The incentive and performance improvement industry blog The Daily Perk poses this question in the post called Incenting Altruism relating to developing an incentive program for organ donation...
And if an incentive can inspire altruism, so much the better. What do you think? Would you work on an incentive program like this?
Aside from the poor grammer (see my rant on "incent" and "incentivizing") the question is a good one. Can you motivate altruism?
From dictionary.com the definition of altruism is: the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others. If the definition of altruism is the "unselfish" concern then you cannot provide an incentive to do it because it would then become selfish and that definition is egoism (from dictionary.com egoism is the habit of valuing everything only in reference to one's personal interest; selfishness.)
So the answer is no - you cannot motivate people through an incentive to be altruistic. But I'm picking nits here. What were really talking about is whether I can influence someone's behavior to be more altruistic. That, I believe, we can do. But we must employ other tools to accomplish that goal.
My belief is that we need to create a culture of altruism which is more of a communication and social proof issue. My recommendations would include:
- Connect like-minded people together and give them tools to show the rest of the world/group/etc. who's doing what to help the cause.
- Publicly highlight the number of people who are doing it and the positive results.
- Leverage our social networks and the same tools that move urban legends around cyberspace in a blink of an eye, but use them to move thoughts about organ donation.
- Create "recognition" opportunities for participants
I look at it this way... if the behavior "should" be done based on moral and ethical issues - incentives simply cheapen the activity.
