Sara Konrath research conducted with colleagues from the University of Michigan took random sample of 10,317 people from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. The participants are high school graduates in 1957, which in 2008 they were around 69 years of age, and about half of them are women.
At around 2004 participants recorded how often they volunteered in the previous 10 years. They also asked why the volunteered, or if there is new and has never planned to become a volunteer, what are the reasons that motivated their plans.The result, some participants expressed the reasons they are more oriented to other people, such as "I think it's important to help others" or "volunteering is an essential activity for people who I know well". However, there are also respondents who answer more self-oriented, such as "volunteering is a good escape for a problem that I experienced", or "volunteering makes me feel better".
The researchers then compared the reasons for the respondents with physical health information collected in 1992. They also pay attention to socio-economic status, mental health, social support, marital status, and health risk factors including smoking habits, alcohol consumption, and body mass index.
The results showed that in 2008 they are volunteering with an emphasis on conditions other people have a lower mortality rate than participants who did not volunteer. Of the 2384 participants were non-volunteers, 4.3 percent of them died four years later, while only 1.6 percent of respondents volunteer who died in the same year.
Meanwhile, participants who claimed to be a volunteer with a focus on self have almost the same mortality rate, which is 4 percent, compared to those who do not volunteer at all.
"It is reasonable if the person becomes a volunteer for the benefit of ourselves, but our results show that, the irony, if the benefits are self-motivated, they do not benefit at all,"
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