Altruism: A Data-Driven Learning Guide

Principal Investigator(s): Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research

Summary: Data-Driven Learning Guides are a collection of instructional exercises that can be used to enhance teaching of core concepts in the social sciences. This learning guide investigates some of the factors that may influence altruistic behavior -- the act of helping that is intended to provide aid to someone else with no expectations of getting something in return. Research questions that can be explored using this learning guide include: what are the factors that motivate one person to help anothe... (more info)

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Summary:   Data-Driven Learning Guides are a collection of instructional exercises that can be used to enhance teaching of core concepts in the social sciences. This learning guide investigates some of the factors that may influence altruistic behavior -- the act of helping that is intended to provide aid to someone else with no expectations of getting something in return. Research questions that can be explored using this learning guide include: what are the factors that motivate one person to help another, how costs and rewards, or empathy influence helping and altruism, the impact that cultural norms and roles may have on helping behavior, and whether characteristics of the person needing help influence helping behavior and if so, how. Crosstabulations are used for the analyses.

Subject Terms:   altruism, instructional materials, social sciences

Geographic Coverage:   United States

Data Collection Notes:

Other Data-Driven Learning Guides covering such topics as aging, gender, race, social class, politics, and health are available on ICPSR's Online Learning Center .