altruism experiment example

Table 6. Proportion of Subjects Agreeing to Take Shocks for Elaine (Batson, Duncan, et al. 1981, Experiment 1)

In additional experiments, Batson and his associates used four different techniques to create the low- and high-empathy conditions, two techniques for manipulating ease of escape, and two different need situations (Batson, Duncan, et al. 1981; Toi and Batson 1982; Batson, O’Quin et al. 1983). The results in all of these experiments exhibited the same pattern. Intriguingly, in another experiment, Batson and colleagues attempted to break the pattern by telling the subjects that the shock level they would have to endure was the highest of four options, “clearly painful but not harmful”. They reasoned that, under these circumstances, even if high empathy subjects had an ultimate desire to help, this desire might well be overridden by the desire to avoid a series of very painful shocks. As expected, the pattern of results in this experiment fit the pattern in Table 4 .

These are impressive findings. Over and over again, in well designed and carefully conducted experiments, Batson and his associates have produced results which are clearly compatible with the predictions of the empathy-altruism hypothesis, as set out in Table 5 , and clearly incompatible with the predictions of the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, as set out in Table 4 . Even the “clearly painful shock” experiment, which produced results in the pattern of Table 4, are comfortably compatible with the empathy-altruism hypothesis; as noted earlier, the empathy-altruism hypothesis allows that high empathy subjects may have desires that are stronger than their ultimate desire to help the target, and the desire to avoid a painful electric shock is a very plausible candidate.

There is, however, a problem to be overcome before one concludes that the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis cannot explain the findings that Batson and his associates have reported. In arguing that Table 4 reflects the predictions made by the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, Batson must assume that escape will alleviate the aversive affect in both low & high empathy situations, and that subjects believe this (although the belief may not be readily available to introspection). One might call this the out of sight, out of mind assumption. Elaborating on an idea suggested by Hoffman (1991) and Hornstein (1991), an advocate of egoism might propose that although subjects do believe this when they have little empathy for the target, they do not believe it when they have high empathy for the target . Perhaps high empathy subjects believe that if they escape they will continue to be troubled by the thought or memory of the distressed target and thus that physical escape will not lead to psychological escape. Indeed, in cases where empathy is strong and is evoked by attachment, this is just what common sense would lead us to expect. Do you really believe that if your mother was in grave distress and you left without helping her you would not continue to be troubled by the knowledge that she was still in distress? We’re guessing that you don’t. But if the high-empathy subjects in Batson’s experiments believe that they will continue to be plagued by distressing thoughts about the target even after they depart, then the egoistic aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis predicts that these subjects will be inclined to help in both the easy physical escape and the difficult physical escape conditions, since helping is the only strategy they believe will be effective for reducing the aversive arousal. So neither the results reported in Table 6 nor the results of any of Batson’s other experiments would give us a reason to prefer the empathy-altruism hypothesis over the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, because both hypotheses make the same prediction.

Is it the case that high empathy subjects in experiments like Batson’s believe that unless they help they will continue to think about the target and thus continue to feel distress, and that this belief leads to helping because it generates an egoistic instrumental desire to help? This is, of course, an empirical question, and a cleverly designed experiment by Stocks and his associates (Stocks et al. 2009) suggests that, in situations like those used in Batson’s experiments, a belief that they will continue to think about the target does not play a significant role in causing the helping behavior in high empathy subjects.

Batson’s work on the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, buttressed by the Stocks et al. finding, is a major advance in the egoism vs. altruism debate. The aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis has been one of the most popular egoistic strategies for explaining helping behavior. But the experimental findings strongly suggest that in situations like those that Batson and his associates have studied, the empathy-altruism hypothesis offers a much better explanation of the subjects’ behavior than the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis.

As noted earlier, Batson and his colleagues have also designed experiments pitting the empathy-altruism hypothesis against a substantial list of other egoistic explanations for the link between empathy and helping behavior. In each case, the evidence appears to challenge the egoistic alternative, though as is almost always the case in empirical work of this sort, some researchers remain unconvinced. [ 18 ] There is however, an influential critique of Batson’s work that challenges all of his experimental work on the empathy-altruism hypothesis. It argues that empathy and its precursors alter people’s self-concept in a way that undermines the claim that their helping behavior is genuinely altruistic.

During the last three decades, psychologists have devoted a great deal of effort to exploring how people think of the self. One major theme in this literature is that people’s conception of themselves varies across cultures, and that in many non-western cultures one’s social roles and one’s relation to other people play a much more central role in people’s self-concepts than they do in the individualistic West (Markus & Kitayama 1991; Baumeister 1998). One very simple way of studying these differences is to ask people to respond to the question “Who am I?” fifteen times. Non-westerners will typically mention social groups, group roles and relationships: “I am Maasai”, “I am a person who brings fruit to the temple”, “I am my father’s youngest son”. Westerners, by contrast, will typically mention personal attributes, aspirations and achievements: “I am intelligent”, “I am a pre-med student”, “I am the fastest swimmer in my school” (Ma & Schoeneman 1997). Another theme is that people’s conception of themselves is situationally malleable—it changes depending on who we are with, where we are and what we are doing (Kihlstrom & Cantor 1984; Markus & Wurf 1987).

While this sort of situational malleability may not be surprising, a number of psychologists have suggested a much more radical situational malleability. Under certain circumstances, notably when we have a close personal relationship with another person, when we are trying to take the perspective of another person, or when we feel empathy for another person, the conceptual boundary between the self and the other person disappears; the self and the other merge. According to Arthur Aron and colleagues,

Much of our cognition about the other in a close relationship is cognition in which the other is treated as self or confused with self—the underlying reason being a self-other merging. (Aron et al. 1980: 242)

If this is true, then it poses a fundamental challenge to the claim that helping behavior directed at someone for whom we feel empathy is really altruistic. For, as Melvin Lerner memorably observed:

It seems that we respond sympathetically, with compassion and a sense of concern, when we feel a sense of identity with the victim. In effect, we are reacting to the thought of ourselves in that situation. And, of course, we are filled with the “milk of human kindness” for our own sweet, innocent selves. (Lerner 1980: 77)

A bit less colorfully, Batson notes that for “the contrast between altruism and egoism to be meaningful”, an individual providing help “must perceive self and other to be distinct individuals” (2011: 145–146). And

if the distinction between self and other vanishes then so does the distinction between altruism and egoism, at least as these terms are used in the empathy-altruism hypothesis. (2011: 148)

Psychologists who have debated the rather astonishing claim that people who provide help to others often lose track of the distinction between themselves and the person being helped have proposed several different ways of determining whether this sort of “self-other merging” has occurred. Before considering these, however, we should remind ourselves of an important philosophical distinction that will be crucial in assessing tests for self-other merging. [ 19 ] The distinction is often made using the labels “qualitative identity” and “numerical identity”. Qualitative identity is the relation that often obtains between two TV sets manufactured by the same company. They share most of their important properties. Numerical identity is a relationship that obtains between a person at one time in his life and that same person at another time in his life. If the time gap is substantial, the person at the earlier time may differ in many ways from the person at the later time. When you were a baby, you weighed less than 10 kg, spoke no language, and couldn’t walk. But you now are numerically the same person as the baby. Numerical identity can be of enormous legal and moral importance, a point nicely illustrated by the trial of John Demjanuk, the Ukrainian-born auto worker who was accused of being the sadistic Nazi concentration camp guard whose victims called him “Ivan the Terrible”. The man on trial, in 1988, differed in many ways from the concentration camp guard: he was much older, heavier, bald, and spoke English. He was obviously not even close to being qualitatively identical with perpetrator of Ivan’s crimes. What the court had to determine was not whether Ivan and Demjanuk were qualitatively identical but whether they were numerically identical. [ 20 ] What makes this distinction important for present purposes is that the sort of identity that is relevant to the debate between egoists and altruists is numerical identity, not qualitative identity. If Sophia, at age 30, sets aside a large sum of money that will be paid to Sophia at age 70, young Sophia is not being altruistic. If her ultimate goal is to ensure that old Sophia has the means to live a comfortable life, then young Sophia’s action is straightforwardly egoistic. The take-home message here is that if a test used to determine whether person A takes herself to be identical to person B is to be relevant to the egoism versus altruism debate, the test must provide evidence that person A takes herself to be numerically identical to person B , not that she takes herself to be qualitatively identical to person B .

Now let’s consider how psychologists have attempted to assess whether experimental participants feel a sense of identity with someone they might be called on to help. In one of the most influential studies claiming to show that helping is often the product of a feeling of oneness, Cialdini et al. (1997) used a pair of tests.

[P]articipants rated the extent of oneness they felt with the [person they might help] by responding to two items that were combined in all analyses to form a oneness index. The first item incorporated the Inclusion of Other in Self (IOS) Scale used by Aron et al. (1992) to measure self-other boundary overlap. It consisted of a set of seven pairs of increasingly overlapping circles. Participants selected the pair of circles that they believed best characterized their relationship with the [person they might help]. The second item asked participants to indicate on a 7-point scale the extent to which they would use the term we to describe their relationship with the [person they might help]. (1997: 484)

In a critique of the Cialdini et al. paper, Batson, Sager, et al. (1997) used three measures of self-other merging. One was the IOS Scale used by Cialdini et al. The second was a “perceived similarity” task in which “[p]articipants were asked, ‘How similar to you do you think the person …is?’ (1 = somewhat, 9 = extremely)” (1997: 500). In the third, participants rated both themselves and the target on a series of personal attributes. The “measure of merging was the mean absolute difference between ratings of self and other” (1997: 498).

It does not seem that any of these four tests of self-other merging provide a reason to believe that the participant views herself as numerically identical with another person. Indeed, both the perceived similarity test and the personal attribute rating test seem to be assessing qualitative identity rather than numerical identity. And it is far from clear what, if anything, the other two tests are measuring. So it seems that there is really no evidence at all that people in close relationships lose track of the distinction between themselves and another person. Indeed, as May notes, if someone really did believe that he exists in two obviously distinct bodies, the most natural conclusion to draw would be that he is delusional (May 2011b: 32).

While the literature on self-other merging provides little reason to believe that normal people take themselves to be numerically identical with another person, it does provide a different kind of challenge to the empathy-altruism hypothesis defended by Batson and his colleagues. That hypothesis, it will be recalled, is that empathy often causes an ultimate desire to help another person. But in the Cialdini et al. (1977) paper cited earlier, they report three studies indicating that empathy, though it does occur, is not playing any causal role in the process that leads to helping. Rather, they maintain, it is “merging”—which is used here as a label for whatever the IOS scale and the use-of- we test measure—that is actually leading participants to help. Though the Cialdini et al. paper is quite sophisticated, Batson et al. (1997) pointed out a number of methodological problems. When they conducted a pair of experiments that avoided these methodological problems, the role of empathy in producing helping behavior was clearly evident. However, most experiments exploring the link between empathy and helping behavior, including this one, use a relatively small number of participants. And the “replication crisis” that has emerged in recent years has led many to worry about the robustness of the effects reported in experiments like these (Chambers 2017). McAuliffe et al. (2018) have addressed these concerns. Their high powered, pre-registered study, run on the internet, analyzed data from 680 participants. Their findings were “unambiguously supportive” (2018: 504) of the link between empathy and helping behavior.

Batson’s answer to this question is clear.

Having reviewed the evidence from research designed to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis against the six egoistic alternatives …, it is time to come to a conclusion—albeit tentative—about the status of this hypothesis. The idea that empathy produces altruistic motivation may seem improbable given the dominance of Western thought by the doctrine of universal egoism. Yet, in the words of Sherlock Holmes, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable , must be the truth”. It seems impossible for any known egoistic explanation of the empathy-helping relationship—or any combination of them—to account for the research evidence we have reviewed. So what remains? The empathy-altruism hypothesis. Pending new evidence or a plausible new egoistic explanation of the existing evidence, we seem forced to accept this improbable hypothesis as true. (Batson 2011: 160) [ 21 ]

Batson’s research program is compelling, and he certainly has shown that the empathy-altruism hypothesis is “in the hunt”, but his findings are not conclusive. There are a number of reasonable challenges to the methodology and the conclusions in some of Batson’s studies. Setting these out in detail is a substantial project (see Stich, Doris, & Roedder 2010). But there is also a plausible egoistic hypothesis that has not been systematically explored.

In recent years, a number of authors have made an impressive case for the hypothesis that belief in a “Big God”—a supernatural being who is omniscient, morally concerned, and acts as a policing agent in human affairs—played a crucial role in the transition from face-to-face “band level” human groups made up of at most a few hundred individuals to much larger tribal groups, and ultimately to chiefdoms and nation states (Norenzayan et al. 2016). These are provocative and controversial ideas. Much less controversial is the claim that many people believe that even when no other human can observe them, a supernatural being of some sort is aware of what they are doing and thinking, and that this being may punish thoughts and behavior it disapproves of and reward thoughts and behavior it approves of, with the punishments and rewards delivered either during the agent’s lifetime or after she dies. [ 22 ] In the experiments, described in section 5.1 , designed to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis against the social punishment hypothesis, Batson and his colleagues went to great lengths to insure that participants in the “low potential for negative social evaluation” condition would think that no one knew of their decisions, and thus that no one would think badly of them or sanction them if they decided not to help. But, of course, none of the steps taken to insure secrecy would be effective in keeping an omniscient God from knowing what these participants had decided. So if we assume that many people believe an omniscient God wants them to help others in need, and that they believe Divine sanctions for not helping are more likely when the target engenders empathy, [ 23 ] the experiments do nothing to rule out a variation of the social punishment hypothesis which maintains that participants are motivated by a desire to avoid punishments administered by God.

The egoistic alternative just sketched, which might be called “the divine punishment hypothesis”, also leads to the pattern of predictions derived from the empathy-altruism hypothesis sketched in Table 5 , and the results reported in Table 6 . The bottom line is that using the Sherlock Holmes standard that Batson favors, there is still a lot of work to do. There is a family of egoistic hypotheses invoking beliefs in supernatural punishments—or supernatural rewards—that still needs to be ruled out before we accept the “improbable hypothesis” as true. [ 24 ]

In the colorful passage quoted at the beginning of section 5.4 , Batson seems to suggest that in the debate between egoists and altruists there are only two possible outcomes. If all human behavior is ultimately motivated by self-interested desires, then the egoist wins; if some human behavior is motivated by ultimate desires for the well-being of other people, then the altruist wins. However, as noted in section 2 , the dialectical landscape is more complex, for there are many desires that are neither self-interested nor desires for the well-being of other people. If any of these are ultimate desires that lead to behavior, then the egoist is mistaken. But, as Batson clearly recognizes, this would not vindicate altruism; both egoism and altruism might be mistaken.

Batson has used the term principlism for one family of ultimate desires that would support neither egoism nor altruism.

Principlism is motivation with the ultimate goal of upholding some moral principle—for example, a principle of fairness or justice, or the utilitarian principle of greatest good for the greatest number. (Batson 2011: 220)

Under some circumstances, one or another of these principles might require helping behavior, though that helping behavior would not be altruistic, since the ultimate desire motivating the behavior is to uphold the principle. On Batson’s view, we really don’t know much about principlism.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no clear empirical evidence that upholding justice (or any other moral principle) functions as an ultimate goal. [ 25 ] Nor is there clear empirical evidence that rules this possibility out. (Batson 2011: 224)

But if that’s right, then Batson’s conclusion that the empathy-altruism hypothesis is true and that people are sometimes altruistic is premature. For even if it were conceded that all the plausible egoistic alternatives to empathy-altruism have been excluded, the job of testing empathy-altruism against principalist alternatives has hardly begun. Moreover, the scope of that project may be much larger than Batson imagines.

One way to see this is to ask which action guiding principles are moral principles. [ 26 ] There is ongoing debate about this question in both philosophy and psychology (Stich 2018). Though Batson does not address that debate, the examples he offers (“fairness or justice or the utilitarian principle”) suggest that when he talks about moral principles he has a rather limited set of principles in mind. But if principlism is limited to a relatively small set of moral principles familiar from the philosophical literature, then principlism hardly exhausts the non-egoistic alternatives that defenders of psychological altruism must rule out. In recent years, there has been a growing body of work on the role of norms in human life, where norms are understood as action guiding rules that can govern just about any human activity. Researchers from a variety of disciplines have argued that norms, and a robust innate psychology for acquiring, storing and acting on norms, have played a fundamental role in shaping human culture and making humans the most successful large animal on the planet (Henrich 2015; Boyd 2018; Kelly & Davis 2018). Others have proposed accounts of norm psychology on which people have ultimate desires to comply with culturally acquired norms (Sripada & Stich 2006) and accounts of how a psychological system generating such ultimate desires might be favored by natural selection (Sripada 2008). The sorts of behavioral rules that count as norms in this literature might well include the sorts of moral principles that Batson had in mind when he characterized principlism. But these are only a small subset of the norms that these researchers have in mind. What makes all of this relevant to our current topic is that any culturally acquired norm might generate an ultimate desire to comply, and most of those ultimate desires are neither egoistic nor altruistic. Thus to make a plausible case that an episode of helping behavior is altruistic, it is not enough to rule out egoistic explanations and explanations that appeal to principlism. The defender of psychological altruism must also rule out explanations that trace the helping behavior to an ultimate desire to comply with any of the vast collection of norms that prevail in human cultures. And that’s a job that defenders of altruism have not even begun.

Another possibility is that some helping behavior might not be motivated by ultimate desires at all. Gęsiarz and Crockett (2015) argue that, in addition to the goal-directed system, behavior, including helping behavior, is sometimes produced by what they call the habitual and Pavlovian systems. The habitual system leads to actions that have the highest expected value based on previous life experiences rather than possible consequences indicated by features of the current situation. As a result, helping behavior may be repeated in the future and in circumstances in which motivating factors like the promise of rewards are absent if the behavior has been rewarded in the past. Like the habitual system, the Pavlovian system produces behavior with the highest expected value based on the past. Unlike the habitual system, however, the Pavlovian system produces behavior that has been successful in the evolutionary past, rather than in an individual’s past. This means that behavioral dispositions that have led to reproductive success in a individual’s evolutionary past may have become innate or “hard-wired” through natural selection. If it is indeed the case that some helping behavior is produced by the habitual or Pavlovian systems, then egoism is false. And if some helping behavior is egoistically motivated and the rest is produced by the habitual and Pavlovian systems, then altruism is also false.

Batson and his collaborators have accomplished a great deal. They have formulated a sophisticated altruist hypothesis, the empathy-altruism hypothesis, that can be tested against competing egoist hypotheses, and they have designed experiments making a strong case that many of those egoist hypotheses are false. But to show that altruism is true, it is not enough to show that specific egoist hypotheses can’t explain specific episodes of helping behavior. Nor would it be enough to show that all plausible versions of egoism are false. It must also be shown that episodes of helping behavior that can’t be explained egoistically can’t be explained by another process, such as principalistic ultimate motivation or ultimate motivation by a non-moral norm. In addition, the defender of altruism must show that non-egoistic episodes of helping behavior are not the product of the habitual or Pavlovian systems. None of Batson’s experiments were designed to rule out these non-egoistic options or others that might be suggested. So there is still much work to be done.

On a more positive note, it seems that Batson and his associates have shown quite conclusively that the methods of experimental psychology can move the debate forward. Indeed, one might argue that Batson has made more progress in this area during the last four decades than philosophers using the traditional philosophical methodology of a priori arguments buttressed by anecdote and intuition have made in the previous two millennia. Their work powerfully demonstrates the utility of empirical methods in moral psychology; philosophical moral psychologists debating the altruism-egoism question have always made empirical claim, and it is now evident that the human sciences possess resources to help us empirically assess those empirical claims.

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altruism | altruism: biological | Comte, Auguste | culture: and cognitive science | egoism | empathy | experimental moral philosophy | hedonism | personal identity: and ethics | social norms

Acknowledgments

This entry expands and updates the “Egoism and Altruism” section in Doris, Stich, Phillips and Walmsley, “Moral Psychology: Empirical Approaches”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/moral-psych-emp/>. Some material in this entry is borrowed from Stich, Doris and Roedder (2010).

For helpful suggestions, we are grateful to Mark Alfano, C. Daniel Batson, William J. FitzPatrick, Adam Lerner, Joshua May, Samir Okasha, Gualtiero Piccinini, Alejandro Rosas, Thomas Schramme, Armin Schulz, Elliott Sober, Kim Sterelny, Valerie Tiberius and David Sloan Wilson. Our thanks to Zhao Wang who helped assemble and check the references.

Copyright © 2020 by John Doris < jmd378 @ cornell . edu > Stephen Stich < stich . steve @ gmail . com > Lachlan Walmsley < ldw917 @ gmail . com >

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What Is Altruism in Psychology? 8 Inspiring Examples

It can be as simple as helping a neighbor with their shopping. Or more noteworthy, putting themselves at risk to rescue a stranger, changing healthcare policies to benefit communities, or helping to rid the world of a devastating disease, impacting millions.

And yet, psychologists and philosophers argue over the motivation behind compassionate, kind-hearted, considerate, and benevolent actions.

Are these people self-less  or self-interested ?

Some believe they are driven by altruism, with no regard for themselves or their wellbeing, while others claim self-interest drives even the noblest action.

In this article, we explore the meaning of altruism and discuss whether behavior can be motivated solely by another’s wellbeing. And if so, why? We also uncover human and animal examples of altruistic behavior and the biological and philosophical implications beneath.

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This Article Contains:

What is altruism in psychology, 4 inspiring examples, the biology of altruism: 5+ interesting findings, reciprocal altruism and the animal kingdom, a note on effective altruism, pure altruism: a philosophical take, relevant resources, a take-home message.

Altruism describes behavior motivated by the goal of increasing someone else’s welfare. In contrast, egoism defines acts driven by our self-interest (Batson, Ahmad, & Lishner, 2020).

For example, the motivation behind stopping to help someone with a flat tire:

• Egoistic view – the driver stops so that they appear caring in front of their new partner.
• Altruistic view – the driver is motivated to stop by their concern for another’s wellbeing.

The underlying motivation defines whether an action is altruistic.

But, isn’t altruistic behavior commonplace? After all, many of us give to charitable appeals, visit relatives in the hospital, or help one another with loss.

Not everyone agrees.

Universal egoism

The theory of universal egoism is commonly held by psychologists, biologists, and economists, partly due to its simplicity and lack of nuance (Batson et al., 2020).

According to this model, the goal or motivation behind each act is self-benefit.

We behave in such a way to feel good about ourselves, receive material rewards, or avoid feeling shame about our actions or inaction.

• We help a friend because we do not want to lose the closeness we share with them. If we see them upset, it causes us to feel bad, so we intervene.
• We offer someone a ride because at some point we may need their help.

Even a heroic life-saving act, according to universal egoists, is an attempt to escape guilt and be seen in a positive light (Batson et al., 2020).

And yet, believing that every action is motivated by self-interest alone seems cynical and devoid of humanity, and offers a bleak view of the world.

Can we believe that there are no selfless actions?

The altruist is more generous with the motivation they attribute to such acts.

While much of our behavior is underpinned by egoistic motivation, under certain circumstances, help is given with the sole aim of improving or safeguarding the wellbeing of others – this is altruism.

If we assist someone in trouble, we are therefore not motivated by a future, unknowable reward or recognition.

But why would we engage in behavior that favors another over ourselves?

– Empathic motivation

Our actions are motivated by our emotional reactions – including empathy and sympathy – to a situation.

In a literal sense, we experience the pain of our friend’s grief, so we offer our time and help. Ongoing brain research has confirmed that mirror neurons help us represent the actions or emotions of the people around us (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2010).

When we see a starving child on a TV commercial, we feel their distress and that of their family before donating.

Empathic motivation results from a combination of our feelings – tenderness, compassion, and sympathy – and the recipient’s sadness, loneliness, and distress.

We perceive the needs of another or imagine their feelings.

Egoists counter this view by suggesting that we are still motivated by self-interest; we help another to remove or reduce our uncomfortable feelings that result from our empathy .

– Collectivism (or group selection)

The collectivist believes that the ultimate goal behind the way we act is to benefit the group, rather than oneself.

Instead of focusing on ourselves or the person we help, we are motivated to improve the wellbeing of the group to which we belong.

It is perhaps best summed up by psychologist Robyn Dawes, it is “ not me or thee but we ” (Dawes, Kragt, & Orbell, 1988).

However, when framed by egoists, the motivation to benefit the group also promotes self-interest.

– Principlism

Logically, behavior that motivates us to keep the group safe may indirectly (or even directly) harm those outside the group. Principlism, however, avoids this dilemma, suggesting that altruism is motivated by the goal of upholding a principle and is therefore universal and impartial.

However, even behavior motivated by principlism can be seen as egoism if upholding moral principles is for personal gain.

While egoism remains a strong challenge to altruism and is dominant in many social sciences, there are plenty of human and animal examples that appear to counter this stance.

Recent research supports the idea of altruism, finding that people feel happier when they engage in behavior motivated by others’ wellbeing (Aknin, Broesch, Hamlin, & Vondervoort, 2015).

Osotua – asking for help

For the Maasai herders of the Serengeti plain, asking for help – known as osotua – is part of their tradition (Holmes, 2016). It is the tribe’s custom that as long as it does not jeopardize their survival, they are obliged to help. And it could mean giving up some of their herd without expecting payback or anything in return.

According to research, similar acts of altruism also exist elsewhere – from Texan cattle ranchers to Fijians – and works because the world is unpredictable. We never know when there will be a crisis and when we will need to ask for help (Holmes, 2016).

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Air Florida Flight 90

After Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the Potomac River, the remaining passengers clung to the plane’s tail in 30-degree water.

When a helicopter from the National Park Service dropped a line to the survivors, Arland Williams , in better shape than the rest, helped each person, in turn, to attach. They were then towed to safety, one at a time.

When it was finally Williams’s chance to reach safety, the helicopter returned to find he was no longer there, succumbing to the water’s freezing temperatures.

He paid the ultimate price to save others’ lives without reward, except for the knowledge of his fellow passengers’ safety.

Bravery and altruism

In a 2019 terror attack on London, civil servant Darryn Frost used an unlikely weapon to defend others from a man wielding a knife and wearing a fake suicide vest.

Grabbing a narwhal tusk from a wall display in the room where the attack began, he chased the man onto London Bridge where police subsequently shot him. Frost’s selfless actions on that day undoubtedly saved many lives, without regard to his safety.

Wesley Autry – the Subway Hero

In 2007, Cameron Hollopeter, then 19, suffered a seizure and fell on to the tracks at a subway station in Manhattan. With a train approaching, Wesley Autry, a New York City construction worker, leaped off the platform’s edge and pinned Hollopeter to the ground. The train braked and passed overhead with inches to spare (Wesley Autrey, 2020).

Autry’s heroic act earned him New York City’s Bronze Medallion and caused a media frenzy, leading to newspaper interviews and multiple appearances on primetime TV.

But when Autry, a humble man, acted, he did it to help, not to be rewarded.

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Biologists and social scientists tend to look at life from a different perspective from psychologists and, as a result, have an alternate view of altruism.

For a biologist, altruism is not the motivation behind behavior but refers to increasing the reproductive fitness of another animal at the cost of their own (Arbia & Carbonnier, 2016).

As Richard Dawkins puts it in The Selfish Gene (2016), “An entity, such as a baboon, is said to be altruistic if it behaves in such a way as to increase another entity’s welfare at the expense of it own.”

And yet, from an evolutionary perspective, this seems counterintuitive.

After all, if most animal behavior is hereditary, how would altruistic behavior be consistently passed on to subsequent generations, when it results in fewer offspring?

But kin altruism (also referred to as the inclusive fitness theory ) suggests that helping a relative (who shares a large part of our genetic code) increases the likelihood of some of our genes being passed down (Buss, 2014).

Altruistic behavior promotes the genes rather than the individual. Research has shown that such activity decreases as the genetic variation (representative of the degree of distance within family terms) increases.

However, how does this explain altruistic behavior toward strangers who share much less genetic material?

At this point, evolutionary biologists turn to a branch of applied mathematics known as game theory .

This mathematical model shows that reciprocity – exchanging help for mutual benefit – can explain biological non-kin altruism (Buss, 2014; Arbia & Carbonnier, 2016).

Reciprocal altruism states that adaptations “providing benefits to non-relatives can evolve as long as the delivery of the benefits is reciprocated at some point in the future” (Buss, 2014).

Such behavior is likely to be repaid down the line and is therefore extremely valuable as it benefits both animals.

There are many examples within nature of animals helping others – even from different species.

Chimpanzees

When a younger chimpanzee seized control of the group from an older dominant male at a zoo in the Netherlands, the latter was not ready to retire. Working with a more youthful, up-and-coming male, he was able to challenge the new dominant male and secure some of the aforementioned mating rights he had lost when dethroned (Buss, 2014).

By working together for a common cause, both the older male and his younger partner experienced mutual benefits.

Vampire bats

Vampire bats feed on the blood of horses and cattle. Research shows that well-fed bats, living in a colony, regurgitate blood from their night’s hunting, giving it to those who are hungry and whom they have received blood from in the past (Buss, 2014).

The closer the connection between the bats, the more likely they are to share their hunting success.

Humpback whales

While the reciprocal nature of the altruistic relationship in the next example is unclear, it provides an interesting example of inter-species behavior.

In 2009 marine ecologist Robert Pitman experienced a surprising act of altruism in the frozen waters of Antarctica. When killer whales began attacking a seal, lying precariously on a small ice floe, an unlikely hero came to the rescue.

When the seal began to wash off the ice – and the killer whales prepared to attack – a humpback whale appeared. It rolled over onto its back, allowing the seal to lay on its stomach, protected. When the seal started to slip, the whale nudged it back onto its stomach (Howgego, 2016).

Why some people are more altruistic than others – Abigail Marsh

Greg Lewis wanted to make a difference in the world and use his 80,000 hours (the average number of hours in our career) as effectively as possible (Firth, 2017).

Lewis believes in effective altruism . His philosophy is to use science to understand and make decisions based on the positive effect he can have on the world.

But when he explored the impact of his plans to become a doctor, he found that his potential was better realized if focused elsewhere. By working in the public health sector – where he could direct policy and have a far-reaching effect on a population’s wellbeing – and making charitable donations based on a better salary, he could help the most people.

Using a statistical tool known as Quality Adjusted Life Years and information from the 80,000 hours website , he understood the effects of where time and money are spent and found a way of maximizing the good he could do.

For example, taking extra care driving near a school does not directly benefit a child but reduces their potential for harm (Kraut, 2016).

And yet, life is messy, and often so are our motives.

The driver may be acting altruistically by taking care around the school, while also showing some self-interest. They are perhaps driving slowly to avoid accidents and possible reputational damage or to escape a ticket for driving too fast.

Pure altruism occurs when there is a single motive.

If the driver’s only goal is the safety of the children, with no benefit to themselves, then the behavior is considered purely altruistic .

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The following book is a detailed introduction to positive psychology and provides an insightful and highly engaging chapter on altruism and empathy.

The next two books on evolutionary psychology offer a fascinating exploration of our evolved mind and the adaptations that continue to shape who we are.

• Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind – David Buss ( Amazon )
• Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction – Lance Workman and Will Reader ( Amazon )

Check out the following link for a philosophical grounding on altruism:

• Altruism – Richard Kraut ( Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy )

For those who wish to find a way of making their working life more altruistic, the following website provides information on careers that add value to people’s lives:

80,000 hours

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Daily we see small acts that appear to be motivated by altruism. And occasionally, we witness or read in the news about someone saving a life or giving the gift of time or money to change someone’s world for the better.

Such acts display the very best of being human.

When we witness a fall, a car accident, or a child about to step into oncoming traffic, there is no time to consciously deliberate the gain we might receive.

Our drive to act appears to be instinctual. We wish to stop, or at least reduce, harm.

Perhaps, our reaction, while automatic, suggests some degree of delayed (or indirect) reciprocal altruism. We hope that if one of our loved ones were in danger, someone would step in, without thought for their safety.

Whether pure altruism exists may remain a matter of philosophy. Until we can see the true, and most probably complex, motivation within our own and others’ behavior, we can only guess what goes on inside our brain.

Either way, we must strive to benefit one another and ensure wellbeing both locally and globally.

Why not take time to read articles or biographies of those who have helped others without thought for themselves, whether during war, famine, disaster, or economic crisis? See the positive in their actions and the good in the world, and consider what you could do with your time.

The roles we play in society affect those around us, even if we don’t see it. Use your time wisely, invest in daily and longer term altruism, and know the difference it can make.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Strengths Exercises for free .

• Aknin, L. B., Broesch, T., Hamlin, J. K., & Vondervoort, J. W. (2015). Prosocial behavior leads to happiness in a small-scale rural society. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , 144 (4), 788–795.
• Arbia, A., & Carbonnier, G. (2016). Human nature and development aid: IR and the biology of altruism. Journal of International Relations and Development , 19 , 312–332.
• Batson, C. D., Ahmad, N., & Lishner, D. A. (2020). Empathy and altruism. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology (pp. 417–426). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Buss, D. (2014). Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind . New York, NY: Routledge.
• Dawkins, C. R. (2016). The selfish gene. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Dawes, R. M., Kragt, A. J., & Orbell, J. M. (1988). Not me or thee, but we: The importance of group identity in eliciting cooperation in dilemma situations: Experimental manipulations. Acta Psychologica , 68 (1–3), 83–97.
• Firth, N. (2017, February 22). How to be good: Can science show us how to save the world? New Scientist. Retrieved August 20, 2020, from https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23331142-800-how-to-be-good-can-science-show-us-how-to-save-the-world/
• Holmes, B. (2016, August 10). The kindness paradox: Why be generous? New Scientist. Retrieved August 20, 2020, from https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130860-400-the-kindness-paradox-why-be-generous/
• Howgego, J. (2016, October 12). I saw humpback whales save a seal from death by killer whale. New Scientist. Retrieved August 19, 2020, from https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23230950-700-i-saw-humpback-whales-save-a-seal-from-death-by-killer-whale/
• Kraut, R. (2016, August 25). Altruism . Retrieved August 20, 2020, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism/
• London Bridge attack: Darryn Frost on using a narwhal tusk to stop knifeman. (2019, December 21). Retrieved August 21, 2020, from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50870309
• Rizzolatti, G., & Sinigaglia, C. (2010). The functional role of the parieto-frontal mirror circuit: Interpretations and misinterpretations. Nature Reviews Neuroscience , 11 , 264–274.
• Wesley Autrey. (2020, August 14). Retrieved August 20, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Autrey
• Workman, L., & Reader, W. (2014). Evolutionary psychology: An introduction . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Particularly Exciting Experiments in Psychology

June 25, 2015

Altruism May Be Universally and Uniquely Human

Evolutionary theories of altruism that focus on long-term benefits such as kin selection or expectations of later reciprocity cannot account for all altruistic behavior. For example, there are obvious long-term benefits to giving your lunch to your child, but it is less clear how you will benefit from giving your lunch to a homeless person you will never see again.

Recent work suggests that humans behave altruistically because it is emotionally rewarding. However, it is unclear whether this is a universal explanation for altruism because previous studies were almost exclusively conducted in North American societies.

Aknin and colleagues (2015, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General ) (PDF, 87KB) tested whether altruism is emotionally rewarding for individuals from a remote, small-scale, rural society on a small island in the South Pacific (Vanuatu). An experimenter gave children eight candies (a rare and therefore valuable commodity). The experimenter then asked the children to give one of their eight candies to a puppet (costly giving); the experimenter also gave the children a new candy to give to the puppet (non-costly giving). Children were videotaped and emotional expressions were coded for happiness.

Replicating prior results with Canadian children, children from Vanuatu displayed more happiness when giving their own candy to the puppet (costly giving) compared to giving a candy provided by the experimenter to the puppet (non-costly giving). Because children gave candy to the puppet in both conditions, these results cannot simply reflect that children enjoyed interacting with the puppet. Finding emotional benefits of altruism in diverse cultural contexts supports the possibility that this is a universal explanation for altruistic behavior.

Although altruism has long been considered a uniquely human capacity, prior work has shown that many animals choose to help others in situations where there is no cost of doing so.

Sterck, Olesen, and Massen (2015, Journal of Comparative Psychology ) (PDF, 94KB) examined whether long-tailed macaques (Macaca fasicularis) engage in true altruistic behavior, where there is a cost to the donor. Macaques were placed in a room with two handles. A close relative (sibling or offspring) was placed in an adjacent room, while another adjacent room remained empty. Pulling one handle delivered a high-quality food reward (peanut) to themselves and a low-quality reward (cucumber) to the empty room, while pulling the other handle delivered the high-quality reward to their relative but the low-quality reward to themselves. In other words, providing food to a relative came at a cost, because the donor received a less desirable reward than if they did not provide food to their relative.

Macaques consistently chose to take the high-quality reward for themselves, even though this meant that their relative received nothing. Together with previous work showing that macaques give to relatives in the same task when their reward is the same regardless of their behavior, these results suggest that macaques have prosocial tendencies, but are not altruistic.

• Aknin, L. B., Broesch, T., Hamlin, J. K., & Van de Vondervoort, J. W. (2015, June 1). Prosocial Behavior Leads to Happiness in a Small-Scale Rural Society. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000082
• Sterck, E. H. M., Olesen, C. U., & Massen, J. J. M. (2015, May 11). No Costly Prosociality Among Related Long-Tailed Macaques (Macaca fascicularis). Journal of Comparative Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0039180

Other Interesting Reading

Object-based attention is studied in the context of visual search in:

• real-world scenes ( Malcolm & Shomstein, 2015, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General )
• rehearsal of feature binding in visual working memory ( Shen, Huang, & Gao, 2015, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance ).

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February 4, 2020

Altruistic babies? Study shows infants are willing to give up food, help others

A new study by the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences finds that very young children are willing to offer food and help others. Kathrin Pienaar

Human adults often respond to hungry people, whether through food banks or fundraisers, or by simply handing over their lunch. But when, and how, does that spirit of giving start?

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New research by the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, finds that altruism may begin in infancy. In a study of nearly 100 19-month-olds, researchers found that children, even when hungry, gave a tasty snack to a stranger in need. The findings not only show that infants engage in altruistic behavior, but also suggest that early social experiences can shape altruism.

The study is published online Feb. 4 in Scientific Reports, an open-access journal from the Nature Publishing Group.

“We think altruism is important to study because it is one of the most distinctive aspects of being human. It is an important part of the moral fabric of society,” said Rodolfo Cortes Barragan , a postdoctoral researcher at I-LABS and lead author on the study. “We adults help each other when we see another in need and we do this even if there is a cost to the self. So we tested the roots of this in infants.”

A 19-month-old child retrieves a blueberry for researcher Rodolfo Cortes Barragan. UW I-LABS

Nonhuman primates have been found to cooperate, and to share resources under restricted conditions. But nonhuman primates, such as chimpanzees, don’t actively hand over delicious food that they need themselves.

I-LABS researchers wanted to test whether human infants were able to act beyond self-interest, when faced with one of the most fundamental biological needs: food.

For this study, researchers chose kid-friendly fruits — including bananas, blueberries and grapes — and set up an interaction between child and researcher. The goal: to determine whether the child would, without encouragement, verbal instruction or reinforcement, spontaneously give an appealing food to an unfamiliar person.

In the experiment, the child and the adult researcher faced each other across a table at I-LABS, and the researcher showed the child a piece of fruit. What happened next was determined by whether the child was in the control group, or the test group. In the control group, the researcher gently tossed the piece of fruit onto a tray on the floor beyond reach but within the child’s reach. The researcher showed no expression and made no attempt to retrieve the fruit.

This video clip from the experiment shows a 19-month-old child offering a strawberry to study lead author Rodolfo Cortes Barragan, after Barragan pretends to drop the fruit.

That reaching effort — the adult’s apparent desire for the food — seemed to trigger a helping response in the children, researchers said: More than half the children in the test group picked up the fruit and gave it to the adult, compared to 4% of children in the control group.

In a second experiment with a different sample of children, parents were asked to bring their child just before their scheduled snack or mealtime — when the child was likely to be hungry. Researchers reasoned that this would raise the “cost to self” that defines altruism. The control and test group scenarios were repeated, but with children who were now more motivated to take the fruit for themselves. The results mirrored those from the previous study. Fully 37% of the test group offered the fruit to the researcher while none of the children in the control group did so.

“The infants in this second study looked longingly at the fruit, and then they gave it away!” said Andrew Meltzoff , who is co-director of I-LABS and holds the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Endowed Chair in psychology. “We think this captures a kind of baby-sized version of altruistic helping.”

The research team also analyzed the data in different ways — whether children offered fruit on the first trial of the experiment or got better during the process, for example, and whether children from particular types of family environments helped more.

Significantly more infants in the test group retrieved fruit for the researcher than in the control group. Scientific Reports/Barragan, e al.

The researchers found that infants helped just as well on the very first trial of the experiment as on later trials, which Barragan said is informative because it shows that the children did not have to learn to help during the study and needed no training. Indeed, children spontaneously and repeatedly helped a person from outside of their immediate family.

The researchers also found that children with siblings and from certain cultural backgrounds were especially likely to help the adult, indicating that the expression of infant altruism is malleable. These results fit well with previous studies with adults that show positive influences of having a cultural background that emphasizes “ interdependence ,” that is, a background that places particular value on how much an individual feels connected to others. Said Barragan, “We think certain family and social experiences make a difference, and continued research would be desirable to more fully understand what maximizes the expression of altruism in young children. If we can discover how to promote altruism our kids, this could move us toward a more caring society.”

Rechele Brooks , an I-LABS research scientist, was a co-author. The study was funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, a National Science Foundation Broadening Participation Postdoctoral Research Award to Barragan, and the I-LABS Ready Mind Project.

For more information, contact [email protected] or [email protected] .

Grant numbers: 1807789 (NSF), TWCF0198

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May 1, 2012

Rats Display Altruism

Rodents sacrifice sweets to jailbreak their friends

By Ferris Jabr

Calling someone a rat may be complimentary. According to a study published in the December 9, 2011, issue of Science , rats can be surprisingly selfless.

University of Chicago neuroscientist Peggy Mason and psychologists Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal and Jean Decety placed pairs of rats in pens. One rat was caged in the middle of the pen, whereas the other was free to run around. In this experi­ment, 23 of 30 rats liberated their peers by head butting the cage door or leaning against the door until it tipped over. To actually test the rodents’ selflessness, Mason placed rats in pens with two cages: in one was another rat; in the other was a pile of chocolate chips. The unhindered rats could easily have eaten the chocolate themselves. Instead most of the rodents opened both cages and shared the sweets. “In rat land, that is big,” Mason says. This is the first study to show altruistic behavior in rodents.

McGill University psychologist Jeffrey Mogil was impressed with Mason’s study, but both he and Mason point out that the jailbreaking rats might only be trying to silence their cohorts’ distressing alarm calls. Mason thinks the alarm calls are not frequent enough to motivate the rats; Mogil is not so sure.

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Mason’s new study is just one in a series of recent experiments that have changed how scientists think about empathy and altruism—namely, that such characteristics are not limited to people, as they once thought. It now seems that many animals have evolved instincts to help others, even at a cost to themselves, and that we inherited these same instincts. “The bottom line,” Mason says, “is that helping an individual in distress is part of our biology.” 

This article was published in print as "Will You Rat Me Out?"

A Little Altruism Experiment

An experiment of one altruistic act a day..

Posted January 23, 2010

Recently I began a little experiment to see whether I could do one altruistic act a day. There are many people who do a great many things, so it is often intimidating to think that doing one altruistic act a day could get very far. However, my hope is that it inspires others to also do generous acts for others. Maybe my one drop in the bucket won't account for much, but one drop is a good start.

Most definitions of altruism discuss the idea that the altruistic act is unselfish and that it provides no benefit to the person performing that act. That is a tough definition to live up to and many others have discussed whether a pure altruistic act is even possible. My goal is to live with the spirit of that intention. Thus, I chose to write this blog completely anonymous. I am quite certain that if I were not anonymous this blog would help my career . Potential dates would most likely find me doing this project an admirable quality. However, I want to see whether I can attempt to do it just for the sake of doing it. In fact, I hope to go as unnoticed as possible in many of my altruistic acts . One example is giving food to homeless people who are asleep so that I don't receive thanks. However, there are times when I certainly benefit from my altruistic actions.

This project has been inspired by many others (some examples are Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project , Stephen G. Post's Blog, Dacher Keltner 's work, and even Wayne Elise's Blog ).

Dacher Keltner has a great book, titled: Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life . Honestly, I have just started this book. I thought it would provide good motivation to keep this project going.

Early on in the book, Keltner speaks about jen, which comes from Confucius. Jen refers to a complex mixture of kindness, humanity, and respect that transpires between people. A person of jen "brings the good things of others to completion and does not bring the bad things of others to completion." Jen is felt in that deeply satisfying moment when you bring out the goodness in others.

Keltner speaks about the jen ratio, which captures the balance of jen compared to other negative events. In the top part of the ratio, are all actions in which you or other people have brought good to others - a kind hand on your back in a crowded elevator, a compliment to a stranger, laughing as a stranger accidentally steps on your foot. In the bottom of the ratio are the occasions in which you or others have done the opposite - the aggressive driver who swears at you as he roars past, the disdainful diner who sneers at at a person who is homeless. Higher ratios translate to greater jen in life.

My goal is to try to bring a little more jen into people's lives and to inspire others to do the same.

Craig D. Marker is a Professor and Department Chair of Clinical Psychology at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia. His clinical and research experience focuses on anxiety disorders. His upcoming book, The Antifragile Self, focuses on how the right amount of stress makes us stronger mentally and physically.

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Heart-Mind Online

Felix warneken: adorable altruistic experiment series.

• Compassionate and Kind

How do early prosocial behaviours develop?

What situations set the stage for children to "help" spontaneously?

How does biology and culture work in concert in the development of altruism?

In this excerpt from the Heart-Mind 2014 Conference, Dr. Felix Warneken walks us through a series of experiments with very young children that examines these questions.

(Prepare to smile at how adorable the emerging state of altruism looks!)

• Early Years

Altruism in Its Personal, Social, and Cultural Contexts: An Introduction

• First Online: 01 January 2013

Cite this chapter

• Juris G. Draguns 2  

Part of the book series: International and Cultural Psychology ((ICUP))

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5 Citations

Altruism is a complex, multifaceted concept that is difficult to define and challenging to investigate. At its core, it refers to intrinsically motivated action for the benefit of other human beings. Proponents of universal egoism attempt to reduce altruism to a surface manifestation of more fundamental, self-gratifying motives. Research over the last several decades has resulted in a partial paradigm shift toward the conclusion that altruism cannot be reduced to egotistic sources and that its roots are deeply embedded in human nature. A variety of research methods have been developed and are being vigorously pursued. They range from studies of altruistic behavior in social psychology experiments to naturalistic field and biographical approaches, sometimes supplemented by psychometric methods. Researchers have studied in exceptional situations as well as in daily lives and have introduced innovative approaches for its exploration. Several sources of altruistic motivation and conduct have emerged, ranging from biological to sociocultural. Yet a great many questions remain to be answered by multimethod and interdisciplinary inquiry before the biological, psychological, and cultural threads are integrated into a scientifically based understanding of human potential for altruism in its manifold modes of expression.

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Juris G. Draguns

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Draguns, J.G. (2013). Altruism in Its Personal, Social, and Cultural Contexts: An Introduction. In: Vakoch, D. (eds) Altruism in Cross-Cultural Perspective. International and Cultural Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6952-0_1

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Published : 19 April 2013

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