Prosocial attitudes may lead to prosocial behavior, including altruism, forging positive relationships with others, even preserving the environment for future generations.
Are prosocial people more likely to have business success and higher incomes? One could propose that “by maximizing their own outcomes, selfish individuals should be better off in the long run than prosocials who are optimizing something else” (p. 2). This could even extend to fertility decisions wherein self-interest leads to smaller families so that one can accumulate more resources for oneself.
Prior research on prosocial behavior has found it to be connected to psychological and physical health and positive social relationships. Although selfish behavior may seem beneficial in the short-term by protecting one’s own interests, it may inadvertently limit opportunities in the long run by negatively influencing relationships. On the other hand, prosocial behavior may lead people into helping occupations, such as teaching and social work, that may not pay well, thus reducing economic resources.
The authors of this article asked a tantalizing question: does selfishness pay? Their goal was to tease out these complex relationships by conducting a series of studies addressing three research questions:
- do selfish people have greater economic resources?
- do selfish people have more or fewer children than prosocial people?
- do laypeople understand the empirical relationship between prosocial behavior, income, and fertility?
The strength of this research lies in its use of five different studies using unique populations and datasets and collecting both correlational and longitudinal data.
The first two studies used cross-sectional data from the General Social Survey (GSS), a representative American survey, and the European Social Survey (ESS), a dataset drawn from 23 European nations. Both surveys measured prosociality, income, and number of children. Due to the cross-sectional nature of the data, associations between variables were assessed, but cause-effect relationships could not be determined.
The GSS data showed a positive correlation between prosocial behavior and fertility (number of children). Prosocial motivation was also linearly related to income, although those with moderate prosocial behavior had the highest income. The ESS, which included the same variables of interest but measured them differently, found similar results to the GSS.
The next two studies used data from panel studies which repeatedly assess the same participants at different points in time. This approach enables researchers to see how participants change over time. The UKHLS is a survey of UK households, and the PSID is a survey of 5,000 U.S. households. Researchers were able to see how prosocial behavior predicted subsequent fertility and income.
Although the UKHLS included only a 5-year follow-up, results showed “prosocial respondents had a greater increase in the number of children and a greater increase in income than selfish respondents” (p. 15) In contrast, “moderately prosocial respondents also had a greater increase in the number of children than did selfish respondents, but not in income” (p. 15).
Given the limitation of only a 5-year follow up, the PSID, which covered a 14-year span, was able to confirm the prior findings. Not only did prosocial and moderately prosocial participants have more children and higher incomes, “at the end of the 14 years, prosocials had both the most children and the highest incomes of all respondents” (p. 18).
A final goal of this research was to evaluate the knowledge of laypersons regarding the relationship between fertility, income, selfishness and other variables. The fifth study recruited 400 Americans from Amazon M-Turk who completed online surveys. Survey responses indicated “respondents tended to believe that selfishness is positively associated with success in terms of physical health and income, but negatively associated with success in terms of relationships, psychological well-being, and number of children” (p. 20).
In a concluding statement about their findings, the authors noted: “If people understood that prosociality pays, then selfish people might engage in more prosociality for selfish reasons. Under their incorrect beliefs, however, it is rational for selfish people to act selfishly” (p. 24).
Citation: Eriksson, K., Vartanova, I., Strimling, P., & Simpson, B. (2020). Generosity pays: Selfish people have fewer children and earn less money. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(3), 532-544.
©Jennie Dilworth, Ph.D