Relationship between altruism and personality among young adults

Pages: 1580-1583
K. Kinjari and C.N. Ram Gopal (Department of Counseling Psychology, Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Kelambakkam, Tamil Nadu)
Asha Latha Mathew (Department of Psychology, University of Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu)

Prosocial behavior is an act which places others before the self where the individual is motivated to help another being and expects nothing in return. In the contemporary world, one form of prosocial behavior that is altruism is rare to be seen. Altruism or selflessness is the principle or practice of concern for the welfare of others. At present, the mortality rate is on a rise which could be because of many reasons among which bystander effect could be a major contributing factor. This created an interest for the researchers to study the relationship between the Big Five Personality traits and Altruism. For this purpose data has been collected from 73 young adults, using the convenience sampling method. It was found that all of the Big five personality traits except for extraversion was found to be related to Altruism and there was no gender difference among the variables except neuroticism.