altruism
People 's Reactions To Altruistic Behavior Depends On Sex Match or Not
Estrella Vasquez
Hunter College of the City University of New York
Abstract
Altruism is an unselfish behavior a person exercises without expecting something else in return. Our everyday lives involve small acts of altruism for example, helping an elderly person cross the streets, holding the door for someone else, offering your seat at the train to a kid, older person, pregnant women or giving money to a person on the train or street knowing you won 't ever see them again. It 's not sure if altruism is biologically or psychologically determined but some people are willing to risk their own lives to save someone else that they know or in some cases are unknown to them. There are some factors that influence a person 's behavior to be altruistic. One of these factors include the feeling of guilt when someone feels bad for something that they did, they tend to act altruistic to minimize their feeling of guilt. The present study is about how gender differences influences people to receive altruism behaviors. We hypothesized that in general people will accept more flowers from the opposite sex rather than the same sex. The participants of this study involved 40 pedestrians in the Upper East Side in Manhattan (20 males and 20 females) which were chosen randomly. The participants didn 't know they were being part of an experiment. The procedures of this experiment involved standing out in the streets of the upper east side of Manhattan and giving out free flowers to random males and females controlling the age and gender variables. One limitation of this study is that people around 72 and Lexington are in the healthcare and academia so they tend to be more liberal to accept flowers from strangers as opposed to going to another neighborhood where people are more conservative. The results indicated a statistically significant difference on whether participants accepted
Estrella Vasquez
Hunter College of the City University of New York
Abstract
Altruism is an unselfish behavior a person exercises without expecting something else in return. Our everyday lives involve small acts of altruism for example, helping an elderly person cross the streets, holding the door for someone else, offering your seat at the train to a kid, older person, pregnant women or giving money to a person on the train or street knowing you won 't ever see them again. It 's not sure if altruism is biologically or psychologically determined but some people are willing to risk their own lives to save someone else that they know or in some cases are unknown to them. There are some factors that influence a person 's behavior to be altruistic. One of these factors include the feeling of guilt when someone feels bad for something that they did, they tend to act altruistic to minimize their feeling of guilt. The present study is about how gender differences influences people to receive altruism behaviors. We hypothesized that in general people will accept more flowers from the opposite sex rather than the same sex. The participants of this study involved 40 pedestrians in the Upper East Side in Manhattan (20 males and 20 females) which were chosen randomly. The participants didn 't know they were being part of an experiment. The procedures of this experiment involved standing out in the streets of the upper east side of Manhattan and giving out free flowers to random males and females controlling the age and gender variables. One limitation of this study is that people around 72 and Lexington are in the healthcare and academia so they tend to be more liberal to accept flowers from strangers as opposed to going to another neighborhood where people are more conservative. The results indicated a statistically significant difference on whether participants accepted
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