ABSTRACT
C onsider the following examples: Michael J. Fox suffered from Parkinson’s disease and became a highly visible booster of research on Parkinson’s disease. Cicely Tyson lost her sister to lung cancer and was featured in a nationwide ad campaign to encourage women to stop smoking. Many who give to help AIDS patients are themselves members of the gay community (Snyder & Omoto, 1992). Do all of these examples confirm the widespread perception that people are primarily self-interested and care most about those causes to which they have a personal connection (Miller & Ratner, 1996, 1998; Wuthnow, 1991)? That people often explain their own acts of compassion in self-interested terms further implies a central role of self-interest in charitable giving and volunteerism behaviors (Wuthnow, 1991).
