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The Social Production of Altruism: Motivations for Caring Action in a Low-Income Urban Community

  • Original Paper
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American Journal of Community Psychology

Abstract

Contemporary social science paints a bleak picture of inner-city relational life. Indeed, the relationships of low-income, urban-residing Americans are represented as rife with distress, violence and family disruption. At present, no body of social scientific work systematically examines the factors that promote loving or selfless interactions among low-income, inner-city American individuals, families and communities. In an effort to fill that gap, this ethnographic study examined the motivations for altruism among a sample of adults (n = 40) who reside in an economically distressed housing community (i.e., housing project) in New York City. Content analyses of interviews indicated that participants attributed altruism to an interplay between 14 motives that were then ordered into four overarching categories of motives: (1) needs-centered motives, (2) norm-based motives deriving from religious/spiritual ideology, relationships and personal factors, (3) abstract motives (e.g., humanism), and (4) sociopolitical factors. The implications of these findings are discussed.

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Notes

  1. The names of the housing community and of individual participants, as well as all identifying information (e.g., age, countries of origin) have been changed in the effort to protect the anonymity of study participants.

  2. Pseudonyms are used throughout this manuscript in order to protect the identity of participants.

  3. Given the focus on extended and fictive kin in African American communities, this category was also used to code for references to godparents, “play aunts,” and play relatives (e.g., play sister).

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Acknowledgments

This research was generously supported by an Altruistic Love grant to the first author from the Fetzer Institute and Templeton Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, 239 Greene Street 4th Floor, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    Jacqueline S. Mattis, Meredith Bonacci, Sheri-Ann Cowie, Lina Ladyzhenskaya & Sara So

  2. Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Wizdom Powell Hammond

  3. University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Nyasha Grayman

  4. Seattle University, Seattle, WA, USA

    William Brennan

Authors
  1. Jacqueline S. Mattis
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  2. Wizdom Powell Hammond
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  3. Nyasha Grayman
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  4. Meredith Bonacci
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  5. William Brennan
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  6. Sheri-Ann Cowie
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  7. Lina Ladyzhenskaya
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  8. Sara So
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Correspondence to Jacqueline S. Mattis.

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Mattis, J.S., Hammond, W.P., Grayman, N. et al. The Social Production of Altruism: Motivations for Caring Action in a Low-Income Urban Community. Am J Community Psychol 43, 71–84 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-008-9217-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-008-9217-5

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