympathy may vary across cultures, feelings of sympathymay appear to be associated with increased helping, regardless of cultural context. Thus, based on a literature review on the individualism-collectivism dimension of Hofstede's cultural dimensions and altruism, the following hypotheses were formulated for an experimental study: H1A: For people from individualistic cultures, the Altruistic behavior would be the same whether the beneficiaries are unrelated or related to the person. H1B: For people from collectivist cultures, altruistic behavior would be lower if the beneficiaries are unrelated to the person. On the other hand, altruistic behavior would be higher among beneficiaries linked to the person. Expected Results A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) would be expected to result in a significant main effect of culture, where Japanese participants would have reported higher levels of apathy than American participants. A significant main effect of self-efficacy will also be revealed, as shown by the lower levels of apathy reported by participants in the high self-efficacy conditions. Furthermore, a significant interaction effect between culture and self-efficacy should also demonstrate the moderating effect of self-efficacy on apathy. That is, people from individualistic cultures would show no difference in altruistic behavior between in-groups and out-groups. Whereas people from collectivist cultures would show more altruism towards people related to them. Discussion This study aimed to discover the relationship between culture and altruism and to directly assess Hofstede's cultural dimensions of individualism-collectivism between prosocial behavioral tendencies. Overall, the expected results supported both hypotheses. We thus conclude that the underlying cultural dimension of individualism-collectivism is indeed associated with levels of prosocial behavior, in particular altruism. Furthermore, it is suggested that the level of sympathy one feels for the other, whether the recipient is a foreigner or comes from different cultural backgrounds, could be one of the factors that contribute to explaining this cultural difference observed in prosocial behavior. This study has both significant theoretical and practical implications. First, this study contributes to filling the research gap regarding the construct of altruism. Second, having used the widely studied cultural value of individualism-collectivism, this study can easily be replicated to examine levels of apathy in other individualistic and collectivist cultures such as various Western and East Asian societies respectively. Finally, altruism is proposed to be sympathetic rather than selfish. Therefore, although this study offers new insights into the interaction between culture and prosocial behavior, particularly altruism, it also extends the potential for other prosocial behaviors such as proactive and reactive behaviors (Nostrand & Ojanen , 2018) which may also interact with Hofstede's cultural behavior. dimensions.Keep in mind: this is just a sample.Get a custom paper from our expert writers now.Get a custom essayOne of the main limitations of this study is due to its experimental design in a controlled environment. In a fabricated laboratory experiment, experimental design can eliminate many real effects. For this reason, future research could address some concerns about the generalizability of the current findings by using different.