Lucie Binder

There exist different theoretical perspectives on altruism that differ in their focus on intentions versus outcomes. When it comes to addressing the fundamental challenges, that our today’s society is confronted with, it is crucial that individuals are willing to act at personal costs for the benefit of others independent of the underlying motives. This perspective is in line with evolutionary and behavioral economic research traditions that strictly focus on input-output relations (Nowak, 2006; Wilson, 1992). Altruistic behavior is typically equated with acts of help giving (Batson, 1991; Cialdini et al., 1997) that involves sharing one’s resources with those in need or who deserve it. Help giving, which ranges from time, money, energy, and information, to blood, organs, and, in extreme cases, risking one’s own life (Rand & Epstein, 2014), is anonymous and directed to strangers, and typically accompanied by empathy (Batson, 2011; Eisenberg & Miller, 1987). However, notallaltruisticactionstaketheformofhelping. Derivingfrombehavioral economic studies, another, antagonistic behavior has been investigated that fits the behavioral definition of altruism. Costly peer punishment entails subtracting resources from others who violate social fairness norms (Fehr & Gächter, 2002; Yamagishi, 1986). Comparing cooperation in the Public Goods Game, a typical economic game used to assess punishment, with and without the option to punish over time revealed that group cooperation increased when participants had the option to punish unfair behavior (Boyd et al., 2003; Fehr & Gächter, 2002). Even though the group benefits from the costly act of an individual, norm-enforcing punishers may face counterpunishment or disapproval from others (Eriksson et al., 2016). This social consequence is different from those who help, who could expect gratitude and social approval. To prevent retaliation and to make the costs more calculable, peer punishment is often anonymous, indirect and coordinated (Balafoutas et al., 2014, 2016; Boyd et al., 2010; de Melo & Piaggio, 2015). While help giving rewards those who deserve it, punishment sanctions those who free ride. From a behaviorist perspective, both behaviors shape the distribution of resources. When it comes to challenging the existing resource allocation schemes, a third facet of altruism can be defined, that is costly for the actor and beneficial for others. Moral courage refers to standing up for one’s ethical beliefs in spite of social pressures (Bronstein et al., 2007; Halmburger et al., 2015; Windmann, 2025; Windmann et al., 2021). Individuals that show moral courageous behavior openly and proactively question the existing resource allocation schemes and thereby typically confront powerful others, such as authorities or the majority. Therefore, acting with moral courage entails high social and personal risks (e.g., for one’s own well-being). The characteristics of high costs and power gradient distinguish moral courage from help giving and peer punishment. Due to the power imbalance that disadvantages the morally courageous actor, the potential costs of moral courage can be incalculable and even limitless. In contrast, peer punishment involves sanctions directed toward peers. Since it is mostly coordinated or anonymous, the costs of punishment are mostly predictable. Help giving, on the other hand, addresses a person in need and thus typically involves a lower-status counterpart. Although help giving may entail risking one’s life in extreme cases, the costs are usually foreseeable. Similar to peer punishment (Fehr & Gächter, 2002; Lotz et al., 2011; Rodrigues et al., 2018), but unlike help giving, moral courage is accompanied by feelings of anger (Hechler & Kessler, 2018; Landmann & Hess, 2017; Sasse, Halmburger, & Baumert, 2022). Although the three dimensions are theoretically distinguishable, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support this distinction. This is partly due to the absence of operationalizations of certain facets. Help giving is the only facet that has been extensively studied using both self-report instruments and standardized behavioral paradigms in the form of economic games. While there are established economic games that assess peer punishment, no such game exists for moral courageous behavior. Additionally, there is a lack of psychometrically evaluated self-report measures that capture the two facets peer punishment and moral courage. Most of the existing literature on altruistic behavior has investigated the facets in isolation, with some exceptions comparing help giving with peer punishment (Friebel et al., 2019; Rodrigues et al., 2018; Weng et al., 2015). A first approach on investigating the three facets altogether while addressing the gap in self-report assessments for peer punishment and moral courage was done by Windmann et al. (2021), who developed the Facets of Altruistic Behaviors (FAB) scale. This self-report scale assesses the three facets help giving, peer punishment, and moral courage as behavioral traits. The authors provided preliminary evidence of the criterion validity of the FAB scale. Building upon these conceptual and methodological foundations, the present work aims to empirically examine the distinctiveness of the three facets. In three studies, we aimed to distinguish help giving, peer punishment, and moral courageous behavior by examining how the facets vary across profile groups, their sensitivity to contextual variation, and their convergent and discriminant relations across methods.

Reliable and valid measurement of the various components of prosociality calls for tools that capture its diverse behavioral expressions. Here, we evaluate how economic game measures derived from the Dictator Game, Public Goods Game, and Ultimatum Game as well as a novel Third-Party Intervention Paradigm correspond with their self-reported counterparts within a design informed by a multitrait–multimethod approach. The self-report scales described Help Giving, Peer Punishment, and Moral Courage as behavioral traits in real life. Each game decision was regressed on all three of these scales using data from 22 studies. Convergent validity emerged, with the strongest associations for help giving and the weakest for peer punishment. Discriminant validity was evidenced by the lack of significant cross-correlations, with one minor exception regarding the Peer Punishment scale and the Dictator Game. Overall, the findings support the distinctiveness of the facets, particularly for help giving and moral courage, while highlighting challenges in capturing punishment-related altruism. While several procedures for improving correspondence are discussed, the descriptively higher correlations within methods than across traits suggest a persistent gap in criterion validation.

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Altruism may not be a unitary concept but may include behaviorally dissociable subfactors. Here, we examined the effects of social distance within and across group boundaries on three facets of altruism: help giving, peer punishment, and moral courage. Using real-life scenarios presented as vignettes, participants were asked to indicate the likelihood that they would engage in the described behaviors across three different social settings: a familiar low-distance in-group, an unfamiliar high-distance in-group, and a hostile out-group. We used the Inclusion of Others in Self (IOS) scale to measure perceived closeness to members of the described social group. We hypothesized that help giving would be most and moral courage least sensitive to variations in social distance. In both studies, results revealed no significant differences in help giving across variations in social distance but a higher self-reported likeliness to show morally courageous acts in the familiar and close in-group compared to the other groups. The results for peer punishment were only partially consistent, following a similar pattern to moral courage. IOS scores discriminated between high and low-distance in-groups, as expected, but did not discriminate well between a high-distance in-group and hostile out-group. On the other hand, facet-specific trait scores correlated significantly with vignette responses. When the three facets were considered together across all vignettes, in-group favoritism became apparent. The studies contribute to our understanding of the social context conditions of altruistic behaviors and call for the refinement of experimental and self-report measures in the study of altruistic behavior.