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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The Fairness Principle, Reward, and Altruistic Behavior

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The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between reward and altruism. It was hypothesized that the altruistic behavior of someone who has been asked for help will occur only after the person asking for help has been evaluated. As a result, if the situation of a person asking for help is perceived as less fortunate, help will be given even if no proportional award is received in return, according to a principle based on need that makes people feel they should help the needy. Results show that when the participants received an unfair award, they tended to offer much bigger donations only in the condition in which the other was perceived as less fortunate. jasp_749 1110..1120 The present study is designed to analyze the relationship between the fairness principle and altruistic behavior, paying attention to the role of reward in eliciting prosocial behavior. The starting point is the theoretical contribution of Miller (1977), who investigated the relationship between just award, excessive award, and altruism. Miller described a two-stage model of egoism–altruism in which people first evaluate the relative fairness of their compensation and only then—if the situation of the other seems unjustly negative—behave in an altruistic manner. That is, only after satisfying their egoistic need for proportionate reward are people willing to help others in difficulty. In other words, Miller found that before helping someone, people need to feel they have had what is owed to them. The consequence of this model is that a genuinely altruistic motivation can be observed only if the egoistic aspirations vis-a-vis an individual’s position in the social system are satisfied. When impartiality and fairness prove inferior to one’s personal expectations, an egoistic orientation prevails. In this scenario, we believe that the fairness principle prevails only after the person asking for help has been evaluated. For example, how do we behave if we have received an unfair compensation, but we think the person destined to receive our help is someone less fortunate? On the contrary, how do we behave if we have received an unfair compensation but we think the person destined for our help is someone not less fortunate? The hypothesis on