Interne determinante altruizma: da li je pomaganje drugima u osnovi egoistično ili altruistično?

Classical meaning of altruism lies in the fact that it seems to represent an exception from convincing' principle which argues that behaviour is controlled by rewards and punishments and in this connection by generalization that people are essentially egoistic. Contemporary researches of the positive forms of social behaviour are only peripherally relevant for this centuries-old question. The majority of these researches investigate situational factors and external determinants of altruistic behaviour. But by turning from the investigation of altruism as a social form of behaviour to definition of altruism as an attribute of personality, a problem necessarily arises of establishing internal determinants and motivational structure of the helping act. Recent approaches point out the importance of emotional factors as fundamental mediators in helping others. These approaches are different from the above mentioned ones because they presuppose different kind of motivation, caused by emotional excitement. According to Piliavin and Piliavin model, helping others in a trouble is exclusively motivated by egoism. Batson and Coke on the other hand presuppose the experience of empathy can be a cause of unaffected altruistic motivation to help. According to this model the spectator of a troubled person can experience qualitatively different emotions: personal anxiety and empathic care for the troubled person, These different emotional reactions result in different motivation to help. There is a suggestion that the experience of empathy provokes altruistically motivated behaviour, i. e. help whose aim is a reduction of the other’s trouble and not of personal unpleasant states. The authors propose a method as well how to ascertain empirically whether motivation to help other is altruistic or egoistic in its essence. At the same time this model represents the first meritorious attempt to ascertain the motivational basis of seemingly unselfish helping others not notionally only but empirically as well.