Rational Choice theory includes a broad body of research that attempts to account for how people act in a variety of contexts, including economic, political and even moral situations. By proposing, most generally, that individuals rationally pursue their self-interests regardless of the context, rational choice has had extensive theoretical and empirical success, on the one hand, and has also faced wide criticism when applied in a variety of disciplines, on the other hand. While there is disagreement over what the defining assumptions of rational choice theory are, in this dissertation I focus on three on which there is widespread agreement. These three features of rational choice theory are: its assumption of egoism or self-interest as the central motivation of individuals; its reliance on consequences as part of a comparative decision-making framework; and finally, its focus on the individual and not on groups as the methodological and normative unit of analysis. In correspondence to these three features, my dissertation is divided into three parts and explores the separate topics of (I) egoism and altruism; (II) consequentialism and ethical decision-making; and, (III) individualism and group identity. The dissertation is not an exercise in showing the extensive problems of rational choice theory, although there are many. The dissertation rather engages these three topics with differing results, some of which in fact attempts to revitalize rational choice, or at least features of rational choice. For the part on altruism, my goal is to demonstrate why the central assumption of egoism in rational choice theory is problematic. More broadly, I argue for a different way of defining genuine altruistic motivation. A result of my analysis there is that altruism appears to be more widespread than has been traditionally assumed and is more amenable to empirical examination. For my discussion on consequentialism, my aim is to re-characterize rational choice as a mode of moral decision-making. I argue that the moral agent is one who frequently compares her particular moral ends in a stable fashion and for this reason cost-benefit analysis is a fully moral framework, one that encourages the agent to genuinely care for her ends and values. For the topic of individualism and group identity, my objective is to show how a previously dismissed topic, once unpacked, is fully consistent with rational choice theory and ought to be of interest to the rational choice theorist. I show that if the liberal political theorist, including the rational choice theorist, is to value group identity, the commitment is only limited to valuing a form of group identity--particularized identity--that is individualist in character. / Dissertation

Conflicts between a married couple bring about impacts upon the family. As divorce rate surges, numerous researches have pointed to the confrontations between husband and wife as the highly relevant contributing factor. Domestic violence has gone from bad to worse over the past few years as well. This study is aimed to identify different levels of physical violence resulting from arguments between married female teachers and their husbands. It further explores the influence of the wife¡¦s altruistic or egoistic attitude on marital conflicts. Some married female elementary school teachers in Kaohsiung City have been chosen as the subjects of the study. Research has been done to find the link between the wife¡¦s altruistic/egoistic character and occurrences of domestic violence amidst conflicts. This study also examines how the subjects¡¦ personality traits and other personal backgrounds interplay with egoism or altruism, which determines the likelihood of domestic violence. A conclusion may be drawn that the more egoistic a married female elementary school teacher is, the more likely domestic violence is to erupt amidst conflicts with her husband. On the contrary, the more altruistic she is, the less likely violence is to happen. The severity of domestic violence varies with the teacher¡¦s years of service, the number of children, and the degree she holds. It is noteworthy that the higher degree the husband holds, the more likely the married couple may end up in physical clashes. The number of romantic relationships the subject had prior to the marriage suggests difference in the likelihood of the couple¡¦s arguments ending in violence. Namely, the more relationships she had, the more possible it is for the marriage to witness violent episodes. If the teacher generally gets along well with her husband, they are much less likely to be involved in physical fights when having an argument. Her expectations of the marriage also determine the possibility of violent incidents. In other words, the less she expects of her marriage, the greater the possibility of abusive occurrences, and vice versa. Analyses of the female teachers¡¦ backgrounds help identify contributing factors of domestic violence. Her years of service at school may result in difference in likelihood of violence, but no significant correlation has been detected. However, the number of children, the couple¡¦s highest degree, the number of romantic relationships prior to the marriage, spousal closeness, and her expectations of the marriage are all significant variables in the probability of domestic violence. Married female teachers¡¦ attitudes have been categorized as either altruistic or egoistic in the research to facilitate the analysis of their relevance to domestic violence amidst conflicts between a couple. By means of Chi-square analysis, the subjects can be classified into four types, ranging from extremely suited for matrimonial and familial life to self-centered. Each type has significant contributing factors that determine the significant differences in degrees of domestic violence.

<p>Världen blir allt mindre och fler människors levnadsstandard runt om i välden blir allt mer påtaglig.</p><p>Samtidigt lever vi i västvärlden i ett samhälle som strävar efter att bli individualistiskt. Vi i väst har</p><p>aldrig tidigare varit så medvetna, kritiska och utbildade som nu, vilket även borde betyda en ökad</p><p>sympati för våra medmänniskor. Men forskare säger annat. Våra handlingar bygger allt mer på vad</p><p>som kommer att se bra ut i våra CV.</p><p>Detta projekt försöker gestalta människans behov av medmänniskor och hennes behov av att</p><p>känna sig behövd.</p><p>Projektet producerade en artefakt i form av en golvlampa som ska förmedla projektets budskap.</p><p>Projektet skiljer sig något från en konventionell designprocess då budskapet och berättelsen är</p><p>beställaren. Processen bygger på ett förhållningssätt som har kommit att kallas konceptdesign.</p>

South Africais a country with many well documented inequalities. To reduce some of them there are many volunteers working in the country. What is it like to observe and work with people affected by all these inequalities? The aim of this study is to develop an understanding of how volunteers experience their work with children inCape Town. The questions I intend to answer in the study are: How do the volunteers experience their work when meeting kids in vulnerable situations and seeing the situation in the country they work in? Does the volunteer work create more cross- culture understanding and do the volunteers' views change during the course of their volunteer work? What goals and/or reasons do the volunteers have for volunteering?           The study was performed inCape Town,South Africa, and consists of nine semi-structured interviews with volunteers that, in different ways, work with children.                       Previous research about volunteers suggests that volunteer work can increase cross-culture understanding but there is also a risk that it might strengthen the stigmatisation. It is also suggested that volunteer tourism is a more sustainable way of travelling than other forms of tourism. The volunteers are driven by different reasons for volunteering they can have altruistic reasons or they can be driven by more self-developing reasons. The participants in this study had different reasons for volunteering like making a change, getting new experiences etcetera. Many of the volunteers described their first encounter with the South African culture as a bit of a shock due to the extreme poverty evident in the country. They also stated that meeting the children was simultaneously a positive and negative experience, as the poverty and social deprivation affecting the children was hard to observe, yet these are still kids and they play and are happy like any other kids in the world. Many of the participants also felt that they could contribute trough their work and that they had the chance to make a difference.                       The results have been analyzed through two articles on the subject of cross-culture understanding and reasons on volunteering.     A majority of the volunteers described an increased cross-culture understanding, but seemed unaware of the risk of stigmatisation. The volunteers have both more self-fulfilling reasons for volunteering and some more altruistic reasons.

This study was an effort to uncover four major facts: (a) the predictive power ofthe proposed integrated model, which posits the influence of attitudes (ATT), subjectivenorms (SN), perceived behavior control (PBC), altruism, self-construal, and paperrecyclingknowledge on behavioral intentions; (b) the moderating effects ofindividualism-collectivism (I-C) on the attitudes-intentions relationship and thesubjective norms-intentions relationship; (c) the comparison of the predictive power ofthe TPB model and the proposed integrated model; and (d) the relationship between twointentions measures: behavioral intentions and implementation intentions.This cross-sectional research consisted of two phases: the TPB elicitation researchand the main study. Participants were undergraduate students recruited from two majorpublic universities in Thailand and the U.S. The sample size used in the main analysiscomprised 417 respondents from Thailand (representing a collectivistic society) and 432respondents from the U.S. (representing an individualistic society). Structural equationmodeling (SEM) was employed to investigate the predictability of the TPB model and theintegrated model. Multi-group SEM was implemented to examine the moderating effectsof I-C. Correlation analysis was conducted to detect the relationship between the twointentions measures.The results yielded some significant findings enhancing our understanding ofpaper-recycling intentions of college students in the two countries. First, TPBdeterminants, especially PBC and SN, were potential predictors of paper recycling.Although ATT was not a successful antecedent of intentions in Thailand, it predictedintentions of U.S. participants. Second, altruism was a significant factor explaining ATTand PBC for both samples; it also directly influenced intentions. Third, two types of selfconstrualsignificantly and distinctively affected ATT and SN. Fourth, paper-recyclingknowledge failed to predict either attitudes or intentions in either country. Fifth, althoughthe ratio difference of the model X2 and the R2 showed the TPB model to be slightly morepowerful than the integrated model, and TPB was more parsimonious, the integratedmodel advances our understanding of additional psychosocial and cultural factors withregard to paper recycling. Finally, the significant correlation between the behavioralintentionsand the implementation-intentions measures were positive and relatively high.Findings can benefit communication campaigns targeting audiences in different cultures.

This thesis consists of three essays. In Precautionary Saving under Correlated Risk, I show that the sign of the correlation between the random variables might determine whether saving increases or decreases when risk is introduced. Precautionary saving is thus not confirmed. In the second part of this chapter, the consumer must also allocate her saving between an insurance and an interest-bearing asset. It is shown that switching the sign of correlation changes the optimal insurance ratio and probably also optimal saving. Saving and Portfolio Choice by Mutually Altruistic Consumers treats the effects of mutual altruism between two individuals. Compared to the Utilitarian social optimum there is, on the one hand, a tendency to higher saving and lower risk share resulting from the higher uncertainty of future income in the Nash equilibrium. On the other hand, there is a tendency to lower saving and higher risk share arising from the possibility of a free ride on the generosity of others, named "Samaritan's Dilemma". Analytically, it was not possible to determine the size or the direction of divergences in the choice variables. Numerical examples show that the effect of the Samaritan's Dilemma outweighs the effect of the greater uncertainty of future income in the Nash equilibrium. However, the divergence in saving between the two solutions is rather small. In the literature, uncertain lifetime has been used to explain both unexpectedly low and unexpectedly high saving by the elderly. In The Effect of Uncertain Lifetime on the Saving of the Elderly, risk is introduced into the remaining lifetime and the consequences of a background risk are investigated. Introducing uncertain lifetime into the certainty model results in a slower decumulation of wealth from the date of retirement. On the contrary, introducing uncertain lifetime into a model with uncertain investment income results in a swifter decumulation and an earlier depletion of wealth.

In recent years, employees at large companies have started to demand that their employer should work more for good causes. The money the company wants to donate to charity is distributed mostly through a vote to decide where the money will be remitted. The purpose of this design case is to develop a design concept for a web-based donation service that involves all employees at a company. Furthermore, the authors of this study intends to explore how the motivation for employees of a company can be affected by participation in this service. In this design case, the service function, quality and concept was tested and evaluated. The testing phase consisted of a user test in which a number of participants tested a prototype of the service. The design process that was used in this design case is target design which is described by Goodwin (2009). For three days, user testing of the service and interviews with six individuals were conducted. The conclusions drawn in this study was that the process of giving needs to be trusted by the user, and there is a clear indication that the service would increase the motivation to work for it´s users.

In an altering world of work where change is inevitable, and with the vast growth of a technological era unknown to mankind and which leaves the human factor behind, there is an outcry for leaders leading by example. Leaders today have a responsibility towards their followers by leading with their hearts, souls and minds, whilst intrinsically motivating their followers. Spiritual leaders are individuals who live by their values, ethics and attitudes, who intrinsically motivate themselves as well as their followers, whilst instilling a sense of belonging and membership in the organisation. When a leader demonstrates these qualities, it increases the psychological wellbeing, productivity and morale of the employee, adding towards the triple bottom-line of people, planet and profit, whilst at the same time reducing absenteeism. The objective of this study was to develop and validate a spiritual leadership questionnaire in the South African context. A quantitative, random probability sampling survey design was utilised in construction organisations in the Gauteng and Northern Cape Provinces, reaching a sample size of 221 participants. By making use and adapting the Spiritual Leadership Theory Questionnaire, the Spirituality Scale, the Religious Involvement Questionnaire and the Meaning in Life Questionnaire, a biographical questionnaire was used to develop the Spiritual Leadership Questionnaire on a 4-point Likert scale. Participation was completely voluntary. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to verify whether the constructs measured the latent variable of spiritual leadership, while Structural Equation Modelling with the application on the Mplus program was used to confirm the relationships between the constructs, and to determine the validity and reliability of the latent variables. Acceptable item reliability was found in a three-factor model, namely spirituality, vision/hope/faith, and altruism. The results indicated practical and statistically significant relationships between the latent variable spiritual leadership and the constructs spirituality, vision/hope/faith and altruism. Recommendations followed, as well as indications for future research. / MCom (Industrial Psychology), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the personality differences between altruistic and nonaltruistic adolescents. A secondary purpose was to compare the two measures employed in assessing altruism, and to determine whether or not altruistic behavior differed as a function of sex and socio-economic groups. One hundred eighty junior high school students were subjects for the experiment. Each subject was administered an author adapted version of the Mf 3 Scale from the MMPI (Minnesota Multaphasic Personality Inventory), made a voluntary monetary contribution to the March of Dimes, and was then administered the Junior Senior High School Personality Questionnaire. A small but significant correlation was found between the adapted Mf 3 Scale and the March of Dimes donation, and significant personality variables were found to differentiate altruistic from non-altruistic adolescents. No differences were found in altruistic behavior as a function of sex and socio-economic status. Recommendations were made for further research, and research findings were discussed with their implications for education, counseling, and the identification of potentially helpful people.

Chapter 1 Low-skilled Migration and Altruism: Population ageing has become a common concern among welfare states, including Canada and most of the OECD countries. Immigration has been identified as a solution to help sustain labour-force growth in industrialized countries, and as the factor most able to mitigate dire predictions of future fiscal imbalances. This chapter examines the impact of low-skilled immigration in a host country where households are altruists with a pay-as-you-go pension system to support the elderly. It demonstrates that low-skilled immigration does not harm the welfare of the domestic population. We use an overlapping-generations model similar to the work of Razin and Sadka (2000) but introduce paternalistic altruism into the life-cycle framework. Within this context of inter-generational altruism and pay-as-you-go pension systems, the initial negative fiscal impact of low-skilled migrants is compensated, thus, all income groups (high and low) and all age groups (young and old) benefit from migration. // Chapter 2 Growth and Sustainability: In light of the major environmental issues experienced by several countries in the last decades, several papers have advocated the rethinking of the role of governments in environmental preservation. This chapter develops an overlapping-generations model of environmental quality and production and investigates the potential role of governmental participation in the preservation of the quality of the environment so as to achieve both economic growth and environmental sustainability. The analysis suggests that long term economic growth and environment sustainability can be maintained with tax-funded environmental programs in a context of a negative production externality on the quality of the environment. // Chapter 3 The Incidence of Geography on Canada’s Services Trade: We estimate geographic barriers to export trade in nine service categories for Canada's provinces from 1997 to 2007 using the structural gravity model. Constructed Home, Domestic and Foreign Bias indexes capture the direct plus indirect effect of services trade costs on intra-provincial, inter-provincial and international trade relative to their frictionless benchmarks. Barriers to services international trade are huge relative to inter-provincial trade and large relative to goods international trade. A novel test confirms the fit of structural gravity with services trade data.