Citation

Mattis JS, Hammond WP, Grayman N, Bonacci M, Brennan W, Cowie SA, Ladyzhenskaya L, So S. Am. J. Community Psychol. 2009; 43(1-2): 71-84.

Affiliation

Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, 239 Greene Street 4th Floor, New York, NY 10003, USA. jsm2015@nyu.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1007/s10464-008-9217-5

PMID

19156513

PMCID

PMC3049186

Abstract

Contemporary social science paints a bleak picture of inner-city relational life. Indeed, the relationships of low-income, urban-residing Americans are represented as rife with distress, violence and family disruption. At present, no body of social scientific work systematically examines the factors that promote loving or selfless interactions among low-income, inner-city American individuals, families and communities. In an effort to fill that gap, this ethnographic study examined the motivations for altruism among a sample of adults (n = 40) who reside in an economically distressed housing community (i.e., housing project) in New York City. Content analyses of interviews indicated that participants attributed altruism to an interplay between 14 motives that were then ordered into four overarching categories of motives: (1) needs-centered motives, (2) norm-based motives deriving from religious/spiritual ideology, relationships and personal factors, (3) abstract motives (e.g., humanism), and (4) sociopolitical factors. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Language: en