Actions Speak Louder than outcomes leading to ineffective altruism

IF 2.3 3区心理学 Q2 PSYCHOLOGY, EXPERIMENTAL

New Ideas in Psychology Pub Date : 2025-01-28 DOI:10.1016/j.newideapsych.2025.101146

Jiaxin Ma , Xiaoyong Hu

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Altruism is the intentional and voluntary act of benefiting others. However, altruists often overlook the effects and impacts of their actions, leading to suboptimal or even detrimental outcomes. This phenomenon, termed ineffective altruism, has been attributed to psychological deficits, such as motivational and cognitive impairments. In this article, we adopt a moral cognitive approach and develop an integrated model of action/outcome value decision-making from an adaptive perspective to elucidate the mechanism of ineffective altruism. our model suggests that warm-glow and reputation enhance the action value of altruism, while cognitive biases reduce the effective outcome value that benefits others. The article concludes with a discussion of how action values and outcome values relate and balance each other and analyzes how different strategies of trading off these values affect individuals and society.

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来源期刊

New Ideas in Psychology Multiple-

CiteScore

4.80

自引率

3.80%

发文量

期刊介绍： New Ideas in Psychology is a journal for theoretical psychology in its broadest sense. We are looking for new and seminal ideas, from within Psychology and from other fields that have something to bring to Psychology. We welcome presentations and criticisms of theory, of background metaphysics, and of fundamental issues of method, both empirical and conceptual. We put special emphasis on the need for informed discussion of psychological theories to be interdisciplinary. Empirical papers are accepted at New Ideas in Psychology, but only as long as they focus on conceptual issues and are theoretically creative. We are also open to comments or debate, interviews, and book reviews.