Cross-cultural assessment of altruism and its correlates

We describe the development and psychometric properties of a 56 item self report altruism scale. Subjects reported on the frequency with which they gave help and received help (for items with a direct reciprocal to giving) and on the rated importance of the helping behavior described in each item. The scale was administered to university student subjects in Australia, Egypt, Korea, the Republic of China (Taiwan), the United States (Hawaii and Missouri) and Yugoslavia. We obtained measures of guilt, shame, psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism, lying, and intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity from subjects; not all measures were obtained from all subjects in all samples. The scale had good psychometric properties. Mean scores on the three altruism measures differed significantly across samples; the differences were not associated with national or regional income level in any consistent fashion. Sex differences, when significant, indicated that males gave more help and, for two of three significant differences, received more help as well. Differences across samples and sexes were almost always consistent across categories of altruism. For most samples, measures of altruism were positively correlated with guilt, extraversion, and intrinsic religiosity while shame was negatively correlated with giving and receiving help but positively correlated with the rated importance of helping. Lie scale scores generally yielded low negative correlations with altruism scores. Amounts of giving and receiving help and the rated importance of helping were very highly correlated both within and across samples. While it is probable that giving help would be regarded as socially desirable, it seems improbable that receiving help is regarded as highly desirable. The very high correlations between giving and receiving help, like the lack of association between lie scores and altruism measures, suggest that social desirability response sets did not greatly influence our results. The very high correlations across measures of giving and receiving support the existence of reciprocal altruism. © 1989.