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