40 Am I generous?

THE EVALUATION Competitive: You regard the other person’s loss as your gain. You think: win-lose.Individualistic: You are primarily interested in your own profit, less in the loss of the other person. You think: win.Prosocial: Your goal is for every-body to profit from your decision. You think: win-win.Altruistic: You want to help others. You think lose-win and experience this as a personal satisfaction.

These four ‘common’ orientations have four pathological counterparts:

Sadism (extreme competitive-ness, whereby you enjoy it when other people lose), sadomasochism (your goal is that neither you nor the other person wins), masochism (you want to lose), and martyrdom (you lose, so that others win).

WHAT IT’S ABOUTAccording to the ‘Rational Choice Theory’ all of our actions are moti-vated by self-interest. The theory converges with the model of the ‘Homo oeconomicus’, whose actions are geared only towards profit maxi-misation. However, a series of tests indicate that humans also behave differently and, in part, selflessly.

THE TESTA test person is confronted with eight alternatives of how to divide up money between himself and an unknown person. Somebody who keeps 100 dollars and gives the other person 50 dollars is ‘individu-alistic’. Somebody who divides it up so that each person gets 75 dollars is ‘prosocial’ – at least according to the Social Value Orientation Scale developed by the psychologists Don Griesinger and Jim Livingston in 1973, which differentiates between eight different orientations.

No THE SOCIAL VALUE ORIENTATION TEST 10

GOOD TO KNOW

‘Giving a gift means giving another person something that you would actually like to keep for yourself.’ Selma Lagerlöf

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41

This is only an approximation of your actual profile. The researchers Ryan O. Murphy and his colleagues at ETH Zurich offer a great test on their website http://vlab.ethz.ch (SVO Slider Measure), which gives you a more

precise result.

Select which way you would divide up the money and mark with a cross.

Then find out where you stand in the model below.

A B C D E F G H

Money for me $ 50 85 100 85 50 15 0 15

Money for others $ 100 85 50 15 0 15 50 85

Mon

ey fo

r oth

ers

$

100

75

50

25

0

0 25 50 75 100

Money for me $

altruistic

prosocial

individualistic

competitive

sadistic

sadomasochistic

masochistic

self-sacrificing

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

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