Perceptions of Prosocial Behavior: Understanding the Self-Presentation of Hardships Incurred During Altruistic Acts

Promoting one's altruistic motives may be an important means by which people can present themselves favorably to others. Still, promoting one's altruistic acts can be risky, as observers tend to be sensitive to factors that indicate that an altruistic act is motivated by self-interest, rather than genuine prosocial motives. Research focused on martyrdom (Olivola & Shafir, 2013; Schaumberg & Mullen, 2017) has suggested that highlighting the hardships involved in an altruistic act can enhance perceptions of prosocial motivation (the martyrdom hypothesis). However, research on bragging (Berman et al., 2015; Sezer et al., 2018) has suggest that first-person statements that highlight hardships may be perceived as self-motivated complaints, rather than genuine (the complaint hypothesis). The current study used a 2 (statement content: accomplishment versus hardship) x 2 (presentation strategy: direct statement or humblebrag) within-groups design (N = 82) to examine if self-promotional statements related to altruistic hardship increased or decreased perceptions of genuineness and prosocial motivation. Consistent with the complaint hypothesis, first-person statements focused on an altruistic hardship were perceived more as complaints (p < .001, η2 = .512) and less as prosocial acts (p = .001, η2 = .132) than first-person statements that focused on an altruistic accomplishment. These results suggest that there may be a penalty for emphasizing personal sacrifice as a means of self-promoting altruistic acts.