Why people with fewer resources are more altruistic

People from humbler backgrounds and with fewer resources tend to be more altruistic.

Decades ago, it was believed that human beings basically base their resource management on an economic calculation based on costs and benefits. on the basis of an economic calculation based on costs and benefits.. According to this idea, everything we do in relation to others responds to a prior reflection on what we lose or gain by choosing each option.

However... where is altruism in this formula? If the conception of the human mind based on economic calculations has lost strength, it is partly because many of the things we do when interacting with each other have more to do with empathy, feelings of identification and the way of conceiving coexistence than with the will to gain power and not lose the power we have. Y the fact that the people who have the least are the most altruistic is an example of this.

Altruism in people with less money.

If we were to act completely rationally and following economic calculations (i.e., guided by the logic of numbers), we would expect that the richest people would be the most willing to be altruistic and give away part of their belongings, and that poor people would be the most reluctant to share, given that they are in a tight spot when it comes to securing their means of subsistence. However, several studies indicate that, beyond theory, in the real world it is rather the same: people with the least money are the ones who give the most to others, and they do so voluntarily.and they do so voluntarily.

For example, in research whose results were published in 200 in the journal Health Psychology it was found that people with a lower purchasing power (determined by variables such as income level, education and type of trade or profession) were more willing to give money to charitable causes, as well as tending to adopt a more open and receptive attitude towards strangers in need of help.

On the other hand, the tendency of people from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds to be more altruistic has been recorded even in preschool children. How can this be explained? Certainly not rationality, understood as a series of strategies to conserve what one has and earn more. Let's see why.

Fewer resources, more social assets

In practice, those who have few material resources are not limited to living the life of the middle or wealthy classes but with far fewer means: their way of life is qualitatively different, and the way in which social relations are established is one of these differences.

Poverty is the default situation in which the majority of the population has lived over the centuries. Wealth, or the ability to live without major economic worries, is the exception, not the norm. Thus, large communities of people have large communities of people have at one and the same time found themselves in povertyand over the generations they have done something about it: they have formed associations, neighborhood and protection networks, which may extend to people in other communities.

As there are no habits that do not change ideas in the long run, communities of people with few resources have been internalizing the idea that individualism is something harmful that brings problems in the face of the threat of extreme poverty, so it is necessary to adopt a collectivist mentality. Hence, the habit of helping others has become perfectly expected in any context where someone needs help. This is a cultural tendency and identification among equals, a necessary logic for groups of people without resources to maintain themselves and be stable..

In contrast, middle- or upper-class people living in cities have little reason to create complex social bonds of solidarity, so that help is seen more as a personal decision, something unrelated to the functioning of the community.

It is better not to mythologize

This type of psychological phenomena can lead us to think that people from more humble origins live a more authentic, honest or even happy life: after all, they would more often behave in the way we identify as ethically correct. However, it is worth remembering that poverty has a very negative impact on all areas of life: health, education, and the ability tohealth, education and the ability to raise children.