The social production of altruism: motivations for caring action in a low-income urban community.
Contemporary social science paints a bleak picture of inner-city relational life. Indeed, the relationships of low-income, urban-residing Americans are represented as rife with distress, violence and family disruption. At present, no body of social scientific work systematically examines the factors that promote loving or selfless interactions among low-income, inner-city American individuals, families and communities. In an effort to fill that gap, this ethnographic study examined the motivations for altruism among a sample of adults (n = 40) who reside in an economically distressed housing community (i.e., housing project) in New York City. Content analyses of interviews indicated that participants attributed altruism to an interplay between 14 motives that were then ordered into four overarching categories of motives: (1) needs-centered motives, (2) norm-based motives deriving from religious/spiritual ideology, relationships and personal factors, (3) abstract motives (e.g., humanism), and (4) sociopolitical factors. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Mattis
Jacqueline S
JS
Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, 239 Greene Street 4th Floor, New York, NY 10003, USA. jsm2015@nyu.edu
Hammond
Wizdom Powell
WP
Grayman
Nyasha
N
Bonacci
Meredith
M
Brennan
William
W
Cowie
Sheri-Ann
SA
Ladyzhenskaya
Lina
L
So
Sara
S
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000533:Altruism; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012944:Social Support; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014505:Urban Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D055815:Young Adult