Discussion
The present study found that the relationship between rejection avoidance and altruism was moderated by social norms; that is, people who fear rejection from others tend to inhibit altruism only when altruism was not perceived as normative. These findings contribute to explaining the results of a previous study (Kawamura & Kusumi, 2018), which found that rejection avoidance is related to altruism toward strangers. Our findings are in line with previous work showing that altruism can be negatively evaluated when it deviates from the social norm (Parks & Stone, 2010). This may explain why people with high rejection avoidance display less altruism when non-prosocial norms are present. Although altruism generally leads to a good reputation (Barclay, 2012), people with high rejection avoidance may focus on the possibility that they will be negatively evaluated by others and subsequently refrain from altruistic behaviors when a prosocial norm does not exist. Overall, the present study provides novel evidence that the relationship between altruism and rejection avoidance is moderated by social norms, and it provides a plausible explanation for the counterintuitive negative relationship between reputation and altruism. This result suggests the importance of considering the influence of social norms when investigating the relationship between reputation and altruism. However, there are several limitations. First, many participants scored at the highest levels of the altruism variable, indicating a possible ceiling effect was present.
