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Scientific article
OA Policy
English

The dynamics of humanistic and biospheric altruism in conflicting choice environments

Contributors

Conte, Béatrice; Hahnel, Ulf; Brosch, Tobias

Published in

Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 173, 110599

Publication date

2021

Abstract

People's engagement in altruistic behaviors depends on the relative importance given to values of humanistic altruism (HA) and biospheric altruism (BA). Specifically, while HA is considered the value base for prosocial behavior, BA is considered the value base of pro-environmental behavior. Despite the clear conceptual distinction, the two values often similarly correlate with outcome variables such as attitudes or choices and lead to ambiguous findings on the common versus unique impact of HA and BA on prosocial and pro-environmental behaviors. Here, we propose that the two types of altruism result in unique behavioral outcomes when they compete with each other, i.e., when people are forced to prioritize one value over the other. In two studies (Ntotal = 1163), we provided evidence for the assumed operational distinction between HA and BA. Moreover, we tested the self-activation hypothesis, the assumption that value centrality moderates the relationship between value activation and value expressive behavior. Results revealed that the experimental activation of HA and BA led to more value congruent behavior in people with high value centrality, but to reactance effects in people with low value centrality. Overall, this article offers new insight for the development of comprehensive theories of altruistic behavior.

Keywords

  • Values
  • Humanistic altruism
  • Biospheric altruism
  • Prosocial behavior
  • Pro-environmental behavior
  • Value activation
  • Reactance

UNIGE affiliation entities

UNIGE research groups

Funding

Citation (ISO format)

CONTE, Béatrice, HAHNEL, Ulf, BROSCH, Tobias. The dynamics of humanistic and biospheric altruism in conflicting choice environments. In: Personality and Individual Differences, 2021, vol. 173, p. 110599. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.110599

Main files (1)

Article (Published version)
CC BY-NC-ND

Identifiers

Additional URL for this publication

https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S019188692030790X

Journal ISSN

0191-8869
411views
497downloads

Technical informations

Creation

03/02/2021 16:55:00

First validation

03/02/2021 16:55:00

Update

11/11/2026 16:00:37

Status update

11/11/2026 16:00:37

Last indexation

11/11/2026 16:00:39
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