The geographic prevalence of various altruistic behaviors (nonreciprocal acts that improve other people’s welfare) is not uniformly distributed, but whether this reflects variation in a superordinate construct linked to national-level outcomes or cultural values is unknown. We compiled data on seven altruistic behaviors across 48 to 152 nations and found evidence that these behaviors reflect a latent construct positively associated with national-level subjective well-being (SWB) and individualist values, even when we controlled for national-level wealth, health, education, and shared cultural history. Consistent with prior work, our results showed that SWB mediated the relationship between two objective measures of well-being (wealth and health) and altruism (n = 130). Moreover, these indirect effects increased as individualist values increased within the subset of countries (n = 90) with available data. Together, our results indicate that altruism increases when resources and cultural values provide objective and subjective means for pursuing personally meaningful goals and that altruistic behaviors may be enhanced by societal changes that promote well-being.

各种利他行为（改善他人福利的非互惠行为）在地理上的流行并不是均匀分布的，但这是否反映了与国家级结果或文化价值观相关的上级结构的变化尚不清楚。我们汇编了 48 到 152 个国家的七项利他行为的数据，发现有证据表明这些行为反映了与国家层面主观幸福感 (SWB) 和个人主义价值观正相关的潜在结构，即使我们控制了国家层面的财富、健康、教育和共享的文化历史。与之前的工作一致，我们的结果表明，主观幸福感调节了幸福感（财富和健康）和利他主义（n= 130）。此外，这些间接影响随着可用数据国家子集（n = 90）中个人主义价值观的增加而增加。总之，我们的结果表明，当资源和文化价值观为追求个人有意义的目标提供客观和主观的手段时，利他主义就会增加，而促进福祉的社会变革可能会增强利他行为。