individuals might volunteer to help others by comparing experimental results with the self-reported motivations of Teach for America volunteers. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that volunteerism is rooted in self-interest, and this is evidenced by not only the experimental data, but by the actions of Teach for America as an organization as well as the self-reports of individual members. Although this does not help explain why volunteerism is held in such high regard, it does serve to demonstrate that volunteering and ostensibly altruistic actions are not as difficult to explain as one might think.

The question of why people volunteer to help others is difficult to answer succinctly, because answering it demands that one consider a number of relatively disparate fields of study and investigation, including everything from evolutionary psychology to management theory. However, one can at least begin to formulate a general explanation of volunteerism that seems to hold regardless...
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