Personality and Individual Differences xxx (2013) xxx–xxx

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Personality and Individual Differences

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Personality and altruism in daily life

0191-8869/$ - see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2013.09.017

⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Graduate School of Engineering, NagoyaInstitute of Technology, Gokiso-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8555, Japan. Tel.: +8152 735 5112.

E-mail address: oda.ryo@nitech.ac.jp (R. Oda).

Please cite this article in press as: Oda, R., et al. Personality and altruism in daily life. Personality and Individual Differences (2013), http://dx.doi.org/1j.paid.2013.09.017

Ryo Oda a,⇑, Wataru Machii b, Shinpei Takagi b, Yuta Kato b, Mia Takeda c, Toko Kiyonari d,Yasuyuki Fukukawa e, Kai Hiraishi f

a Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Nagoya 466-8555, Japanb Department of Computer Science, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Nagoya 466-8555, Japanc Department of Liberal Arts, Aoyama Gakuin Women’s Junior College, Tokyo 150-8366, Japand Department of Social Informatics, Aoyama Gakuin University, Sagamihara 229-8558, Japane Department of Psychology, Waseda University, Tokyo 162-8644, Japanf Faculty of Psychology, Yasuda Women’s University, Hiroshima 731-0153, Japan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 15 July 2013Received in revised form 1 September 2013Accepted 9 September 2013Available online xxxx

Keywords:AltruismPersonalityBig FiveSelf-Report Altruism Scale

Personality may be among the factors contributing to individual differences in altruism. Given that expla-nations of altruistic behavior differ according to the relationship between actors and recipients, thepersonality traits contributing to altruist behavior may differ according to the relationship betweenthe parties involved. However, few studies on the effect of personality on altruism have examined therelationship between donor and recipient, and no study has addressed altruistic behavior in daily life.We employed the Self-Report Altruism Scale Distinguished by the Recipient, which was newly developedto evaluate altruism among Japanese undergraduates, to investigate the relationship between theBig-Five personality traits and the frequency of altruistic behaviors toward various recipients (familymembers, friends or acquaintances, and strangers) in daily life. With the exception of extraversion, whichcommonly contributed to altruistic behavior toward all three types of recipients, the particular traits thatcontributed to altruism differed according to recipient. Conscientiousness contributed to altruism onlytoward family members, agreeableness contributed to altruism only toward friends/acquaintances, andopenness contributed to altruism only toward strangers.

� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Altruism refers to behavior by an individual that increases thefitness of another individual (recipient) while decreasing the fit-ness of the actor. There are two major ways to measure altruism.One is investigating the amount of money an individual is willingto give to someone else in an experimental situation, such as thedictator game (DG) (Camerer, 2003). The other is using a self-re-port altruism scale that asks respondents how they have behavedaltruistically in various situations (e.g., Rushton, Chrisjohn, &Fekken, 1981). Previous studies have revealed individual differ-ences in degree of altruism. One possible contributor to individualdifferences in altruism is personality. The most popular model ofpersonality structure is the Five-Factor Model, which delineatesfive broad traits: extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, consci-entiousness, and openness to experience (Costa & McCrae, 1992).Several studies have investigated the relationship between altru-ism and the Big-Five personality traits. Ben-Ner, Kong, and

Putterman (2004) reported that although personality affected giv-ing in the DG, the effect depended on the receivers’ sex. In contrast,Swope, Cadigan, Schmitt, and Shupp (2008) reported no associa-tion between personality and giving in the DG. Bekkers (2006)showed that charitable giving was positively correlated with open-ness and extraversion, whereas blood and organ donation werepositively associated with agreeableness. Carlo, Okun, Knight, andde Guzman (2005) found that agreeableness weakly affected vol-unteerism and that prosocial value motivation mediated the rela-tionship between extraversion and volunteerism.

The evolutionary explanation of altruistic behavior differsaccording to the relationship between actors and recipients. Forexample, altruistic behavior toward kin eventually helps the ac-tors’ own genes and can be explained by kin selection (Hamilton,1964). Altruistic behavior toward non-kin may have evolved dueto the potentially beneficial effect of incurring a cost in the presentif a reverse situation might occur in the future and the recipient,whom the actor helped previously, might perform an altruisticact toward the actor (Trivers, 1971). Altruistic behaviors towardsstrangers, however, involve neither inclusive fitness nor directreciprocation. Indirect reciprocity and competitive altruism theo-ries propose that the actors benefit in the long-term by ‘‘purchas-ing’’ increased cooperation from others when they ‘‘pay’’ for

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altruistic behavior. That is, altruistic behavior towards strangers isa form of investment (Bshary & Bergmuller, 2008). Theoreticalstudies indicate that building a good reputation plays an importantrole in the evolution of reciprocal altruism through indirect reci-procity (e.g., Nowak & Sigmund, 1998). Even if the altruist is not di-rectly rewarded by the recipient, information about his or her pastbehavior can be used by potential partners in making decisionsabout interactions. These explanations suggest that the personalitytraits affecting individual differences in altruism may differ accord-ing to the relationship between actors and recipients. However,few studies on the effect of personality on altruism have examinedthe relationship between donors and recipients. Ashton, Paunonen,Helmes, and Jackson (1998) hypothesized that empathy andattachment facilitate altruism toward kin, whereas forgivenessand non-retaliation facilitate reciprocal altruism. They found thathigh agreeableness and high neuroticism facilitated altruism to-ward kin, whereas high agreeableness and low neuroticism facili-tated reciprocal altruism toward non-kin. Ben-Ner and Kramer(2010) investigated the effect of the relationship between donorsand recipients in the DG and found that personality had no effecton giving to kin, but it had a significant effect on giving to collab-orators, competitors, and a neutral person. These studies, however,did not deal with altruistic behavior in daily life.

In this study, we investigated the relationship between theBig-Five personality traits and the frequency of altruistic behaviorstoward various recipients (family members, friends or acquain-tances, and strangers) in daily life. We employed the Self-ReportAltruism Scale Distinguished by the Recipient (SRAS-DR), whichwas newly developed to evaluate altruism in Japanese undergrad-uates (Oda et al., 2013). We examined the effect of the Big-Fivetraits on altruism toward each category of recipient using a multi-ple regression analysis. Following Ben-Ner and Kramer (2010), wepredicted that personality would affect altruistic behavior towardfamily members less than it would affect altruistic behavior to-ward friends/acquaintances or strangers. As each item on theSRAS-DR addresses the frequency with which one has engaged inaltruistic behavior in daily life, the scores of people who do not fre-quently interact with others are low. Therefore, it was expectedthat extraversion would contribute to altruism toward all threetypes of recipients, as people who are high in extraversion tendto seek out opportunities to engage with others. The degree of con-tribution, however, would be relatively small when the recipientsare family members and be large when the recipients are friends/acquaintances and strangers. On the other hand, we predicted that,with the exception of extraversion, the personality traits affectingaltruistic behavior toward strangers would differ from those affect-ing altruistic behavior toward friends/acquaintances because altru-istic behavior toward strangers is a form of investment withoutimmediate reward.

Recently it has been suggested that a General Factor of Person-ality (GFP) occupies the top of the hierarchical personality struc-ture (Rushton, Bons, & Hur, 2008) and the evidence isaccumulating (e.g., Rushton & Irwing, 2008). We also examinedhow the GFP correlated with frequencies of altruistic behaviors to-ward various recipients.

2. Methods

2.1. Questionnaires

The Self-Report Altruism Scale Distinguished by the Recipient,the SRAS-DR, was developed by asking Japanese undergraduatestudents to describe the altruistic behaviors they enact in their dai-ly lives and to classify them according to the recipient (familymembers, friends or acquaintances, and strangers). In a separate

Please cite this article in press as: Oda, R., et al. Personality and altruism in dailyj.paid.2013.09.017

study, respondents were asked to rate the frequency with whichthey engaged in altruistic behavior using five categories from‘‘never’’ to ‘‘very often.’’ Next, 21 items (seven items for each reci-pient) were selected for inclusion in the SRAS-DR via exploratoryfactor analyses. The score significantly correlated with that of otherrelevant scales as well as with the results of a behavioral indicator.For example, the score for the item measuring altruistic behaviortoward strangers was significantly correlated with the frequencyof blood donation, whereas that for other categories did not. More-over, the 1-month test–retest reliability was high. These resultsindicate that the SRAS-DR has acceptable reliability and validity(see the Supplemental Material in Oda, Shibata, Kiyonari, Takeda,& Matsumoto-Oda, in press for details about each item and thedevelopment of the instrument).

Big-Five Scale: we employed a short form of the Japanese Big-Five Scale developed by Namikawa et al. (2012), which was basedon the Big-Five Scale of Personality Trait Adjectives (Wada, 1996)commonly used in Japan. The short form contains 29 items anddemonstrates sufficient reliability and validity despite the reducednumber of items.

These two scales were bound into a booklet with other scalesand administered to participants. The Big-Five Scale preceded theSRAS-DR.

2.2. Participants

A total of 564 Japanese undergraduates (233 males and 331 fe-males, mean age: 19.7 ± 1.2) at five universities participated andreceived no monetary reward for their involvement.

2.3. Analyses

First, simple correlations among three subscales of SRAS-DR andBig-Five traits were calculated. Then we performed multipleregression analyses to infer the effects of Big-Five traits on altruismtoward each type of recipient. We also considered sex as a factor.Interactions between factors were not considered. We conducteda relative importance analysis (Tonidandel & LeBreton, 2011) topartition the regression effect. Percentage of each relative weightindex (RWI%) and its significance were computed by using the Rscript offered on a webpage (http://relativeimportance.david-son.edu/multipleregression.html). This analysis enables one toestimate how independent variables contribute to dependent var-iable when the independent variables are not uncorrelated.

The GFP score of the participants was computed by using themeta-analytic Big Five intercorrelations and GFP loadings on Ta-ble 3 of van der Linden, Nijenhuis and Bakker (2010). We employedthe results from the subsample of undergraduate students becauseour participants were also undergraduates.

3. Results

We found moderate correlations among the subscales of theSRAS-DR (Table 1). Extraversion was weakly to moderately corre-lated with each subscale of the SRAS-DR. Conscientiousness wasweakly correlated with altruism toward family members, andextraversion was moderately correlated with openness.

As there was no possibility of multicollinearity among theBig-Five traits, we performed multiple regression analyses. Theanalyses revealed that the factors that contributed to altruism dif-fered according to recipient (Table 2). Sex, extraversion, and con-scientiousness significantly contributed to altruism towardfamily members (adjusted R2 = .103). Females engaged in altruisticbehavior toward family members more frequently than males. Thesame sex difference was also observed in altruism toward friends/

life. Personality and Individual Differences (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/

Table 1Correlations between each parameter.

Parameter 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1. SRAS: family .47*** .46*** .02 .20*** .12** .12** .22***

2. SRAS: friends .42*** �.02 .42*** .14*** .12** .073. SRAS: strangers �.04 .33*** .23*** .11** .044. Neuroticism �.18*** �.18*** �.20*** �.075. Extraversion .39*** .15*** .086. Openness .12** .12**

7. Agreeableness .23***

8. Conscientiousness –

⁄p < .05.** p < .01.*** p < .001.

R. Oda et al. / Personality and Individual Differences xxx (2013) xxx–xxx 3

acquaintances. Extraversion and agreeableness also significantlycontributed to altruism toward friends/acquaintances (adjustedR2 = .268) while the percentage of relative weight index of agree-ableness was small. Although sex did not contribute to altruism to-ward strangers, extraversion and openness did significantlycontribute to this type of altruism (adjusted R2 = .119).

Correlations between the GFP score and each of the subscales ofthe SRAS-DR were .224 for family members, .275 for friends/acquaintances and .254 for strangers. All the correlation was statis-tically significant (<.001).

4. Discussion

The results indicate that personality contributes to altruism indaily life and that the degree to which each personality traitcontributes differs according to the recipient of the behavior. Thecoefficient of determination (adjusted R2) was highest for altruismtoward friends/acquaintances and lowest for altruism toward fam-ily members. The same tendency can be seen in correlations be-tween the GFP score and altruism toward each recipient. Thisdifference may be caused by differences between social and homeenvironments. Indeed, the frequency of reciprocal altruism towardfriends/acquaintances is affected by ‘‘social niche’’ (Wilson &Csikszentmihalyi, 2007). Reciprocal altruism can be maintainedonly in an environment in which altruistic acts are rewarded. Ahigh level of prosociality would be more advantageous in certainsocial environments and less so in others. This is similar to the con-cept of ‘‘niche’’ in ecology. An ecological niche refers to the rela-tional position of a species or population in its environment.Each species has evolved to adapt to its own ecological niche. Byanalogy, social behavior is thought to have evolved as an adapta-tion to the social environment surrounding each individual. Wilsonand Csikszentmihalyi (2007) proposed the notion of an altruismniche. Indeed, Oda, Hiraishi, Fukukawa, and Matsumoto-Oda(2011) reported that Japanese undergraduates who received socialsupport from friends/acquaintances tended to demonstrate proso-

Table 2Regression of altruism distinguished by the recipient on Big Five traits.

Trait Family members Friends/acquai

b SE t RWI% b S

Sex 0.314 0.085 3.71*** 24.1* 0.626 0Neuroticism 0.063 0.042 1.52 2.0 0.038 0Extraversion 0.142 0.045 3.18** 23.2* 0.371 0Openness 0.054 0.044 1.21 6.8 0.015 0Agreeableness 0.083 0.043 1.94 8.8 0.118 0Conscientiousness 0.181 0.042 4.35*** 35.1* �0.004 0

* p < .05.** p < .01.*** p < .001.

Please cite this article in press as: Oda, R., et al. Personality and altruism in dailyj.paid.2013.09.017

cial behaviors toward them. The ability to construct such an altru-ism niche depends on personality. For example, a person who ishigh in extraversion and agreeableness may choose a social envi-ronment in which people engage in reciprocal helping behaviors.On the other hand, the frequency of altruism toward family mem-bers depends on one’s home environment, which is less affected bypersonality than is one’s social environment.

The traits that contributed to altruism differed according to re-cipient. As predicted, however, extraversion commonly contrib-uted to altruism toward all three types of recipients and relativeimportance was small when the recipients were family membersbut was large when the recipients were friends/acquaintancesand strangers. In addition to extraversion, conscientiousness con-tributed to altruism toward family members. As the participantsin our study were undergraduates, most of whom were not mar-ried, their family members could be regarded as kin. Ben-Ner andKramer (2010) reported that personality played essentially no rolein explaining donations toward kin in the DG. However, unlikeBen-Ner and Kramer, who used a laboratory setting, we investi-gated behaviors in daily life, which introduced many factors thatwould be eliminated in a controlled laboratory environment. Forexample, scores for altruism toward family members depend onthe time respondents spend with their families, and conscientious-ness may have a direct influence on the quality of family relation-ships. For example, people low in conscientiousness are lessresponsible to their partners and highly conscientious people areless likely to get divorced (Roberts, Jackson, Fayard, Edmonds, &Meints, 2009). These facts suggest that participants who are highin conscientiousness tend to be family-oriented and spend moretime with family members, which would increase the frequencyof altruistic behavior toward family members. The relationship be-tween degree of conscientiousness and time spent with familymembers should be investigated in future studies.

In contrast, agreeableness contributed only to altruism towardfriends/acquaintances. Agreeableness reflects individual differ-ences in cooperation and social harmony, and people who scorehigh on this trait tend to believe that most people are honest, de-cent, and trustworthy. Therefore, it is plausible that participantswho score high on agreeableness tend to form reciprocal relation-ships with others. Agreeableness, however, did not contribute toaltruism toward strangers. Aside from extraversion, only opennesscontributed to altruism toward strangers. Openness is negativelycorrelated with harm avoidance and positively correlated withnovelty seeking (De Fruyt, Van De Wiele, & Van Heeringen,2000). Participants who score high on openness may pay for theirtendency to be generous toward strangers in the absence of anyguarantee of reciprocity. In contrast to Ashton et al. (1998) andBen-Ner and Kramer (2010), we found that neuroticism did notcontribute to altruism toward any category of recipient. Both theprevious studies employed money allocation as a measure of pros-ociality, and Ashton et al. (1998) also used a questionnaire.

ntances Strangers

E t RWI% b SE t RWI%

.077 8.18*** 37.4* 0.085 0.084 1.01 2.3

.038 1.00 0.6 0.041 0.041 1.00 0.7

.040 9.17*** 52.2* 0.278 0.044 6.27*** 66.1*

.040 0.39 4.2* 0.121 0.044 2.76** 24.0*

.039 3.06** 5.1* 0.076 0.042 1.80 6.6

.038 �0.11 0.5 �0.015 0.041 �0.36 0.3

life. Personality and Individual Differences (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/

4 R. Oda et al. / Personality and Individual Differences xxx (2013) xxx–xxx

Whereas the questionnaire used by Ashton et al. (1998) producedrecordings of participants’ willingness to perform altruistic behav-iors, the SRAS-DR we employed asked about the frequency withwhich respondents actually engaged in behavior for the sake ofothers. Such differences in the methods may have affected theresults.

In conclusion, personality is a factor affecting individual differ-ences in altruism in daily life, and the personality traits affectingaltruism differ according to the relationship between the actorand the recipient, a pattern that reflects the evolutionary back-ground of human altruism. The results of the present study under-score the importance of distinguishing among the recipients ofaltruistic behaviors.

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