After checking the previous health status, it was found that volunteering was responsible for a 44% reduction in mortality. [36] The simple awareness of goodness in oneself and in others is also associated with greater well-being. One study in which participants were asked to count every act of kindness they performed for a week significantly increased their subjective happiness. [37] It is important to note that while research supports the idea that altruistic actions bring happiness, it has also been found that they work in the opposite direction – that happier people are also more friendly. The relationship between altruistic behavior and happiness is bidirectional. Studies have shown that generosity increases linearly from sad affective states to happy affective states. [38] Altruism refers to a motive for ancillary behaviour that serves primarily to relieve the fate of another person, regardless of the caregiver`s personal interest. Altruistic help is voluntary, deliberate and motivated by concern for the well-being of another person. If help is given for altruistic reasons, the caregiver does not expect reimbursement, reciprocity, gratitude, recognition or other benefits. Even young children feel good to share, and to some extent, altruistic tendencies can be integrated for most people. Many altruistic actions are reactive: people react with compassion when they see other people who are suffering and need help. Of course, people also learn the norms of altruism in their culture, including how much or little generosity is considered acceptable. Rushton JP, Chrisjohn RD, Fekken GC.

The altruistic personality and altruistic scale of self-assessment. Pers Individ Dif. 1981;2(4):293–302. Finally, regions involved in cognitive control and emotion processing, including DLPFC, amygdala, and insula, may also be associated with altruistic behavior. DLPFC is involved in the laborious regulation of attention and categorization of emotional stimuli.38,53 In addition, DLPFC has reciprocal connections with other important emotion-processing regions of the emotional salient network such as the amygdala, insula, ACC, and hippocampus.54–57 The amygdala plays an important role in attention, especially the amygdala helps alert the brain to important stimuli and is particularly sensitive to stimuli. 58 The insula is involved in the processing of emotional stimuli; especially negative stimuli, in addition to interoceptive states.59,60 In terms of altruism, these regions can facilitate the orientation of attention to emotionally provocative situations and stimuli. Regions like the insula can be associated with negative emotions, either in response to a partner`s distress or thinking about the consequences of selfish decisions. In addition, these regions may be involved in integrating information about the cost-benefit analysis performed when evaluating the decision to perform costly actions for others.

Helping others who have been harmed (altruistic help) and punishing the individual who violates social norms (altruistic punishment) are both considered altruistic behavior. In the condition of help, individuals try to help the person who has been harmed, while in the condition of punishment, the offender is punished for pressuring the individual to conform to social norms (for example, a fair distribution of money). Altruistic help and altruistic punishment can be studied by partners directly involved in the exchange or by third parties who see participants from the directorates-general. In psychological research, altruism is demonstrated by prosocial behavior, which can be measured by self-reporting scales that specifically measure altruistic behavior or by personality measures (Table 1). The altruistic personality scale20 measures altruistic tendencies by measuring how often a person behaves prosocially. Altruistic behavior in the workplace, which involves actions of employees of an organization that are intended to help others but are not formally rewarded,21 has been studied using the Citizenship Behavior Scale and the Support Behavior Scale.22 The Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale measures five facets of altruism in the workplace, and the Helping Behavior Scale is designed to measure global altruism and useful behavior in the workplace.16 Another The ability to measure altruism is through the Big Five personality model. Specifically, the altruism facet in the overall tolerability trait in the NEO personality inventory is often used to assess altruistic tendencies.23 In addition, economic and neuroeconomic studies tend to use behavioral measures of altruism because they are readily available, easy to use, and have been shown to be reliable for measuring altruism. Psychologists have identified different types of altruistic behavior. These include: Pathological altruism is when altruism is pushed to an unhealthy extreme and harms the altruistic person or well-intentioned actions cause more harm than good. In addition to learning by reinforcement, we are also likely to help more often if we model the useful behavior of others (Bryan & Test, 1967).