| Author: | Zhu, Yijie |
| Title: | The rich do good for autonomy, and the poor for relatedness |
| Advisors: | Chen, Xiaohua Sylvia (APSS) Yu, Lu (APSS) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2023 |
| Subject: | Social status Helping behavior Altruism Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of Applied Social Sciences |
| Pages: | vi, 110 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Socioeconomic status and helping behavior have been hot topics in the field of social psychology. Contradictory findings have been documented on the relationships between socioeconomic status (SES) and prosociality. Some researchers found that people with higher SES showed more prosociality, while others found the opposite effect. These findings on both sides were supported by different theories. It was pointed out that the reason for this inconsistency may be that higher-SES people engage in prosocial behavior for reasons different from lower-SES individuals (Piff, 2017). Based on self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), I hypothesized that higher-SES people help others for autonomy and lower-SES people help others for relatedness. On one hand, autonomy motivation was hypothesized as the reason why higher-SES individuals help others and relatedness motivation was hypothesized to be the reason why lower-SES people help others. That is, when SES is high, autonomy motivation (instead of relatedness motivation) will predict prosociality positively (Hypothesis 1a); in contrast, when SES is low, relatedness motivation (instead of autonomy motivation) will positively predict prosociality (Hypothesis 1b). On the other hand, based on the two-process model of psychological needs (Sheldon, 2011), the behavior caused by certain motivation should satisfy the corresponding need. Therefore, I further hypothesize that helping others may satisfy more autonomy (than relatedness) needs of higher-SES people (Hypothesis 2a) and more relatedness (than autonomy) needs of people with lower SES (Hypothesis 2b). Four studies were conducted to test the hypotheses. In Studies 1a (N = 140) and 1b (N = 151), the hypotheses related to autonomy and relatedness were tested respectively, based on cross-sectional data measuring autonomy and relatedness motivation, autonomy and relatedness need satisfaction, subjective and objective SES, and prosociality from student samples. Results indicated that for people with higher SES, specifically those with higher subjective SES (SSES), autonomy motivation positively predicted prosociality, which in turn predicted autonomy need satisfaction (Study 1a); for people with lower SES, specifically only objective SES (OSES), relatedness motivation positively predicted prosociality, which in turn predicted satisfaction of relatedness need (Study 1b). The findings generally supported my hypotheses. In Studies 2a (N = 147) and 2b (N = 128), I manipulated autonomy and relatedness motivation, respectively, to test the moderating effects of SSES and OSES on the effects of motivation on real donation. The results supported my hypotheses (1a and 1b) and showed the same patterns as in Study 1, i.e. autonomy promoted prosociality only for people with higher-SSES and relatedness only facilitated prosociality of those with lower-OSES. In Study 3 (N = 170), a recalling task was adopted to manipulate prosocial behavior situation and tested its effect on autonomy and relatedness need satisfaction. Hypotheses 2a and 2b were supported with the same pattern, showing that prosociality satisfied more autonomy need of higher-SSES people and more relatedness need of lower-OSES people. Study 1 was replicated with community samples in Study 4. Though the results were consistent with my hypotheses in general, only OSES was found significant in moderating the paths from both autonomy and relatedness motivation to prosociality and those from prosociality to both autonomy and relatedness need satisfaction, revealing a pattern different from student samples. To sum up, the higher-SES people, in the context of my research, exhibited prosocial behavior for autonomy, while their counterparts with a lower SES did so for relatedness, and the SSES and OSES functioned differently in the above mechanisms. Taken together, the findings indicated different motivations for the "rich" and the "poor" to engage in helping behavior. Possible interpretations for the inconsistent findings are discussed. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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