Is Self-Transcendence Philanthropic? Graded Response Model Approach
Frontiers in Psychology May 18, 2022 Bandos Ros, Shinji Kaneko
Strong feelings of altruism significantly explain prosocial and pro-environmental behaviors, but the latent trait biosphere does not explain pro-environmental behavior such as past volunteering in clean-up activities. Subjects, whether overseas graduates or not, are more altruistic than biospheric by nature. Using the Graded Response Model, the study found that biosphere and altruism are independent of each other; merging them into a single dimension called self-transcendence makes the construct less reliable. Consistent with previous studies, the effect of self-transcendence could not be detected statistically, as it affects both past volunteering in environmental affairs and past volunteering in social welfare.