The study examines whether people more strongly approve of self-interested or benevolent action.  Previous research suggests a prescriptive norm of self-interest, which discourages selfless, prosocial behavior, and which makes people think negatively about those who engage in benevolent acts.  The current study challenges the prescriptive norm of self-interest.  We speculate that gender identity acts as a confound in previous studies, masking the norm of benevolence, and falsely indicating a norm of self-interest.  To investigate this dilemma, we disentangled gender identity from self-interest.  Our findings support the idea that variables other than self-interest are to blame for previous findings that people approve of, and feel comfortablewith self-interested action.