Altruism and prosocial behaviour—acting to help others with no direct benefit to oneself—are challenging to study in highly competitive, high-stakes environments. Organizational psychologists are interested in how high-frequency financial traders perceive and experience their own altruistic actions, such as mentoring junior colleagues or sharing proprietary market strategies during periods of extreme market volatility. Because personal motivation and values are highly internal and subjective, researchers believe that a self-report method is the most appropriate way to gather detailed, first-hand data on traders' personal motivations.
A team of organizational psychologists is planning to conduct self-report research to investigate how high-frequency financial traders perceive and report their own prosocial behaviours.
Outline two weaknesses of using the self-report method in this study.
644 exam-style questions on OCR A Level Psychology Research methods and techniques. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.