Effect of Elevation on Alruistic Behaviour

Project done as part of the "Intro to Psychology" course at IIIT-H during Monsoon 2020.

• For a detailed report please refer to "Final Psychology Presentation.pdf" in the repository.

Hypothesis

• We expect there to be a marked change in the participants’ altruism levels depending on the video that they have been shown.
• We believe that witnessing a virtuous/prosocial act leads individuals to be more likely to perform the prosocial act themselves.
• A positive correlation is to be expected between the altruism levels shown by the participants and the video they have been shown.

Results & Observations from data collected

Results on the self-rating variables

• We find that optimistic about humanity, happy, arousal and pleasantness exhibit means in a decreasing order when going from elevation, control and sad videos.
• However, we find that the means of wanting to help others, uplifted, warm feeling in the chest and wanting to become a better person are highest in the sad video which is not in accordance with our hypothesis.

Results based on whether or not personal things are at stake

• We can observe that there is a high correlation for seven measures of self-rating when personal interests are not at stake.
• However, only two measures of self-rating have a high correlation when personal interests are at stake.

Division based on thought vs action

• We can observe that there is a high correlation for six measures of self-rating when in thought based questions.
• However, only three measures of self-rating have a high correlation in the action based questions.