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Volunteering and well‐being: is pleasure‐based rather than pressure‐based prosocial motivation that which is related to positive effects?
Author(s) -
Vecina María L.,
Fernando Chacón
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/jasp.12012
Subject(s) - prosocial behavior , pleasure , psychology , social psychology , context (archaeology) , well being , developmental psychology , psychotherapist , paleontology , biology
This article seeks to establish whether prosocial motivation in a sample of 251 volunteers is based on pleasure and not on pressure, which is related to the states of general well‐being (hedonic and eudaimonic measures) and the various states of well‐being specifically associated with volunteerism (volunteer satisfaction, volunteer engagement, and study enjoyment), all of this irrespective of the age of the volunteers. An analysis of partial correlations and linear regression leads to the conclusion that volunteerism undertaken as a non‐obligatory, planned helping activity, sustained over time and within an organizational context, is not always associated with positive effects in terms of well‐being. It seems that these positive effects are related to pleasure‐based prosocial motivation.