Social psychologists during the 20th century made many remarkable discoveries. One of these is that an individual’s behavior could be shaped, changed, and even criminalized by the systematic manipulation of social interactions (Frith & Frith, 2008). Compared to all other species, human beings display much higher levels of altruistic behavior toward genetically unrelated individuals (Haviland, Prins, Walrath, & McBride, 2004). Thus, identifying the stability of altruistic behavior in humans and other animals has been one of the major scientific challenges in recent decades (Nowak, 2006). In essence, altruistic behavior has also been shown to be evoked by prosocial media exposure and to elicit helping behavior (Greitemeyer & Osswald, 2009). The paradox of altruistic behavior
is that
although
altruistic
helping
adds to
the common
good of a group
of individuals,
the one contributing
to the common good
generally
endures
a higher
cost
than
the individual
returns (deWeerd & Verbrugge, 2011; West, Griffin, & Gardner, 2007).
However
Hamilton (1963)
predicted
that altruistic
behavior
would
still
be selected
if the cost
to the altruistic
individual
is less
than the benefit
to the recipient
or that the recipient
possesses
the common good.
Accordingly,
the present
study aimed
to explore
if altruistic
behavior
hinders
the scientific
reasoning
performance
in an online learning environment.