single word requests - What do you call an 'unselfish' action made with a selfish reason?


There are many examples of this, and I'd like to give a few:



  • A person who puts a lot of effort to help the community and earns reputation points. But that reputation is the motivation behind helping the community, not because they really want to.

  • A student approaches a professor, and helps them in their teaching and doing research in order to have a good LOR (letter of recommendation).

  • To a SEO, the content of the website must be good (well, this one is a little tricky, but you get the spirit.)


I'm not saying that the reputation/LOR/high-ranked is not deserved. It is. I just want to focus more on the selfish reason(s) behind that.


Any kind of answer can be accepted: single word, phrase, proverb or idiom.



Answer



Ulterior, as in, an ulterior motive. From the Collins dictionary:



if you say that someone has an ulterior motive for doing something, you believe that they have a hidden reason for doing it



While this doesn't necessarily define the action, it describes the reasoning/motivation behind it. To describe the action itself, you may describe the action as Ostensible, wherewith the actions you describe are ostensible, with ulterior motives



outwardly appearing as such; professed; pretended



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