Factors Determining Lay Judgment on Motivation of Altruistic Acts: Experimental Approach

The purpose of this work is to understand how people produce lay judgments on motivation of altruistic acts and which of considered factors determine these judgments. The theoretical framework of this project is based on “folk sociology” and modern theories of altruistic behavior. Moreover, I have a methodological aim to test the research instrument: scales and the wording of the questions. To achieve these goals, I employed quantitative method: a questionnaire with descriptions of situations (vignettes) and altruism scale. With the application of these methods I intended to obtain preliminary results (preparation of database), statistical results (statistical analysis of the data in SPSS with tables), general statistical results (test of hypothesis and analytical report), methodological results (test of research instrument) and theoretical results (abstract model of lay judgment on altruistic act). To sum it up, I thoroughly examined the phenomena of lay judgment on altruistic act and tested technique for it’s measuring.