Selfish or Selfless? On the Signal Value of Emotion in Altruistic Behavior

Emotions are both a motivating force and a consequence of consumer prosocial behavior. The debate over whether people are truly altruistic has often focused on the direction of emotion that someone feels when engaging in prosocial behavior. While some argue that the emotions people feel can genuinely involve empathic concern (e.g. Batson 1987), others argue that emotion-driven prosocial behavior is at odds with altruism because emotional actors reap intra psychic rewards, such as a boost in positive affect (Andreoni 1990), or a reduction in negative affect (Cialdini, Darby, and Vincent 1973). In the current research, we find that naïve theories run counter to theories that decry emotions as selfish. We predict that because emotions are perceived as spontaneous and natural (Tiedens 2001) and reflective of an actor’s true motives (Ames and Johar 2009), expressing emotion in the context of prosocial behavior signals information about a consumer’s true character. Our results demonstrate that lay people view emotion as reflecting genuine altruism despite recognizing that those who feel good about doing good reap intra-psychic rewards.