#84. The Moral Psychology of Voluntourism - Dr. Melanie Altemus

Dr. Melanie Altemus of Massey University, New Zealand, explores the complex psychology behind volunteer tourism, including motivations, moral implications, and the impact of the 'white savior' complex. She shares insights from her research on how volunteerism can sometimes do more harm than good and discusses the importance of understanding the underlying psychological traits involved. Dr. Melanie Altemus shares her groundbreaking research on international volunteer tourism, exploring motivations, moral judgments, and community impacts in Fiji and beyond. Discover surprising findings about privilege, cultural exchange, and the true effects of volunteer work.

Dr. Altemus' Thesis:
https://openaccess.wgtn.ac.nz/articles/thesis/Stories_of_Saviourism_Examining_the_Moral_Negotiations_in_Volunteer_Tourism/30586076?file=61733902

Transcript

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Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Smooth Brain Society. Every year, 10 million people pay to volunteer abroad, building schools, working with kids, making a difference, but can helping actually cause harm? Today, we're joined by Dr. Melanie Altimas, currently working at Massey University in New Zealand, whose research is one of the first to explore the moral psychology behind voluntourism. Her recent work has surveyed hundreds of volunteer tourists, tested how we judge these good intentions gone wrong, and has also spent time living in a Fijian village that hosts these volunteers to understand the impacts from the views, sorry, to understand the impacts from the view of the hosts. Join us as we unpack some of the uncomfortable truths about doing good. Dr. Altmus, welcome to the SmoothBrain Society. Yay, thank you, Sahir. That was a great intro. Yeah, really happy to be here. And it's so fun to be able to talk about my research. um Just graduated in December, so it's still kind of fresh. Yeah. Let's get into it. Yes, we shall. Very quickly, Feryl is back to co-host. It's been a while since you have co-hosted. Beth, who's usually the co-host these days, is submitting her PhD at the moment. So stressful times for her. You guys can relate, considering you guys submitted what? A couple of years, a year and a bit ago? Not that long ago at all. not even. Still traumatized. All right, Mao, I guess the first question we ask everybody is a little bit of an origin story. What kind of got you into researching voluntourism? Yeah, so, I guess going way back to like my childhood. I did grow up partially going to church on Sundays with my mom. And it was always really, you you always look up to the bigger kids that go and do these fun things with their friends. And so they would go on mission trips for over the summer for like a full week. And we thought of mission trips as like, You get to go away for a week, have fun, and you're volunteering. So you come back and you get all this social praise of, wow, you helped the community, you sacrificed part of your summer. And I wanted to be just like them. So when I grew up, I did go on a couple of those mission trips. um And they were within the US. So I'm from the US. um So that was a kind of a different situation when you think of voluntourism, you think international, but it actually does happen within m the US as well and can happen within countries. But essentially it was with communities that were historically marginalized or experienced some sort of maybe financial hardship or things like that. um And yeah, I didn't really, thought, of course it's great. I'm being socially praised for this. It's helping people. How could it be anything but good? um And then fast forward to undergrad when I did a study abroad trip to Southeast Asia. with a leadership group and we did do some volunteering there as part of the program. So it wasn't a voluntourism trip, like we just volunteered for one day at an orphanage. um But that's when I really started to think about this more critically because we entered the classroom, I was really excited and I realized it was just me and like 30 kids and I'm in Cambodia. They don't speak any English. I don't speak any of their language. So it was and I just didn't know what to do. And I'm like, what do I even talk about? What am I doing here? Like I have no idea how to even approach this. m I'm not a train teacher. So basically we ended up just playing games and I think I taught them the word vegetarian, which is hilarious and so random. I didn't know what else to do. And so I felt I just felt unfulfilled afterwards and I was asking people on my trip, like, what did you guys think of that? Did you like, but everyone seemed really happy with it. And they were just excited that they got to meet children from the local community and the children seemed excited. So it would be really easy to just move on and say like, that was, that was good. And not look into it deeper. But I actually, because it was a study abroad trip, part of what we were doing was thinking about leadership in the host countries that we were staying in. And so I did do more digging and I learned all about how a lot of orphanages, um and this was like an orphanage slash school, so the kids lived there. And I learned a lot about how a lot of orphanages actually um bring in children from the foothills um and they pay parents to take their kids from their homes and put them into orphanages to meet the demands um of tourists that want to volunteer with children. So there's a whole business going on in Southeast Asia with children and people wanting to interact with them, wanting to take pictures with them, wanting to feel good about their volunteer trips. um And then there's the other side of it. So there's this really kind of dark underbelly to this. uh And of course that leads to um exposure for children, to people that could cause harm, it could lead to trafficking, all these darker consequences. um And on the other side of it, even if that's not what's happening in the school that you're in, just the unskilled approach to this, takes away time from them where they could have been learning something more, I don't know, helpful. And yeah, just kind of a lack, a waste of resources really in some ways, but that's my perspective. And I think there is value. When I learned from my research is there is value. in just this exposure to other cultures and relationships. em But it's really tricky to get right, I think. um So anyway, this is a really long story for how we got here. But I actually ended up going into clinical psychology after I graduated undergrad. um And I learned I did interviewing with families with em families that were receiving like community mental health services. And I went into their homes. And em a lot of these families were experiencing hardship and um I interviewed them for three time points. So I was kind of following the family stories and I thought, wow, this is really what I care about. Like I really value speaking to people one-on-one and hearing their stories. And that's how I want to inform change or inform um policy and make structural changes rather than kind of individual. Cause I really did think about becoming a therapist or becoming a psychologist, but um I don't know, I wanted to make a change that was broader and more structural, I think. So I made a complete 180 on my career path and left clinical psych and went into cross-cultural psychology at Victoria University of Wellington and in the Center for Applied Cross-Cultural Research. yeah, found Dr. Rita McNamara, my supervisor, who does uh cross-cultural moral investigation as well. And yeah, that's how I got there. That was very long. Cool. well, no, that was super cool. uh Why don't you uh tell us about how you decided to, I don't know. Well, this is a difficult thing to study, right? Like how do you find voluntourism sites in the first place? How do you access them? How do you even go about investigating such a complicated? topic So why don't you like tell us a little bit more about that? And I had it like I want to piggyback on that question and I want to ask a little bit more about Is voluntourism also like a psychological experience like when People have come into a given community. Do they feel like they're being voluntoured? Upon I don't know if that makes sense like obviously like tourism is a big industry and people know when they are a site of tourism do people know what? if they're a site of volatilism. Yeah, okay, wait, I'm trying to dissect these questions. So first question was how did I start to investigate such a complex? um And that took me a really long time to figure out. So literature review was extremely challenging because there is, I think almost zero psychological research on volunteer tourism or on international um development, volunteering, whatever you want to call it. um So I ended up kind of reaching from different disciplines. But it took me a really long time to get there because when you start your PhD, you know, they're like, look at this journal and this psychological journal and I haven't I had information then from some tourism stuff. But I found all of that was geared towards this is how you can make your tourism business more Affective and how you can reach more people and how you can advertise your volunteer tourism and it was not geared towards let's understand this phenomenon and understand the psychology and the human experience of this. um So I had to piece together from a ton of different, basically I used em the white saver complex, which is kind of now a buzzword, but I kind of use that as a guide for what characteristics to look into that may be relevant for volunteer tourism. And I collected all the information I could about those characteristics, including um what we call white guilt um or guilt for white privilege, um entitlement, um social dominance, a ton of different characteristics that I looked into and tried to figure out, do all these go together into one person that makes a volunteer? How does this look? And that's kind how I got to my first study was putting together all of these um characteristics that seemed relevant and looking at how they were related to each other for people that were interested in volunteer tourism. um But yeah, it took me a really long time to get there because it's not something that studied in psychology. And I think supervisors even were like, I don't know how to help you. So I felt kind of on my own in this part of it, but I'm really grateful that I did eventually come across um the development side of this research where it is focused on how can we make this more sustainable and ethical. um Like Dr. Shannon McClennan in New Zealand who has helped this research and She has done amazing work um learning about host perspectives on volunteer tourism as well. So there is information out there. It's not necessarily psychological, but it really did um help me frame this research. em And then, sorry, what was the next question? oh We can come back to the next question. have another question. Because my question is, oh so you said that there was nothing psychological about voluntourism. So what was the existing literature about? Like what was already there? Can you take us through that? Yeah, so there was research into motivations of volunteer tourism. So are people self motivated for their own desires? Or is it genuinely to help? Or is it to learn a language? Is it self improvement? So there was, that was probably the main research I found it was the study by Han and it was like with 330 people who had done international volunteering. And they found overall that it was much more wanting cultural exposure and wanting um like a novel experience themselves and helping was like kind of way low on the list of motivations. So that's where I saw the recommendation of if you're advertising your volunteering um you may want to put cultural experience opportunity rather than helping others in a community and it literally says that in the publication. um So although it wasn't meant to be psychological, like obviously motivations are critical for understanding the psychology behind decision-making to participate in something like this. um So I kind of took the psychological implications from studies that were more based around motivation or, um yeah, I'm trying to think of other research that I found. A lot of it was just like statistics, but international volunteering or voluntourism is... not regulated or closely monitored. So it's extremely challenging to find out how popular is this actually? Is it growing? Where is it happening? And how Affective are these projects? And in fact, the last one is measuring the impact of international volunteering is ah I still have not really found many studies on that. think, luckily, things are changing in the development space. People are looking into this more now. um based on some critiques that have been published, which is wonderful, but it's still not monitored the way you'd think it should be, considering it is this power dynamic of people in the Western world and space with um a lot of money and lot of influence traveling to spaces where, yeah, there's less privilege in historical marginalization and colonization. it's, yeah, really interesting. ask one question and then I promise I will stop hogging up question time. But I want to ask why you settled on the White Savior Complex as a main anchor point to build off of. Sorry, just to add to that, out of interest, you said white savior complex, guilt, and you added a few other things. Are these any different from when you're studying them versus how people use them in day-to-day life in terms of words? Is there a difference between when you're talking about them in research versus the general population? I mean, I guess with any, because it was in a survey setting that I use these terms or these concepts. So obviously you're going to have people reporting things maybe differently than they would in real life. But the questions would, um there wasn't like a white saviorism scale. instead of measuring it directly, which I couldn't really do, it was putting together, yeah, those characteristics that people discuss when they talk about white saviorism. But white saviorism itself is a theory. It's not something that has been measured. um It's not, it's something that's discussed and I think it's agreed upon that it exists, but we haven't nailed down what actually that feels like or looks like psychologically. um So that's why I was really curious and why I use white saviorism as the theoretical framework for exploring this. Because white saviorism, um Teju Cole is the, person who I think is a poet or writer um who tweeted about the white savior complex and it got really popular and he used voluntourism as like the quintessential example of white saviorism. So that's kind of why I chose this because it did and it to me personally it felt like it felt real it felt like this is something that I experienced when I was there and in Southeast Asia it felt like we felt better about ourselves for for helping, but did we even make an impact? was a small little, you know, maybe we gave someone a pencil, like we feel really good. Did it make an impact? Was there a sustainable change? Or in fact, did it just progress or, yeah, kind of back up those feelings of power between the Western visitors and the Indigenous hosts? Yeah, so I think that's why I chose the White Savior. complex because I felt like it was something that I personally experienced and it's something that's discussed in social justice literature and also development literature sorry does that answer your question? m no, I think my question just jumps off it quite well, because you mentioned sort of the characteristics. So what sort of characteristics? Because there's no proper scale. But what sort of characteristics do you then associate with this idea of white savior complex? And then I've got another one. Yeah, no, this is a great question. And I actually did a specific regression analysis on those characteristics that I thought were most closely related to the white saver complex. And that was white guilt. So it actually is, for this scale, was guilt for white privilege. So not, you know, just a little bit different. And it was affective empathy. So feeling an affective empathy is different than perspective taking or cognitive empathy because it's when you experience someone else or you see someone else experiencing emotions, you feel them the same way or similarly and kind of can relate on not just a cognitive level but also like physical and emotional level. And Teju Cole and other people that talk about white saber complex talk about it being this big emotional. experience and he calls it white tears, like crying for the experience of others without necessarily understanding or trying to understand why that experience happens and the institutionalized racism and things like that, not going beyond that, um that emotional experience. um So I looked at, so now we have guilt for being, yeah, so white guilt, affective empathy, And self-oriented motivation. So that's um the reasoning people reported for wanting to participate in volunteer tourism. So that could be wanting to further their CV or their language skills or have a novel travel experience. um So yeah, we were just interested to see how people with that actual volunteer tourism experience reported on those characteristics that seemed most aligned with the White Savior Complex.. Doesn't that sound like a good thing to have in the sense like if we're talking about uh voluntourism technically being harmful in a way showing or having like a high level of empathy towards sort of whatever community you're going to help out. Isn't that a good thing? Yeah, this is a really wonderful question. There's, and I'm glad that there's discussion now on these different types of empathy because they do serve different functions. So um affective empathy means that you can feel what other people are feeling, but you don't always have that cognitive empathy piece along with it. And that cognitive empathy piece is really important for understanding why people are going through what they're going through. um and understanding why people are experiencing something is really what you need to be motivated to help someone and to know how to help them appropriately. So you can share those feelings, which is a good thing. I think that's like a human response. But you do need both aspects of empathy in order to make a real change and understand what's going on. Because on the other hand, if you just have perspective taking, or that cognitive, understand why you're suffering, but I don't feel for you, like I'm not experiencing affective empathy, then you also won't feel, you know, if you don't have that human peace, you might not feel motivated either. yeah, em yeah, great question. they on cognitive empathy? Did you measure cognitive empathy? I did, but not for this specific regression analysis. So I did a total of six analyses for this first study, is wild. Yeah. about parts of it. So if you could tell us, run us through the actual study from what you were trying to do, what you did. I mean, you don't need to list the results, but give us an idea of what you did and what was the key things to come out of. Yeah, so I wanted to just start off with the survey to understand what type of characteristics or personality traits or beliefs do people hold that are interested in volunteer tourism or interested in participating. So I put in I think it was nine um measures total, as well as questions like, have you ever participated in international volunteering? Are you interested in participating in the future? And 80 % of people responded that they were interested in international volunteering. And I think it was 33 % had experience. So I wasn't expecting so many people to be interested in the future, like future voluntourism because of now at this point in my research, I was very aware of all the critiques and all the dangers and harms of voluntourism, which we spoke a little bit about. So then I... looked at how people with those interests and experiences responded to surveys on all these different characteristics. then I put them into the biggest finding or biggest method was a social network analysis, which I had never done before. But it's a really cool way to put a lot of different variables in and see how they're related visually. If you're a visual person, it's a great method. because you can see the lines that actually connect to each variable. And the thicker they are, the stronger the connection. The color indicates if it's a positive relationship or a negative relationship. It's just a really nice, clean, easy way to see what's going on in your data. Yeah. And it's basically correlations, but it's detecting all these correlations at one time, and kind of considering each other in that as well. you're also seeing which variable has the most impact out of all of these variables. um And for this study, that was affective empathy, funny enough. So that had the most influence and relationship to all the other characteristics I was measuring. and yeah, should I list off all the ones that I measured? Maybe I don't know if you need to list all of them off but sort of like the maybe like the important ones and so affective empathy relates to all of these ones or voluntourism relates to all of these ones So everyone in this, so basically what I did is I combined the participants who had an interest and experience in voluntourism into one group. uh And originally I was going to separate people with voluntourism experience, people without, but it actually didn't really make sense if most people were interested in voluntourism anyway. So I ended up just combining those groups and looking at that group more in depth. um And so. The key findings from the network analysis or key relationships that I thought were interesting was that, so I measured right-wing authoritarianism and social dominant orientation, um which are related, which we know they're slightly different, um but they're typically positively correlated, but they were also um positively correlated with this idea that there's a cost to um confronting your privilege. So some, that variable kind of reaches at, um like, I'm fearful of discussing my race or my privilege because I might lose friends. So kind of that social fear of social isolation or um detecting some sort of cost basically that um you would receive if you were to really critically examine your own privileges. um So that was very highly correlated with m these power ideologies. Another interesting finding was that I measured entitlement, was also a very key player in this network, surprisingly. um And the more entitled someone felt, the more motivations they had for volunteering, or the higher motivations they had. That was really fascinating and not um what I was expecting. um But it's important to note that... Yes. This is psychological entitlement. Yeah. Yeah. So I believe I deserve more than other were yeah, those type of beliefs. So if you I so if you have that feeling of like, I believe I deserve more than others like entitlement, then you're more likely to be willing to fall into. Is that sort of? or it's, it was more like the motivation. So and those motivations are both that include those self oriented and other oriented motivation. So helping people, but they do also include that. um I want to, you know, experience a new culture, I want to improve my language skills. So some of those were self focused as well. um But still motivated towards that international volunteering experience. I registered entitlement as like recognizing your own privilege, like, oh, I am really entitled. Like I am entitled, so I should volunteer, almost like an altruistic motivation, but this seems to be more selfish entitlement, no? I'm entitled to more, I'm entitled to bigger experiences. yeah, so I use the psychological entitlement scale, which, um which is more like, I think I deserve more than others. I can't think of any other example. But yeah, it's not necessarily an altruism. I mean, and that depends on an altruism is something I talk about a lot because it's something we associate with volunteering, but altruism implies that there's no um direct benefit for the actor, the person that's doing the volunteering or pro-social behavior. uh But in international volunteering or voluntourism, there are direct benefits for the volunteer. So are we judging it like it's an altruistic behavior when technically it's not at all, because this is an exchange, people are. having a vacation and they are, um you know, experiencing culture and benefiting a lot from this experience. But how are we judging that? So that's where I get to my second study. So we can talk about that more. But um yeah, yeah, good question. so you you indicated towards moving to your second study. have one question about this one before we move on to that. That's did was there any sort of predictions which you had or things which you thought you would find at the start when you. did the survey which and those relationships didn't exist or were the other way around ah or anything like that. Yeah, definitely. I thought that affective empathy would for sure be higher for those with volunteering experience or those with international, with that actual tangible experience doing that. But it was the opposite. And I also found that the more one felt motivated to volunteer, the more they're willing to confront their privilege, but the less they are aware of their privilege. So that was um pretty kind of surprising. It just wasn't something I was really thinking about, but it ended up being a more surprising finding because it felt like, yeah, I want to get out there and I want to make a difference, but I don't really understand it. And I don't really understand the systemic reasons for why I have this privilege. um And I think that that really um can kind of reflect what we think about when we think about um international development coming in with people from another country being like, yeah, I want to help. I want to dig a well for you and get you fresh water. But they don't understand the land. They don't understand the dangers or harms if you do it incorrectly. So it's that motivation for wanting to do something, but not necessarily um being aware of their own positionality and their own limitations. So yeah, that wasn't something I was looking for, but. I thought it was interesting and I talked a lot about it in my thesis. super interesting. So let's move on because I feel a lot of these questions will come back and link through your other studies. I wanted to talk about the second study now. So what did you do? How was this different? So the first one was obviously a survey kind of, uh yeah, talking, asking a lot of people and about their motivations essentially for voluntourism and ideas behind it. yeah, let's go into the second study now. Sure, so the second study was more looking at not the people who actually do the volunteering, but people that may be their peers or people that would typically be in that space. So um I asked students at Victoria University, and I know we don't really like to, it's not always a good idea to use students as a representative sample, but in this case, they are typically those that volunteer or they're the peers of people that volunteer. um And I was interested to test their moral judgments on volunteer tourism um because we hear about it in um the news about things going wrong in volunteer tourism and we're aware of these critiques from development researchers that's not maybe not all it's correct up to be. So I was really curious, what do young people think of this? How do they judge it? And do they care about the outcome of the project? Do they care if it's successful or? or a failure, will they judge it differently for that? And do they care if the person comes in with that savior mindset or that deficit mindset versus um thinking like an asset mindset and just being a team player? Like, does the mindset matter and does the outcome matter for people's moral judgment for this type of behavior? So that's why I set up a vignette. And that's basically storytelling or stories. And you manipulate different parts of that story. to see which variables people do care about when they pass judgment. So for this, I manipulated, I had a protagonist and it was always a Canadian male because I think, because I wanted to replicate the study in Fiji and having someone who's a male just made sense. Like I had to pick one or the other and then Canadian because it's a little bit more neutral than the US and not as close to home as New Zealand. So there's all these reasons we pick out our protagonist, right? m But it was a Canadian man, and he either had an asset mindset towards the community or deficit. So he was either thinking, this is really cool that these um that people in Fiji need um clean water, and they're making a difference on our own. I want to help with the initiative that's already happening there. Like, And then the deficit mindset is more, I feel sorry for this community. They don't have clean water. That's terrible. um I'm going to help. and then the outcome was manipulated on this was um there was always a cost to the host, no matter what the outcome was. cause no matter what hosts spend time and resources um on the volunteer, but the positive outcome was successfully dug a well. for example, and now the community has clean water, or the negative outcome was um did not successfully build a well and actually um caused damage to an existing water source and now the community is left without access to clean water. And these are, they were all based on real stories that I heard from people in Fiji. um for example, one was the community needed fresh water, but the solution was or what people were able to offer was like laptops for their um for students. And so they set up this whole laptop center in in a shipping container on, you know, on the beach with all these laptops like, yeah, you can go to school online. And the kids are like, cool, this is different. But over time, like it gets eroded. It does not maintain they don't have people there that are engineer or they didn't have engineers in that community to keep in. And what about the electricity? You know, it's just like offering solutions to to issues that aren't necessarily aligned. And so, I tried to use real stories for these because I wanted it to be as realistic as possible and have those negative outcomes that really have happened in these communities. um And yeah, that's the design. so, so Yeah. How many vignettes did you show them? How did you vignettes per participants see? Did you randomize it? Did they see some asset mindset, some deficit mindset? Yes, so all participants saw four of these stories. So each person saw each of the conditions that they could have. So asset mindset, positive outcome, asset mindset, negative outcome, deficit mindset, positive outcome. um but they didn't see them. And that was, that was, um what is that called? When they're, randomly displayed to the participants. So there was no order bias. um Yeah. And Yes, so everyone saw a or read one story, answered judgment questions. So those judgment questions were on blame or praise for the protagonist, and then their judgment towards the behavior. So is this right or wrong? So the blame or praise kind of gets at that implication of responsibility for the protagonist, and tends to be more reactionary, like it's your fault, or, oh, you did a great job. But um the right or wrong judgment on the behavior kind of gets at those social norms or those conventional norms of m is this the type of behavior that we approve in our society, which does vary across cultures. And we have seen that in Fiji and New Zealand and the US. Awesome so then like was the dependent variable? Sorry, sorry, sorry. No, I was asking that question exactly so you can ask it. I was just asking what was the dependent variable? Did they say how much they agreed with the outcome? What was the subsequent question? And then what did you find, obviously? This sounds really interesting. Yeah, sorry, that's what I was trying to say. um they responded to questions on how blame-worthy was the participant or how praise-worthy was the participant? And um do you think um how right or wrong is this person's actions? um So those are the two main outcome variables, the blame and praise and the right and wrong, which are pretty typical in moral judgment research. um The one thing about the study that was kind of novel was the how I manipulated the mindset of the protagonist that hasn't been, I have not seen anyone manipulating deficit versus asset mindset. Typically it's intention, um like intention to do good or do bad, but I felt like for this, made more sense to kind of get more at that, um that kind of savory head space of, um yeah, asset or deficit mindset. um And yeah, the results were kind of what you would imagine. So they judged more positively for m asset mindset and for um successful outcomes and more negatively overall for deficit mindset and negative outcomes. But there were some interesting nuances there. So let me just check my notes. um So yeah, overall more acceptability for successful projects and those with an asset mindset, but there was this asymmetry in judgment. So, voluntourists, so the protagonist received a disproportionate recognition for the successes um versus the responsibility for the negative consequences, which the responsibility was diffused for those when things didn't turn out good for the community. m There's also no significant difference in acceptability of the behavior between the two successful outcomes. um So that means that mindset didn't play a role in judgment when the project went as planned. So when the project was successful, it didn't matter to people if they had a asset or deficit mindset towards the community, m which was really, I think, an important finding because it shows that um we're maybe not taking that into account is that white saviorism. headspace and we're saying it doesn't matter as long as it's successful outcome, then you can think what you want about the community. I know, I hope that's not how people feel and this isn't necessarily reality, but em yeah, I think it helps explain why that might be and I found that valuable. I mean, to an extent, it's like the ends justify the means sort of thing, right? Like, who cares what you cared as long as you did it, as long as you helped some people. Because we're looking at it from the view of uh people whose friends went to voluntourism, volunteering, right? So why do I care why he went? Like he did something good for people kind of thing. Yeah, and that's the thing is I really wasn't looking at why it was more like how is he how is your friend perceiving the community? Is he seeing them as helpless and needing the help of a white outsider? Or is it he um went because he believes in something that they're already working on, he wants to be part of something bigger than himself. So I really tried to get at that. But I think like I said, this is this was a novel manipulation, manipulated variable. So not sure if you know this is a thesis not sure if I did it perfectly um I learned a lot from the process and I think I would do things differently next time um as we probably all would but yeah I I guess that's the thing about novel research. Like we were talking about, you didn't have much to go on to begin with. So that's, guess, the whole point of it. um But you spoke about the sort of like the negative outcomes when outcomes didn't go their way. What was the blame diffusion like? Like what were they doing just being like, it's the company's fault. It's someone else's fault. Or how do you measure that? What was going on? So to measure the blame and praise, it was all on one scale. So it was like blame would be negative three praise positive three. So it was really easy to test or to analyze how people judge based on the outcome and the mindset. So yeah, does that make sense? No, was yeah, it makes sense. I was thinking more about like what it meant because why were they diffusing blame kind of thing as opposed to do you have insights into that? Yeah, that's, that makes sense. I think that, so people were blaming participants for, or praising them for the positive outcomes, right? So they were saying like, you did such a good job, you achieved these goals, but they were blaming, or they were not blaming them as much for the negative. So if something went wrong, the project was not a success, they were not really blaming them as much as they were praising them for the successes. So there's a lot of reasons why that could be. I didn't necessarily ask why it would be one way, why they blamed them or why they praise them. And I think um in future studies, that would be a really interesting thing to look at. But I think that um in these situations, if something goes wrong, it's actually the opposite of what we see in our own in some other studies where typically if something goes wrong, you actually blame the person more than you would if it went right. um So, and that's just in like, if you've heard of the nob effect, it's this experiment where you ask someone about a CEO and they say, the CEO made a decision and it ended up harming um the environment, even though they didn't mean for that to happen. And people blamed the CEO um every time it's been replicated and consistent. But if he accidentally, if the CEO made a decision and it really helped the environment, there was not as much praise for that outcome. They're like, oh, well, cool. He didn't necessarily mean to do that. But that's a great outcome. But this was the opposite. So I think that speaks a lot to maybe this cross-cultural outcome and why it's not in a CEO or in a business setting. This is in typically a community where a lot of things um don't go the way you want it to go or don't go as planned or we always hear these negative stories. So it seems like maybe it's not surprising that it didn't work out or it's not, they're not part of the in-group there in the community. So maybe it's not the responsibility in the first place for them to make a positive change. So that could be diffusing the blame. um But I think it's important to remember that there. they are placing more praise when it does go right. So I think it could be, and this is speculative, but it could be the um participants obviously may identify with the protagonist and kind of have that self-serving bias of, hey, you did really good and you made this impact and praising you for that. You we like to praise ourselves when things go right and not as much blame on ourselves when things go wrong. So it could be that identification with the protagonist and coupled with the protagonist not being an in-group member with who they're helping, um if that makes sense. So that's my interpretation. yeah, that's I guess the other thing which I was thinking and you can correct me if I'm wrong is just the idea of volunteering, because at the end of the day, it is volunteering. So then they're like, they went to help out. If it went wrong, it went wrong. It's they don't really have much of a role versus a CEO. You have like the power of the company and you could have done like intended harm or intended good. You had all the data information to make your decision and. Well, no, I do think you're onto something because when we think about when people judge altruistic acts, if the if the actor receives any um any benefits, then they are judged more harshly than if they didn't volunteer at all, even if it wasn't intentional. So if the actor, um you know, got a free meal when they volunteered. uh there's been studies that have shown that people would judge that person as less helpful than someone who even who didn't um who didn't volunteer in the first place, which was really fascinating because I don't think that's this that's how people are judging this situation where we're volunteering in another community internationally. So I found that the way people were judging voluntourism was different than they were judging traditional volunteering um in a Western setting. and context. they were judging voluntourism more positively. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. seem more like cool and like more worldly or more sacrificial and altruistic. I don't know if I can speak as to why, like I didn't, I think that's an interesting follow up question. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I know I talk about this in my thesis, so I'm trying to remember, but it is all speculative at the end of the day, but um I think that it definitely matters that we're judging people that are from a place of privilege, helping people without those same privileges. And I just don't think that we judge people the same way when we're in contexts on our own and people that don't look like us in our outgroups. um So I think, yeah, I don't know. Do you think voluntourism is like signaling? Like it's a signal of like somewhat sacrifice or it's like a class signal and also like a privileged signal and a signal of worldliness to their in-group? Yes, there's a word for that. It's um prestige signaling. think it's costly signaling theory. And absolutely, and this is something that I also speak about. And that's related to virtue signaling, which is discussed more in the social justice space. And this is where that multidisciplinary like research and literature review all comes together because you have virtue signaling and then you have costly signaling. So costly signaling is that more evolutionary take on things like I am going to demonstrate that I have resources and therefore I'll have more prestige in my in groups. um And I think if that theory stands and this would be a great example of that because you are demonstrating you have resources to not only travel internationally but resources to give freely to people that are in your out group and you have the time to spend away from work and family and other responsibilities. don't think from what I know about costly signaling theory, I don't think it's typically conscious. I think it's just something that's integrated into our social human behaviors. But yeah, I think that's a huge part of it. And that's why I kind of thought people would judge it the... I guess I expected people to judge volunteering, voluntourism more harshly than they did. Um, and they judged it more positively than they did in volunteering. Yeah, I thought it was too. No, thanks. Yeah, the best for last. I just get into the third study. Okay. So for study three, um this is like the real reason I came to Aotearoa and wanted to work um with Dr. McNamara and also in the Center for Applied Cross-Cultural Research was because they had experience conducting research in the Pacific. the opportunity was very important for me. It was very important for me to take any opportunity I had to speak to people directly. about their experiences hosting volunteers. So there's been studies hosting, um there's lots of research, like I said before, on kind of that tourism aspect, looking at volunteers and what they want and their experiences. But what about the people that are being directly affected and are hosting? um So I was really grateful for the support that I received to do that. and to collaborate with people in the community to make sure, one, it's something that they valued, a study that they wanted. I got to ask directly, how could this help um progress things and help the volunteering space in your community? um And yeah, I had incredible insights from the study. So it was a fieldwork study, but I did do a consultation trip prior to starting the fieldwork for a week. And if anyone ever does field work, I highly recommend doing a consultation trip for at least a week, because you learn a lot about where you'll be, who your contact people will be, what things will look like, what to bring. Just like, I don't know what I would have done if I showed up without doing that. um And as an outsider, my positionality was extremely important to keep in mind and something that I reflected on. throughout the entire process, in the design phase, in the grant proposal phase, like it's something that I really had to be mindful of and take great care in how I approach the study. And I'm so grateful that I was connected to someone in the community that really believed in this project as well and wanted to work with me um to make this happen. um And she became a close friend and she hosted me at her home and We talked for hours about what this phenomenon and what it looks like in Fiji and her own village, how things have looked for her. um And so I spent a lot of time with her in that consultation trip. And then I went back about a month later for the field work. um And I stayed in the village with a host, Basi, who also became a close friend. um And yeah, I stayed there for a month and I went around and met the community and whoever invited me in their home, I asked if they would be open to having a Talanoa. And Talanoa is where you sit around um and it's basically storytelling and it's just sharing your experiences. It's not structured. It's casual. People come in and out of the physical space at any point. So I really. value taking an approach that was culturally relevant and using a framework even the Fijian Vanua research framework that fit the way that the community um needs and functions and make sense to them. Yeah. So I guess the obvious next question is what were sort of what did like the community you were with say about voluntourism, like what were their experiences of it? Yeah, so it was so different than what I was expecting. It was so fascinating because they absolutely loved the volunteers that they have had in their village. they have had a Peace Corps volunteer who was there for a couple of years and then they had, think it was around 20 students, so like undergrad students, two times um and they stay for about a month in the village and they go to different homes within the village and stay. m And they loved the volunteers and they, at the end of every interview, they asked, can we, can you please tell them to send more volunteers? m But it was, obviously it's much more nuanced than that. But that was the biggest surprising finding was actually requesting more volunteers. And the approval was not just what I learned verbally, but what I observed. So there were kids in the village that I met that one was named Anna Claire and I they were telling me their names and names namesake and names are a huge part of um from my what I understand a huge part of the culture and it's a real honor to receive someone's name in your family or someone important to you and they had named Anna Claire after a volunteer that they hosted in their home. So they actually named their children after the volunteers that they had in their homes for a month. And I went to another home where I saw a framed picture of a volunteer that they had. um And there's not many, the homes that, the homes were not highly decorated. So it sticks out when there's a framed photo um and it was of the volunteer that had visited. So it felt immediately to me like, And being kind of in that position as well as the only white person um in the village at the time and from an educated background, a researcher, Western, I was kind of playing the role of the volunteer in some ways. And I saw firsthand how it felt. um And it did feel like the closer people in the village were to you. there's privileges that they receive as well. There's praise that they receive as well, just as you receive, as I received for just being myself. um The people want to be close to you and proximity um matters and kind of receiving that um prestige from, yeah, that just people with resources and kind of the unearned privileges that I have can ultimately bleed out into the people around me. um And yeah, that was, it's very complex. So I'm trying to be careful about how I talk about this because it's also like, I want to be true to my participants words. And that's not something that they said directly. That's strictly my experience um and experiences from, I did interview volunteers as well. There were two Peace Corps volunteers in neighboring villages and they said they felt like you you get put on a pedestal and people look up to you you just have all these people ask, like, just think you're so smart and have because you do have access to education and resources that they don't have. So they want to learn from you and get close to you. But it feels like, um yeah, almost one one woman who was Peace Corps volunteer described as being like a trophy. um And I thought that's really And I think that the safety and the comfortability does go both ways here um and is important to think about for everybody. yeah, but I found the volunteer work actually is the last thing they talked about. They couldn't even remember the volunteer work, the actual, like I asked what projects did they do? And they said, oh, they stayed with us um in the village and we became our friends. And at first I was like, wait, what? Like, don't you remember any of the work? And there's two things there. One, I don't think that the groups are consulting with the community about what they want and what they need. And in fact, that's what people said is the people come in with ideas and they do them and we support them. So they're not consulting with the community on what they really need. The second thing there, I just lost my train of thought, sorry. One second. What was I saying? The second thing there, so the first thing was sort of the projects. They don't consult the community for the projects they need. yes. So, okay, so the second reason why I think they were more focused on other things than the volunteer work was because they do value relationships so much in that community and culture and relationships are everything. um So the fact that they made friendships and they formed bonds with people from other cultures and learned about their lives in other places, that was so valuable. That was the most valuable thing um to the people that I interviewed. or that they said to me at least, and they don't have direct access like we have to outside um things going on, you know, internationally and around the world. I mean, there is some service, cell-service that people kind of know, but it's not the same as what we have access to here. So the closest thing to like cross-cultural interaction is having volunteers and I think as humans, love to learn from each other. And I think that's like really beautiful and wonderful. um I think it would make sense if we just focused on that. If that's the strength, if that's what we're getting from this, why not do like an exchange program and have kids from the village stay with people here or in the United States or in the UK and do an exchange so everyone can experience that and stop, not stop, but either reform the volunteer efforts or just focus on what is being, what is successful and that is relationships. um Yeah, so those are my... Yeah. Yeah, so you did. Actually, when you're saying this, I'm reminded of when a few of our friends came for Sahir's wedding to India and everyone just wanted to take a photo with them because white I was perplexed by this. We asked people like, why do you want to take a photo with these? know, they just white, they're like normal. And they're like, yeah, but it's because we'll never get to go abroad. So this is the closest we get to that. experience. And that sounds very similar to maybe what was happening, but on a larger scale, on a larger timeline. And it makes sense that on a diluted version, it's like signaling on both ends of the dynamic, like costly signaling on the end of the volunteerists and virtual signaling maybe on the end of the the hosts almost. the proximity to the volunteers. so ultimately the net benefit is simply proximity rather than any aid at all, like you said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is, I don't know, that's a um very interesting finding. Yeah. Sahir, did you have a question? I mean, I mean, the nuance of it, as you said, is quite interesting that they don't remember the projects and one being like nobody knows. But then the second I guess then the question is what was done in terms of like materially with the village apart from the connections were like the villages or communities better off from the volunteering efforts. Could it couldn't have just been like you said, an exchange at that point? Yeah, it's when I did get down to what was the project eventually over time I figured out what it was. um And the one that stuck out was doing there were like health workshops. And they but these were undergrads that weren't majoring in health. um One was a literature major who had no health experience, but they were running workshops in their community hall um with the kids and, and the parents and everyone. um about kind of taboo topics as well. Like they would talk about um sexual health and they would talk about drug use and things that are not typically discussed uh with one another in the village. um They talked about menstruation, which is another thing that is not discussed much. um And I wish I could have been a fly on the wall. Like I wish I would. Like it's so fascinating. I wonder what type of consultation or collaboration they did to create these workshops. Were they created in the UK and simply transplanted right into the village in Fiji? Or was there a collaboration and co-creation of this workshop? And I don't think it was necessarily negative. I think um it was different. And I think it, and another thing that a lot of participants said they valued was like modern ways of thinking. And so I guess it did make it had people reflecting on their own norms in their village and values, um which that's, I find it really difficult to say are they better offered or not. It's like, are we better off for people coming into communities and changing values and norms. It depends who you're asking and what those values are. um I had a really I had a very deep, interesting conversation about colonization and religion in Fiji with my aunt who is religious and does believe in mission trips and things like this. um And I was curious like what she thought, like is it, do you think it's a good thing to come into a community and spread Christianity when there's already an existing religion and there's already existing system? um And I think in people's perspectives that are truly devote, they believe, yes, it's a good thing they'll be saved. They'll be. And that is what my participants said as well. They said without like the Christian white missionaries, we wouldn't be saved. And that was really that was a deeper finding than I was ready for. It was it was like without these white Westerners than these Christian missionaries, we would be lost and. would be just like our ancestors and kind of speaking negatively about their ancestors, um which I mean, and you have to put it in context, they're talking to me as a white researcher. So we can't take, you know, we have to put it and take everything with a grain of salt. um Yeah, so I think and they did a like in modern volunteers to Christian missionaries back in the 1800s. And they said they're the same and they're not. there's not a difference. there is that neocolonialism that's discussed in this space. And I think that that's very valid. And I think that it needs to be um discussed maybe more in depth because it's really complex. Like I said, I got into a lot of spaces that I wasn't expecting or prepared for. I mean, I was. I did a lot of research on colonization and uh decolonization and neocolonization. to actually have these conversations with real people being affected is another level um of insight. Yeah. Yeah. And for many reasons, but one of them is it is, they contain a lot of codes to traditional success. Yeah, yeah. I say it? It's like, you learn ways to deal with people internationally. You learn how to speak in English, which means you can do higher positions, you can get better jobs. And so I'm sure these missionaries or these volunteers are bringing in that cultural information. the health stuff doesn't matter, but it is the cultural information and the It's a resource. Yeah, of course, like erosive in a way, but also developmental and cornerstone and maybe another way. absolutely. And I think that we have to be careful of the ideas of like, no, don't bring in outside ideas, because it's like, well, do we want people to just stay and, you know, and fossilize a culture that can evolve, or like, you know, change over time, just like all cultures change over time. And who are we to say when it's right or wrong, or good or bad, like that's up to the people in the community. But I struggle with it because it's also like we see the dangers of voluntourism like in Southeast Asia and it's just it's still fresh. It's not as big in the Pacific as it is in Southeast Asia. And I guess as a researcher, there is a sense of responsibility to warn of where it could go and the and maybe it's already happening. I don't know. But um just is this the right medium to have that cultural exchange? I'm not. I'm not saying it's a bad exchange, but is this the right way to do it? um Yeah, because I think you're absolutely right. Like learning how to speak English and financial um literacy and things like that, like it will help in the long run because we do live in a Eurocentric world. That's just like the kind of reality and we have to do that. Don't worry, the Chinese century is coming. Everybody needs to learn Mandarin. But your point, uh which you said about like, was sorry, I'll just rephrase that. But your point about sort of Southeast Asia versus Fiji, where you were kind of like the experiences which you mentioned there, sort of the bad things which happened or are happening as well, kind of makes me think that you conducted the interviews and your work was in the Pacific. potentially if you had asked the same question somewhere else, potentially you get a completely different opinion or experience of, yeah, of, yeah, the projects, if they're different, if they're not sort of these health projects and if they are, like you said, building a well which went wrong or, or like causing like more damage than good, then all of a sudden would the opinions change, even if they think the volunteers themselves were nice people. Well, it's funny you say that because that actually did happen in Fiji and it was right before I got there. There was a group there that said they would dig a well. This isn't in the village I was in, but I was speaking to someone in the provincial office. And a lot of, like I said, a big issue in Fiji is access to clean water. And so they had a group come in and say, we're going to dig a well. And they did, but they dug it in the wrong way, or they dug a borehole, but didn't complete the well. Something went wrong. And basically the water was contaminated and it made people in the village really sick. it caused like severe health issues. um And he was explaining to me, you don't notice right away. So the volunteers left, like they dug the well. They thought maybe it was successful, they left. And then weeks and weeks pass and people in the village get sick and they go to the hospital and they're like, wait a minute, there's something wrong here. And so the water project was not successful, but there was no one around to take responsibility for it. So that fell on the provincial office to to fix that and the community to come together and find other resources, one for healthcare now because they have to deal with that and also to fix the well and dig a new one. So there is harm happening right here in the Pacific. It's not as, I mean, I think just like when you talk about children and trafficking, that's like a whole nother level, but there is serious harm happening as well. the Pacific. that's, and when I spoke to the provincial officer, he said like, we want volunteers, but we need them to follow the protocols and we need them to consult with the local experts. He's like, I could have told them, I know all about this land, it can kill you, you have to be really careful. If someone had asked, if someone had consulted with a local expert, maybe this wouldn't have happened. So I think that's what it comes down to there. um Based on my conversations with the leaders in that group was um consultation and local expertise in valuing that and rather than transplanting Western knowledge to non Western and indigenous spaces. Yeah. I guess because we've been going on for quite a while for the last like five minutes or so. Let's wrap up with a couple of questions looking towards the future. So there's a question which we've been asking a lot recently is Dr. Altamus, if you have if you're given, let's say, two billion dollars, like unlimited money and ethics have gone on holiday. So it's up to you. What sort of research do you want to conduct? And then we can like narrow it down afterwards into. Yeah. first unrestricted. Yeah, I thought a lot about this and I'm like, wow, you could do like a really cool experiment like around the world, but genuinely nothing to me compares to having one on one conversations or like not one on one but like having real conversations with real people in their homes and their context when you're invited, of course. I would love to replicate. Yeah, when you're invited. So if I ever had the opportunity if there was the opportunity to collaborate with communities in around Southeast Asia and around the Pacific that were open to this kind of work and speaking to me about their experiences hosting. I think that would be so incredible. And it wouldn't even necessarily have to be me being there. It's not about me as a researcher. It's like who in the local community can ask these questions and record these interviews. So we have records of what it's like to, to host. um So yeah, I think just spreading um qualitative research, know, the funding is not as readily available as it is for quantitative and field work is expensive and it's long term and it needs to be really integrated. So if I had all the funds in the world, yeah, I would send, I would have people, yeah, conducting interviews like this for months at a time and all over the place. And that'd be really cool to make like a network of people that were, that cared about this. And I think we could do some really um important work with getting some implications of how to change things for each community. Because it'll, like we said, it will be different. What I learned from Fiji might not be applicable to what's going on in Cambodia or Thailand. um Yeah, not the most exciting or creative answer, but I think that's just genuinely where my passion and beliefs are. Yeah. It's a good solid answer. I quite like it. Bro, this was so like... nice. Not me saying I would start a cult. I just think like there's not, we do so much research trying to figure out like all these things and it's like why not just ask, just ask someone like how's it going for you, what's your experience, why are we doing all these other things like trying to figure out you know what's your motivation, how do we how do we get more volunteers, it's like why don't we ask the community what they want and what works best for them, come on it's not that hard so I think yeah if I could invest in that. direct communication, that would be the best. Fair enough. right. Final question then, which we ask, what if you have a hot take about your subject? So do you have something ready for us? All right. So in that case, Melanie, could you tell me a hot take you have about your subject? Yes, so I think saying that your trip is not voluntourism, it's international development volunteering and saying that you've been there for a long time is not the flex that you think it is. And what I mean by this is typically in development research, or not weeks, I'm not a development researcher, but they differentiate between length of time that people spend in their volunteering host community and their skill level. And they kind of say that's good versus bad. Good is long-term and skills. Bad is short-term unskilled. But I think this is really misleading. there's not enough evidence that length of time is correlated with more Affective outcomes for volunteer volunteering. It makes sense logically, but there's actually evidence that suggests the opposite, um that the longer you spend, the more responsibilities people expect you to take on and the less people can rise to those responsibilities. um And even in the village I was in, they were more critical of the Peace Corps volunteer than they were of the short term unskilled volunteers. um And also labeling volunteers as skilled is very abstract and comes from a Western idea of what skills are. um So for example, for the Peace Corps volunteers have to have a bachelor's degree in some related field, go through a couple months of training and they're qualified as skilled. But um like I said, this is a more Western approach because skills according to some communities may be being familiar with the land like the um provincial officers spoke to me about. um So familiarity with the land and an expertise. So what we're considering as good volunteering um is not necessarily going to reflect what the community thinks is good. And that comes back to our social norms and how context matters um or moral norms, sorry, what we value as being good or bad or right or wrong. And like I said, in this community, relationships are more important than the projects that were conducted. So what we might think as good volunteering could be just okay volunteering to other people. um So I do argue that the issue of these inherent power dynamics between groups and uh unskilled work should be according to local standards. yeah, that's my hot take. Doing things for long term doesn't make it better. That's very good and it nicely wraps up well with your research so works great. Farro, any last question from you? No, that was a really fun chat. Yay. Thanks so much for having me. So nice to talk to you guys about my research. It's been, I mean, you both have been very supportive throughout the process and yeah, it's so nice to able to talk about it and have everything kind of come together. And yeah, it's still ongoing this research um because the goal is to have an outcome that's, you know, co-led by the community. It is longer term. So it's spanning past my PhD, which is all good and something that I'm invested in. watch this space. Awesome. And then maybe in a year, a couple of years, you can come back and talk about it again. So, all right. always recruiting. He's always recruiting. He never misses an opportunity. The hustle is real OK? All right. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thanks again, Melanie, for joining us. And until next time, take care.