Altruism is when people help others at a personal cost, without expecting anything in return. People may act altruistically out of empathy, a desire to strengthen relationships, or to gain social approval and maintain a good reputation. These motivations can vary depending on age, personality, and who the recipient is.
Oguni, R., Hagiwara, C., & Shimotsukasa, T. (2025). Relationship between reputational concern and altruistic behavior in adolescence and adulthood. Personality Science. https://doi.org/10.1177_27000710251340614
Key Points
- Focus: This study explores how two types of reputational concerns—seeking praise and avoiding rejection—are linked to altruistic behavior across different life stages.
- Method: Researchers used a cross-sectional survey of 875 Japanese individuals aged 15 to 59, measuring altruism toward family, friends, and strangers, alongside levels of praise seeking and rejection avoidance.
- Findings: Praise seeking influenced altruism toward family only in youth (15–24.45 years) and toward friends up to age 43.37. In contrast, altruism toward strangers was consistently related to both higher praise seeking and lower rejection avoidance regardless of age.
- Implications: These findings suggest that motivations behind altruism change across development, highlighting the need for age-sensitive strategies to encourage prosocial behavior.
Rationale
Altruism, defined as costly, voluntary behavior intended to benefit others, is foundational to human cooperation.
One key driver of altruism is reputation—our desire to be seen positively and avoid being socially rejected. But not all reputational concerns are the same.
Psychologists distinguish between:
- Praise Seeking: Wanting to gain approval and admiration.
- Rejection Avoidance: Wanting to prevent disapproval or exclusion.
While previous studies show that people act kindly to enhance or protect their reputation, most research has focused on adults. This leaves several gaps:
- How do reputational motivations influence altruism in adolescents versus adults?
- Do these effects vary based on the recipient (family, friends, or strangers)?
- Can understanding these patterns help support healthier social development?
This study addresses these questions by comparing adolescents and adults, focusing on how praise seeking and rejection avoidance influence altruistic behavior across relationships.
Understanding these links is vital—not just for theory, but for designing age-appropriate interventions that encourage prosocial behavior and reduce social risk.
Method
Study Design
Cross-sectional survey using hierarchical multiple regression.
Sample
- Total: 875 participants (420 males, 455 females)
- Age range: 15 to 59 years (Mean age = 36.38)
- Location: Japan
- Recruitment: Online panel with equal numbers across gender and age groups (teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s)
Variables
- Independent Variables:
- Praise Seeking
- Rejection Avoidance
- Dependent Variables:
- Altruistic behavior toward family
- Altruistic behavior toward friends
- Altruistic behavior toward strangers
- Control Variables:
- Empathy (4 dimensions: personal distress, empathic concern, perspective taking, fantasy)
- Age and gender
Procedure
- Participants completed an online survey.
- The survey included:
- Demographics
- Reputational concern scales
- Altruistic behavior scale (by recipient type)
- Empathy scale
- An attention check was included to ensure data quality.
- Participants were compensated by the survey platform.
Measures
- Praise Seeking & Rejection Avoidance Scale
- 18 items (e.g., “I am eager to advertise my good points”)
- 5-point Likert scale
- High reliability: α = .91 (praise seeking), α = .89 (rejection avoidance)
- Measures motivations linked to social approval and fear of rejection
- Altruistic Behavior Scale (Oda et al., 2013)
- Separate subscales for family, friends, strangers
- 21 items total (e.g., “I have helped a stranger who fell on the road”)
- 5-point frequency scale
- High reliability across subscales (α ≈ .87–.89)
- Empathy Scale (Interpersonal Reactivity Index)
- 28 items measuring personal distress, empathic concern, perspective taking, fantasy
- Used to control for emotional sensitivity in altruism
Statistical Measures
The authors used hierarchical multiple regression:
- Step 1: Controlled for age, gender, and empathy
- Step 2: Added praise seeking and rejection avoidance
- Step 3: Added interaction terms (e.g., praise seeking × age)
If an interaction was significant, they used the Johnson-Neyman technique to identify the specific age ranges where relationships were significant.
This method was appropriate for testing how the influence of reputational concern on altruism changes with age.
Results
- Altruism Toward Family
- Praise seeking predicted altruism only for ages 15–24.45
- Rejection avoidance had a positive effect across all ages
- Empathy (especially empathic concern and perspective taking) was a strong positive predictor
- Altruism Toward Friends
- Praise seeking was a predictor only until age 43.37
- Rejection avoidance had no significant effect
- Empathy, particularly empathic concern and fantasy, again predicted altruism
- Altruism Toward Strangers
- Praise seeking was positively related across all ages
- Rejection avoidance was negatively related across all ages
- Effects did not vary by age
Insight
This study shows that the desire to be liked (praise seeking) strongly drives altruism in youth, particularly toward family and friends, but this influence weakens with age.
By midlife, kindness appears less about image and more about intrinsic motivation or emotional connection.
Rejection avoidance, surprisingly, did not vary by age in its effects. It predicted less altruism toward strangers, likely due to fear of being judged or blamed.
However, it had no clear effect on altruism toward friends, possibly because not helping isn’t seen as socially risky.
These findings extend prior work by highlighting developmental shifts in altruistic motivation:
- Younger individuals are more reputation-sensitive.
- Older adults may act more from genuine concern than social approval.
The study also underscores the importance of separating types of reputation concern—praise seeking motivates action, while rejection avoidance can inhibit it.
Clinical Implications
- Support Youth Development: Leverage adolescents’ desire for praise to encourage prosocial behavior (e.g., peer recognition programs in schools).
- Social Skills Training: Help teens distinguish between healthy altruism and people-pleasing driven by fear of rejection.
- Adult Outreach: Tailor interventions for older adults around empathy and connection rather than social recognition.
- Policy & Education: Integrate reputation-sensitive strategies into character education programs, especially during adolescence.
Challenges:
- Excessive praise-seeking may lead to inauthentic behavior.
- Rejection avoidance might cause social withdrawal, reducing helpfulness.
- Cultural values (e.g., collectivism in Japan) may influence generalizability.
Strengths
- Large, Diverse Age Sample: Captures nuanced age-related differences in altruism.
- Reliable Measures: Scales showed high internal consistency, increasing confidence in findings.
- Multidimensional Approach: Explored altruism across different social targets (family, friends, strangers).
- Controls for Empathy: Helps isolate the effects of reputational concern from emotional sensitivity.
- Developmental Perspective: Bridges a gap in literature on how motivations for altruism evolve with age.
Limitations
- Self-Report Bias: Participants may overstate their altruism or reputation concerns.
- Cross-Sectional Design: Cannot confirm causality or how these relationships change over time.
- Cultural Specificity: All participants were Japanese; findings may differ in more individualistic cultures.
- Age Range Limit: Excludes those under 15, missing early adolescent development.
- No Behavioral Validation: Relies on subjective reports rather than observed altruistic acts.
Socratic Questions
- Why might praise seeking motivate altruism in youth but not in older adults?
- Could rejection avoidance ever encourage altruism rather than inhibit it?
- How might cultural values shape reputational concerns and altruistic behavior?
- What alternative explanations could account for the decline in reputation-motivated altruism with age?
- Should we view altruism as “less genuine” if motivated by praise seeking? Why or why not?
- How could this study’s findings inform the design of social-emotional learning programs?
- What might we discover by studying altruism and reputational concern in children under 15?
- How might these relationships differ in high-stakes real-world scenarios (e.g., disaster response)?
- Can you think of a situation where rejecting a chance to help someone could actually enhance a person’s reputation?
- How would you design a follow-up longitudinal study to test causality in these findings?
