Personal Circumstance and Service

While reading Paul Elovitz’ analysis of the evolution of service over his lifetime, I found myself contemplating my own life. The comparison was interesting to me given that our background stories are very different, yet we ended up with teaching careers at the same institution. I also found altruism and generativity to be enticing topics about which to write at this point in my life. I am a woman in my 60s, now considering retirement and looking back on a 37-year career as a psychology professor. I have also renegotiated my relationships with family during the past 18 months as I endured an intense series of medical treatments. This commentary has provided an opportunity to examine my career and personal inclinations to understand how altruism, service, and generativity have and have not marked my adult life.

I have always had a distinct interest in understanding why people behave altruistically in some situations, but not in others—even when the situations seem highly comparable. I believe that for many people, altruism and service to others are not constant impulses across time and situations. I will use myself as an example. I often comply to requests for donations to a variety of worthy causes, or help anyone outside my family, for too long a time. My feeling at those moments is that some form of service is “due” from

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me, that some sense of life balance demands an altruistic act. One might say that my conscience interjects the thought that a moral person would be more generous, or at least generous more often, and I therefore act to fulfill the responsibilities inherent in being a good person. Behaving as a moral person is one of my core values, and some imprecise internal clock tells me when I am in danger of slipping too far from generosity. Selfishly, I am also avoiding feelings of guilt through these timed acts of giving. It strikes me as I write this that my thinking is a simultaneous blend of multiple stages of moral development from the value-driven to the purely selfish desire to avoid guilt.

One other factor seems relevant in exploring the inconsistency of my altruism. I believe that degree of self-focus is a key to understanding my behavior. Yet self-focus sometimes inhibits and sometimes increases my altruism. When I am focused on myself due to physical or emotional distress, I don’t have the psychological energy to feel guilt and thus am less likely to be affected by a moral sense of obligation. However, there have been times when I brought myself out of an emotional distress by purposely changing focus from myself to helping someone else. That is, I have sometimes made donations, or done something kind for another person, in order to take my attention away from myself and thus feel better. When in physical distress, however, I am less likely to be helpful to anyone else.

I often comply with requests for donations to a variety of charitable causes, yet sometimes I discard them without a second thought. I would be hard-pressed to explain why a request on one particular day evokes a positive response when I discard identical requests at other times. The reasons are not obvious. It is not because of available funds, nor is it necessarily because of the nature of the request. Sometimes I simply don’t help. Similarly, I have sometimes helped people by assisting in food pantries, in my workplace, or by volunteering in facilities such as assisted-living communities. Yet I would have to admit that, generally, I help because I have been asked to do so; only on rare occasions have I stepped forward on my own initiative. I am loath to admit that while I have sometimes intervened when a stranger needed help, I also have done things such as drive by people with car trouble without stopping or calling for help. I believe that I have always helped my children when they needed me without being asked, but that has not been true with respect to altruism outside my nuclear family.

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This is in stark contrast to my husband Brian, who almost always helps other people across situations. Altruism and service are fundamental to how he lives his life, as it has been with his father. Brian does not need to be asked for help; he offers his help. In this way, he mimics his father, who had a medical career and was consistently involved in service. For example, my father-in-law is a domestic violence victim advocate and is called to the police station to help advise people when their partners have been arrested for abuse. He has continued this volunteer activity for years and is now well into his 90s! During his childhood, Brian was never told explicitly that service was to be valued and that he should commit himself to helping others. Yet his father’s values seem to have become part of his psyche, and thus his adult behavior, without explicit instruction.

Service to others across situations is less a part of my adult psyche. Do I mimic my parent as my husband does his father? Yes, it would appear to be so. Voluntary service to others was not a trait that I saw in my single mother as I grew up. My mother was a wonderful, caring woman with her family and friends. Like me, if asked she would give her help, but as a widow with a young child, her focus was on keeping our life going and on the people within her own personal circle. She did not volunteer in the community or church, nor was she in a position to mentor others to any great extent. Clearly, my husband and I—like Paul Elovitz—were influenced significantly by family, explicitly or implicitly, in our service orientations in quite different ways.

My interest in understanding altruism has been based not only on personal experience but also on my discipline. By training, I am a social psychologist and I teach about theories of altruism in my classes. My first published article was an empirical study of altruism and some of the factors that influence altruistic behavior. Specifically, I studied the impact of gender on the likelihood to help a stranger. Gendered social norms often have been found to have an influence on impulses to help others in psychological research, as have a host of other transient variables. Thus, engaging in altruistic behavior can be quite inconsistent across situations. Certainly, these findings reflect my own behaviors with respect to helping.

However, as I thought about my life to prepare to write this essay, I realized that there is one type of service, a form of generativity, which has been consistent in my life across time and situa-

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tion. It is a form of service Paul Elovitz discusses in his article as well—the impulse to help others in our profession and guide them toward their futures. In my case, the focus is on students headed toward careers broadly within my discipline. It is of vital importance to me to assist students, inside and outside of class. I feel compelled to extend myself when students need help to understand concepts or complete assignments. I feel joy in helping students prepare for graduate school by working with student research assistants, guiding students in curricular choices to be prepared for the programs they want to enter, teaching students how to prepare conference submissions and presentations, and publishing with students. I have spent many hours talking to students about their educational options and possible career choices, including students I did not know personally. I sometimes reach out to students to help them even without their direct requests.

This form of service, of guiding the next generations within my sphere as a college professor, has not been a changeable impulse for me. It has been evident from the early years of my career in my 30s. As I contemplate why this form of service feels different for me and why it is a consistent trait when other types of altruism are not constant, I think competence is the key. Helping others in their intellectual development and path toward careers is something I feel competent to do; I have confidence in my ability to effectively make this contribution to others. Perhaps I have a consistent impulse to help students simply because I feel sure that I can do it.

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