The healthy selfishness and pathological altruism scale: adaptation into Turkish and validity and reliability study

Abstract

Selfishness and altruism are two concepts of paradoxical nature. Examination of these concepts according to individuals and cultures may provide a better understanding of the paradoxical structure in question. In this study, it was aimed to adapt the Healthy Selfishness and Pathological Altruism Scale (Kaufman & Jauk, 2020) into Turkish and to conduct a validity and reliability study. Before proceeding to the main study, a validity and reliability study was conducted with a study group of 122 (84 women & 38 men) adults to get preliminary information about the scale. The main study group of the research consisted of 570 (392 female, 178 male) adults. The two-factor structure of the scale was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. Healthy selfishness was positively related to self-love, self-efficacy, and altruism, whereas pathological altruism had a negative relationship with self-love, self-efficacy, and altruism. The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient was .95 for healthy selfishness and .91 for pathological altruism. As a result, all findings showed that the Healthy Selfishness Pathological Altruism Scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool.