06 Jan Psychologists Identify A New Type Of Altruism: Others-Centeredness
I’ve been saying for quite some time now that happiness isn’t just feeling good, it’s also doing good.
One of the best ways to enjoy more happiness, is to make others happy.
Because at the end of the day, other people matter. Belonging and connectedness are crucial to our health and wellbeing, so the more we think of others the more we do ourselves good; which is pretty much what Mark Travers explains in this Forbes article …
A new paper published in the academic journal Personality and Individual Differences offers a new lens through which to understand cooperative behavior — something the researchers refer to as others-centeredness.
“Others-centeredness is a tendency to put others’ interests ahead of one’s own that is based on a specific way of thinking,” says Ryan Byerly, a researcher at Sheffield University in the United Kingdom and lead author of the paper. “The others-centered person thinks that their own interests are just as important in the grand scheme of things as any other person’s interests. But, they also place a high value on interpersonal relationships. Because of this, they tend to prioritize promoting others’ interests when they can’t equally promote their own interests and another person’s interests. This is because when they promote the other person’s interests, they promote not just those interests but the interpersonal relationship as well.”
An example of others-centeredness, according to the researchers, would be electing to give the last cookie to a coworker instead of keeping it for yourself. Even though you both would enjoy eating the cookie, the benefit you get from strengthening the interpersonal relationship by acting generously outweighs the benefit you would get from eating the cookie yourself….
… keep reading the full & original article HERE