The Presence Of Opposite-sex Audience Promotes The Display Of Altruism Behavior And Attitude

Altruism refers to the type of behaviors for the purpose of benefiting others but at the cost of the actor.There are increasing evidences that the mere presence of opposite-sex audience could promote the altruism,but only for males.The reasonable explanations for the phenomenon are mainly coming from the perspectives of Evolutionary Psychology or Sociocultural Theory.But these evidences are mainly from the researches of altruism in the context of relationships within strangers,so it's still doubtful whether the presence of opposite-sex observers will promote the individual altruism display similarly to thestrangers when the recipients are within close relationships,such as friends and family members(Question 1).Additionally,it's still controversial because some researches received inverse results that the audience of opposite-sex makes females more altruism displays but not for males.Instead of actual altruism behaviors,these researches adopted distinct measurements such as the subjective report of help willingness as altruism which,to some degree,is identical to the definitions of the altruism attitude.So,the inconsistency may come from the incompatibility of the content or characteristics between the attitude and behavior(Question 2).Study 1 is designed to explore question 1 and find that the presence of opposite-sex audience only makes males not females more altruism displays than the presence of same-sex audience regardless of the recipients of altruism.Similarly,taking three different kinds of recipients into consideration,Study 2 surveys the economic altruism attitudes but which is distinct to the actual altruism behaviors in Study 1 to explore question 2 and find that the presence of opposite-sex observers can only increases the willingness of economic altruism toward friends.By these findings,we can arrive at the conclusions that the presence of opposite-sex observers can promote the displays of altruism behavior only for males regardless of the closeness between the recipients and actors that exactly supports the hypotheses form Evolutionary Psychology.Nevertheless,the presence of opposite-sex observers can only increase the willingness of economic altruism toward friends which partly supports the assumptions from Sociocultural Theory.It also suggests that the confused findings about the presence of opposite-sex observers promoting individual altruism is more likely coming from the distinctly inner nature or mechanism of attitudes and behaviors and not caused by the incompatibility from each other.