Every action is a selfish one and thus true altruism does not exist. Discuss in relation to research on pro-social behaviour.
Helping another in need or having the feeling of wanting to help someone in need is something that usually happens in everyone’s life. It is a common thought that animals help each others reciprocally expecting to gain something in return. However in some cases, helping is not linked to immediate returning benefits or these are inexistent. This type of prosocial behavior has caught the attention of psychologists interested in understanding the processes and motives behind it. Can this be considered real altruism? Psychologists have been investigating this issue proposing different hypothesis to explain altruistic behavior. This essay will discuss altruism and some of the more dominant thoughts over the debate whether altruistic behavior generates from real altruistic motivations (helping with the goal of benefiting others, without any self benefit) or selfish motives (helping the other with the ultimate goal of self benefit).
The discussion over the real essence of altruistic behavior is not a new subject and has been present in literature for long time, from Aristotele to Freud (Batson and Shaw, 1991).
The common view of psychologists, philosophers and biologists was, until some time ago, that egoistic motivations are a common denominator for most human behaviors. Prosocial behavior is considered and studied differently than other human behavior, because it is the only one that is apparently independent from reinforcement (benefit or punishment). Altruism is considered part of prosocial behavior (Hogg and Vaughan, 2008). Auguste Comte coined the word altruism when writing about the two different motives (egoism versus altruism) which are simultaneously present in an individual and that shape the individual’s behavioral responses. Altruism refers to those social acts that are “an expression of an unselfish desire to live for others” (Comte, as cited in Batson and Shaw, 1991, p108). Despite the promising prosocial definition, most psychologists through all times have held the idea that real altruism cannot exist because all behaviors are originated by selfish or evolutionary motives.
Evolutionary psychologists like Rushton (1991) argue how altruism is part of evolution that originates from genetic purposes. Many studies show how people would rather help a relative, or a person they can mirror with, than someone they are not related or don’t feel a connection with.
It is understandable how helping a relative or someone we are attached to could be a normal response and bring benefit to the helper in some ways, but it is difficult to explain when people and non-humans show compassionate feelings for complete strangers. This apparently altruistic behavior suggests that real altruism could indeed exist.
To further investigate this option some tried to analyze the emotions and cognitive processes happening to an individual prior to manifesting the helping behavior.
Piliavin et al. (1981, as cited in Vaughan en Hogg 2008) suggested that the act of not helping someone in need could result in costs for the bystander. These could be of either emphatic or personal nature. That is, the helper may feel remorse if choosing not to help. In this case, the effort of minimizing the costs does result in helping behavior that is anyway considered selfish. They put down a model outlining three cognitive stages a bystander goes through before formulating what outcome will be the most effective. First the bystander suffers from physiological arousal, which means to feel distressful or uncomfortable feelings from perceiving the other person’s trouble. Secondly, the bystander needs to label this state of arousal. As explained by Vaughan and Hogg, arousal alone does not produce an emotion. Individual cognitive processes play a significant role in determining which emotion needs to be allocated to the arousal state. (Hogg and Vaughan, 2008). The last stage is evaluating the consequences, losses and benefits; hence the person will make the choice of helping or not helping.
During the second stage of this model one can start focusing on the emotions that generate either the altruistic or egoistic motives behind the resulting action. It could be argued that the bystander, who feels empathy, namely to have compassionate feelings for the other person and being able to feel and entering into another’s feelings, aims the helping behavior at alleviating the person in need and thus altruism is generated by altruistic motives . Empathy, therefore, is the emotion that could generate real altruistic behaviors (Batson and Shaw, 1991). Batson and Shaw proposed in 1991 the empathy-altruism model, suggesting that in order to understand which motive drives the action, it is needed to ascertain someone’s ultimate goal because if the ultimate goal is to relieve the other’s suffering, unintended benefit could be a consequence of the helping action but not the goal itself and thus the motives can be considered altruistic. But when the ultimate goal is to receive self benefit from helping another, the behavior can be considered selfish. They designed experiments appositely to try ascertaining the real motive behind an action and to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis against all opposite theories. Their results suggested that the empathy-altruism hypothesis was a valid and researchable one. But their study was as promising for the altruism versus egoism debate, as questionable. Cialdini and his colleagues (1987) contested their hypothesis saying that empathy can generate sadness in the helper, therefore the action of helping another could be motivated by the willingness of the helper to relieve his/her sadness (as cited in Breckler, Olson, Wiggins, 2006) even if they agreed to the new pluralistic approach proposed (Cialdini, 1991). Other critiques were instead against the methodology of the experiments, complaining that the results could lack of natural validity because of the way the experiments were designed (Wallach and Wallach, 1991; Dovidio, 1991). Wallach and Wallach also suggested that it is empirically impossible to test whether the motives behind helping someone else are truly altruistic (aiming only at relieving the other’s pain) or egoistic (aimed at relieving self discomfort) because “one goal is the necessary consequence of the other” (1991, p.154). They claimed that trying to prove this would be like trying to solve the null hypothesis and that altruism does not seem to be demonstrated by psychological experimentation (Wallach and Wallach, 1991).
This could sound pessimistic for scientific research, but the studies by Batson and Shaw gave rise to a new era of thought about altruism, suggesting that a pluralistic view, including both egoistic and altruistic motives, should be used when interpreting and researching prosocial behavior, pushing away the monistic view of human egoism. In the last years, evolutionary psychologists such as De Waal, have included the empathy-altruism hypothesis as part of their researches on altruism, empathy and evolutionary approach. De Waal suggestes that empathy is the proximate behavior that on the long term gives birth to the ultimate prosocial behaviors, such as altruism. This is an evolutionary point of view. In comparative studies it is shown how other animals also engage in prosocial acts (e.g. chimpanzees). De Waal believes that empathy can be the only answer to why animals and humans are able to dispense assistance according to need (De Waal, 2008, p.289). Supported by clinical research (2002a), he introduced the Perception Action Mechanism (PAM) model according to which humans have a mechanism from which empathic capacity generates. PAM provides a person to perceive the subjective state of another through neural and physiological representations (De Waal, 2008).
Supporting PAM, MRI studies on human subjects have demonstrated an activation of the ventral insula both when we feel disgusted or we see someone who is disgusted (Wicker, 2003 as cited in de Waal). According to De Waal, the PAM is at the core of the helping behavior, whilst cognitive processes are on its outer layer. De Waal argues that cognitive processes are too long to be part of every pro-social action, as they may include very quick reactions, as for example in emergency situations.
His research, which includes also clinical experimentations and comparative studies, provides a better understanding of why people and other animals feel the need of helping others. It also proposes prosocial behavior to be a more spontaneous impulse instead of a mechanic and controlled cognitive process and it highlights the mediating role that emotions have on behaviors.
Other studies show that infants already show compassion at a very young age (1 to 2 years old), when complex cognitive processes are not developed yet. This is an empirical critique to the Pilivian cognitive view of altruism, as demonstrated by Warneken and Tomasello (2006), babies who understand when their help is needed will try to help the person in need (an unknown person) even before help has been requested.
All these results suggest that altruism exists independent by evolutionary theories and can be independent from direct or indirect reinforcement, leading us to the idea that true altruism can exist free from egoistic motives.
Why some altruistic behaviors exist in the animal world has not been discovered yet, but the debate on the true core of altruism is challenging and still goes on. It is intriguing how it has involved so many disciplines, from philosophy to biology and still continues to receive interest and be researched. Today it is fair to accept the coexistence of both altruism and egoism behind different pro-social behaviors and, as suggested by Wallach and Wallach (1991) as well, the fact that it is very difficult to demonstrate which motive prevails on the other doesn’t preclude us from accepting the existence of altruism, as it is, for the fact that is part of our natural human being.
References:
Batson C.D. & Shaw L.L. (1991) Evidence for altruism: toward a pluralism of prosocial motives. Psychological Inquiry, 2(2), 107 – 122
Breckler S.J, Olson J.M. and Wiggings E.C. (2006) Social Psychology Alive. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth
Cialdini R.B. (1991) Altruism or egoism? That is (still) the question. Psychological Inquiry, 2(2), 124 – 125
De Waal, F.B.M. (2008) Putting the altruism back into altruism: the evolution of empathy. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2008(59), 279 – 300. Retrieved from http://www.annualreviews.org/ by EMORY UNIVERSITY on 01/23/08.
Dovidio J.F. (1991) The empathy-altruism hypothesis: paradigm and promises. Psychological Inquiry, 2(2), 126 – 128
Hogg M.A. & Vaughan G.M. (2008) Social Psychology (5th Edition) Essex: Pearson Education Limited
Rushton J.P. (1991) Is altruism innate? Psychological Inquiry, 2(2), 141 - 143
Wallach L. & Wallach M.A. (1991) Why altruism, even though it exists, cannot be demonstrated by Social Psychology experiments. Psychological Inquiry, 2(2),153 – 155
Warkeneken F. & Tomasello M. (2006) Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees. ScienceMag, 311. Retrieved from http://wwwsciencemag.org
2 comments:
Hi Kina,
Brilliant and well-researched post! I have long been frustrated by those who argue that genuine altruism isn't possible. It is my contention that those connected to a higher source are not altruistic to lay pennies up in heaven or because it's the right thing to do. They serve and give as God's instruments of love. Nothing more or less.
Thanks for your good work!
@JeanneMale
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