Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

15 minutes

Tune In: The personal effects of altruism

25 minutes

Find Out: Exploring evidence about the benefits of doing good

15 minutes

Take Action: Remind yourself (and others) why it’s good to give

5 minutes

Reflection

Tune In: The personal effects of altruism

Preparation

This lesson and the other lessons in this unit use The Life You Can Save book and organisation to inspire students to develop their ethical thinking capabilities and think critically about what it means to be considerate and giving. To give some context around this lesson and the resources students will use in the following steps, you might like to explain to your students that The Life You Can Save works to eliminate poverty. They look into different non-profits that are running highly impactful programs to help reduce poverty. They figure out which programs work well to solve problems stemming from poverty and then try to tell more people about them to gain support. They also help connect people who want to donate money with these non-profits, so their donations can make a big impact. They aim to create a world where everyone has an opportunity to build a great life and where there’s no suffering or death due to extreme poverty.

Step 1

Invite your students to stand in a line across the classroom. Assign one side of the classroom as ‘strongly agree’’ and the other as ‘strongly disagree,’ with the middle being ‘neutral.’ Read the following statements and ask your students to head to the part of the line that represents their answer the most:

Giving and helping others makes us feel good about ourselves.
Giving and helping others can be beneficial for our mental health.
Giving and helping others can be beneficial for our physical health.
- Call on some students to explain their reasoning behind this stance. Why do they think that? What was the physical response in their body when they helped someone? How did they feel immediately and afterwards?
Giving and helping others can be detrimental to our mental or physical health.
- Again, call on some students to explain their reasoning here. Is it possible to give too much? What does this look like?

Step 2

Assign your students the role of reverse investigators. Instead of asking students to analyse evidence given to them to determine a conclusion, give your students the conclusion and ask them in pairs to determine what evidence they would need in order to believe that the conclusion was true. Students can record their answers in the Student Worksheet.

The conclusion is: “Giving away a large amount of your money to people experiencing poverty is beneficial for your physical health.”

You might like to talk a little bit about empirical evidence in the form of qualitative and quantitative data.

Empirical evidence is the evidence we directly observe and receive from our senses. It can be qualitative, which is descriptive (based on interpretation and language), or quantitative (numbers-based and able to be measured).

Step 3

Invite your groups to share their required evidence with the class. Are there any similarities or differences in their thinking?

Find Out: Exploring evidence about the benefits of doing good

Step 1

Watch the following video with your students, which talks about the principle of altruism.

Altruism | Ethics Defined - McCombs School of Business (www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJEhog-vZKU)

Explain to your students what altruism is using the definition below and ask students if they can think of any examples of altruistic behaviour.

Altruism refers to behaviours that benefit another person or alleviate their distress without any foreseeable benefit—and often a cost—to the actor and without an expectation of anything in return (Source: Batson & Powell (2003); de Waal (2008)

An example of altruistic behaviour might be someone anonymously performing random acts of kindness for someone in need, where they willingly give up their own resources without any expectation of recognition or personal gain. Altruism is a type of pro-social behaviour.

Ask your students what the term pro-social behaviour might mean. They may have heard the term before, but if they haven’t, encourage them to think about anti-social behaviour and how these two might differ.

Prosocial behaviours include a wide range of behaviours that bring social benefits but result from a variety of circumstances and motivations.

Step 2

Pose the following question to your students and ask them to think of all the different ways to be altruistic in this particular situation:

A group of young people from your town want to start a litter clean-up crew to clean city parks. What are different ways you could help this effort?

Possible responses could include:

Joining the clean-up crew and contributing time to clean up the environment.
Providing resources to the crew such as garbage bags, gloves, bins.
Giving financial assistance.
Promoting the initiative to the local community, or engaging others in joining the effort.

Explain to your students that research has shown that altruism improves the wellbeing of the people involved in the altruistic act, including the person doing the act, the person who benefits from the act, and even observers.

Ask your students to reflect on the activity they completed at the start of the lesson to brainstorm independently on their Student Worksheet why they think this improvement in wellbeing might exist.

Step 3

Divide your students into groups of 2-3 and assign each group one of the questions below (these are also available on the Student Worksheet). In their groups, students should explore the resource Doing Good and Feeling Good: Relationships Between Altruism and Well-being for Altruists, Beneficiaries, and Observers, a chapter of the 2023 World Happiness Report, and produce a response to their question guided by other research if necessary. Encourage them to analyse and interpret the data presented and include examples to illustrate their point.

Students requiring support could complete questions 1 or 4.

Students requiring extension could complete questions 3 or 5.

Questions

More people around the world said that they had given to charity, volunteered or helped a stranger during the pandemic than in the years before. Why do you think people were actually more giving during a crisis that was making their own lives more difficult (the pandemic)?

This is very unusual behaviour in the animal kingdom. Animals usually focus on looking after themselves at all costs when times get tough. They are not generous.

In your own words, what is the difference between altruism, cooperation, and fairness (pp.105-6)? Which one of these do you think people mostly practice? Why?

Possible answers could include altruism is acting in a way that does not benefit the person helping, and cooperation helps both people

“Altruism refers to behaviours that benefit another person or alleviate their distress without any foreseeable extrinsic benefit—and often a cost—to the actor and without an expectation of anything in return.” Do you believe people will do things for others without any benefit—and sometimes even a cost—to themselves? Why?

Which behaviour (p. 108) led to the most reported life satisfaction? Why do you think this might be? List some of the effects of altruism on altruistic actors’ (the people doing the act) wellbeing (pp. 115-6).

Why are we more inclined to help people related to us over strangers (p.113)?

There seems to be an evolutionary benefit to helping those closely related to us. If we help members of our own family, our DNA is more likely to carry on in the next generation, who will also learn that helping others is important and further guarantee the survival of our own species.

Gratitude has positive effects on wellbeing, but research shows that it could actually improve our overall health by improving our sleep and reducing inflammation (p.114). Why do you think that being grateful can have positive effects on our physical health?

“Interestingly, altruistic actors seem to underestimate the positive effects of helping on beneficiaries’ wellbeing. In one recent study, people who were instructed to perform a “random act of kindness” consistently underestimated how much the act would be valued by recipients and how much it would improve their wellbeing (p.113).” What, if any, impact do you think this has on people’s willingness to be altruistic? Why?

People might think it isn’t ‘worth’ helping others, reducing their altruistic actions (p.113).

Step 4

Watch the following short clip from The Life You Can Save about the benefits of spending on others compared to yourself.

Would you spend money on yourself or others? #shorts - GivingWhatWeCanCommunity (https://youtube.com/shorts/0-Ncok1QELI?feature=shared)

Either in small groups or as a class, invite your students to share the answers to their questions to discuss and get an overview of the positive benefits of altruistic behaviour to all involved.

Take Action: Remind yourself (and others) why it’s good to give

Step 1

Either independently or in their small groups, ask your students to record a short statement that reminds themselves or others about the benefits of behaving in a way that helps others and the effect this has on the health and wellbeing of all people involved.

This could be written as short messages to be displayed around the room, or if you have the time and resources available, these messages could be presented through a TikTok-style video, advertisements, poems, songs or even a short roleplay.

This message could include the facts and statistics mentioned in the report, but it could also focus on the positive feelings experienced when helping others, as discussed in the Tune In section.

You might like to encourage students to stitch together everyone's responses and create a class video with these messages to share with other members of the school and community to spread the message of the links between altruistic behaviour and positive personal wellbeing.

Extension

If you would like to delve a little deeper into this with your school community, you could encourage students, instead of recording their own messages, to find members of the school community, including parents, staff, and students who participate in voluntary pursuits. Students could record short videos of these people talking about their experiences volunteering, focusing on the rewarding feelings it brought them. Students could pull together all of these short recordings to create a video showing how participating in giving impacts wellbeing and show this at an assembly or year-level meeting.

Reflection

At the beginning of the lesson, students played the role of reverse investigator to determine what evidence they would need to believe the following statement: “Giving away a large amount of your money to people experiencing poverty is beneficial for your physical health.”

Invite students to reflect on this lesson by asking if there was any evidence that they found today that supports the conclusion that “Giving away almost all of your money to people experiencing poverty is beneficial for your physical health.”

Was there any evidence they found that was similar to what they had brainstormed at the beginning of the lesson?

Enhancing Wellbeing Through Altruistic Behaviour

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