Social Motivation : Are We Better Now Than Then?

Abstract

<P> For a few years the political and economic situation in Poland has been getting worse in many respects: the unemployment rate has been rising, the budget deficit has been growing, trust in politicians has been falling. The state has been unable to perform many of its functions, for example, in the area of health care services. The pessimistic situation has been accompanied by pessimistic social moods, supported by the catastrophic tone of the media and the Polish tendency to complain. However, not everything has been that bad. An optimistic tone may be seen in the social involvement of Poles. Over the past three years, the number of Poles engaged in various forms of voluntary jobs has increased markedly. </P><P>Surveys done in the years 1994-2002 on representative samples of Poles show an increase in sensitivity to the public good and a significant growth in the strength of social orientations, particularly prosocial ones. The results show that social orientations, understood both as outcome allocation preferences and as control allocation preferences, affect the prosocial behaviors of Poles. The measures of attitudes and behaviors were: attitudes toward public goods, declared environment-friendly behaviors, and declared limited resources crisis behaviors. As it has turned out, it is not the orientations themselves that are the best predictors of such behaviors but their absolute value. Thus, for prosocial attitudes it is not one's cooperative orientation that matters but his/her concern for joint outcomes, even when he/she cares for minimization of those joint outcomes. That one wants something is more important than what the something is. This is a theoretically unexpected result, and, as such, it needs replication in further studies.</P>