The Drive For Altruism Is Hardwired 582
Dekortage writes "The Washington Post is reporting on recent neuroscience research indicating that the brain is pre-wired to enjoy altruism — placing the interests of others ahead of one's own. In studies, '[G]enerosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex... Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.' Such research 'has opened up a new window on what it means to be good,' although many philosophers over recorded history have suggested similar things."
altruism (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So do selfish people have defective brains? (Score:1, Interesting)
Lift each other up (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're getting brain activity... (Score:5, Interesting)
warning, possible flamebait follows:
If you're a Christian, is it impossible to be altruistic? If you do good deeds, don't you ingratiate yourself witht he Lord, thereby increasing your chance of being admitted to heaven? So, even if you don't really "get" anything for doing good deeds, you're still going to get a reward for it in the afterlife right? Which would mean it wasn't really altrustic.
No such thing as a truly altruistic act? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, if altruism creates pleasure in the brain, is it still considered altruism? You ARE getting something out of it, after all.
I knew I should have paid more attention in my humanities courses, particularly Philosophy.
Guilt and altruism (Score:5, Interesting)
Guilt, on the other hand, is waiting for the blow to fall. We don't feel guilty when there's no risk of being punished, and we don't act altruistic when there's no-one watching.
So even if the moral compass is in-built, it only activates in the presence of others.
Ethics. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not behaviour that is smart for the individual. Risking your own life for others? Not something you see often in the animal kingdom. But it is something that occurs among humans, and it is a big part of what we consider "good".
Philosophically, ethics falls into two distinct branches: relativism, and objectivism.
Relativism basically states that good and evil are relative...Relative to you personally, relative to your culture, relative to your psychological state. It fits with people's differing views on what is right and wrong; I think it's right, you think it's wrong, we're both correct. Basically it's worthless. If you're a relativist, morals are meaningless, because you can only apply moral judgements to yourself, and what the hell point is there in that?
Objectivism states that good and evil are objective...That there are things that everyone should agree are right and everyone should agree are wrong. Logically, objectivism must be correct, because the alternative is relativism, and relativism is worthless. But no one agrees about right and wrong, so how can it be right?
But when you look at it in terms of humanity as a social animal, it becomes a little clearer. The "Robin Hood" story is a classic example: Stealing is bad, except when you're stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, right? Obviously the group that is being stolen from (the rich) still think it's bad, but since the vast majority of people are not rich, historically it's been considered good.
Mill came up with the theory of Utilitarianism to attempt to explain this sort of thing: in a nutshell, whatever makes the majority happy is right, and whatever makes the majority unhappy is wrong. Politicians live by this one, because they never have to actually consider the greater good, they just have to make 51% happy until the next election. So adding a tax on gasoline to reduce consumption and using the money to pay for better public transit and research into cleaner energy, while probably the "right" thing to do, would never fly because it would piss off 80% of people and the guy'd get canned in the next election by someone running on a "repeal the gas tax" platform.
So utilitarianism clearly needs some work...Reduce "good" into "happy" and you end up with nothing but bread and circuses, because that would make people happy, and happy == good. This, in a nutshell, is the problem with democracy.
So we have a hardwired inclination toward altruism. It definitely explains a few things. The problem is, humanity has a lot of hardwiring. We have tons of instincts, reflexes, automatic responses. Most people learn to override those things as part of their day to day life. Can't live purely on instinct. So what value is it to have a piece of altrustic hardwiring in a society that preaches just the opposite? Altruism is an irrational response, from the point of view of the thing that's about to put its squishy coropreal self in harm's way.
Still, it's nice to know that, if you're trying to be altrusitic, if you're trying to be selfless, you're instinctive responses are going to be in line with your conscious actions. Maybe everyone...most everyone...really does have some good in them, whether they like it or not.
Re:Lift each other up (Score:3, Interesting)
Nowadays, we live separated from our extended families literally amongst strangers. A city is basically a bunch of different families and tribes mashed together in close quarters. In hunter-gatherer societies, when "strangers" or different families and tribes get together, strict ritual is followed, so that nobody does or says something that would unintendedly hurt one another, and it doesn't escalate to violence. Our civilized social rules or "manners" are basically rituals for dealing with strangers, which we have to do a lot in modern society. We have very complex and subtle rituals to deal with cashiers, bosses, people on the sidewalk; all of the casual acquaintances that make up most of our social interaction in the city. These rituals override our innate helping behavior, which evolved to help our relatives living with us.
Question--why do conservatives donate more? (Score:2, Interesting)
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right in America -- and it's making him nervous.
The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income.
In the book, he cites extensive data analysis to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives -- from church attendance and two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services -- make conservatives more generous than liberals.
The book, titled "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism" (Basic Books, $26), is due for release Nov. 24.
When it comes to helping the needy, Brooks writes: "For too long, liberals have been claiming they are the most virtuous members of American society. Although they usually give less to charity, they have nevertheless lambasted conservatives for their callousness in the face of social injustice."
For the record, Brooks, 42, has been registered in the past as a Democrat, then a Republican, but now lists himself as independent, explaining, "I have no comfortable political home."
Since 2003 he has been director of nonprofit studies for Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
Outside professional circles, he's best known for his regular op-ed columns in The Wall Street Journal (13 over the past 18 months) on topics that stray a bit from his philanthropy expertise.
One noted that people who drink alcohol moderately are more successful and charitable than those who don't (like him). Another observed that liberals are having fewer babies than conservatives, which will reduce liberals' impact on politics over time because children generally mimic their parents.
Brooks is a behavioral economist by training who researches the relationship between what people do -- aside from their paid work -- why they do it, and its economic impact.
He's a number cruncher who relied primarily on 10 databases assembled over the past decade, mostly from scientific surveys. The data are adjusted for variables such as age, gender, race and income to draw fine-point conclusions.
His Wall Street Journal pieces are researched, but a little light.
His book, he says, is carefully documented to withstand the scrutiny of other academics, which he said he encourages.
The book's basic findings are that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.
Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone's tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don't provide them with enough money.
Such an attitude, he writes, not only shortchanges the nonprofits but also diminishes the positive fallout of giving, including personal health, wealth and happiness for the donor and overall economic growth.
All of this, he said, he backs up with statistical analysis.
"These are not the sort of conclusions I ever thought I would reach when I started looking at charitable giving in graduate school, 10 years ago," he writes in the introduction. "I have to admit I probably would have hated what I have to say in this book."
Still, he says it forcefully, pointing out that liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.
In an interview, Brooks said he recognizes the need for government entitlement programs, such as we
Re:Guilt and altruism (Score:3, Interesting)
Speak for yourself. I feel vaguely uncomfortable running stoplights on my bicycle, when it's 3AM and I know there isn't a cop within km of where I am -- because I think that running stoplights is wrong. (Why do I run them? Because my bike won't trigger the traffic detector since it's mostly not metal.)
Some people make the distinction between shame cultures and guilt cultures: shame cultures are where morality is mostly external, and society punishes people when they're caught, so they feel badly about being caught, essentially, whereas guilt cultures rely on people feeling badly about what they've done, even if nobody knows.
To paraphrasean old story, a furnituremaker asked a Shaker why they used wooden pegs and beautiful craftsmanship to hold chairs together, even on inside joints where nobody could ever possibly know that they hadn't used glue/nails. The Shaker said, "God would know." That's a guilt culture right there.
Re:So... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure why any of this should come as a surprise to anyone.
Re:Hold up... technical foul (Score:3, Interesting)
Altruism is hardwired, but mostly among groups (Score:4, Interesting)
Science and religion agree again! (Score:2, Interesting)
Even the nonreligious "Gentiles" are accountable to God since all have the requirements of the law written on their hearts. It seems these scientists have found evidence to confirm this.
Re:Ethics. (Score:1, Interesting)
Nonsense. This is seen endlessly in the animal kingdom.
When a bird sees a predator and calls out a warning to its family members and neighbors, it is significantly increasing the possibility of the predator noticing and attacking it. It does so to protect the larger number of animals that it shares similar DNA with.
Just one example, there are millions. This is very common animal behavior.
"Altruism is an irrational response"
Not at all. What matters is the preservation of the larger quantity of similar genetic material. The bird calling out the warning may sacrifice itself (one bird) and protect several dozen others.
In addition, if one individual can perform an "altruistic" act which has a small cost (giving CPR), and the beneficiary receives a huge benefit (not dying), and then, later on, someone returns the favor, everyone comes out ahead. Hardly irritional; in fact, the exact opposite.
Re:Why do conservatives donate more? (Score:5, Interesting)
Another way of looking at this might be that "Religious Conservatives" spend a lot more money (primarily) improving the well-being of those they consider to be part of their own group, while "Secular Liberals" contribute a smaller amount to people outside of their own group. Both seem like perfectly natural responses.
Also remember that many religions have the concept of a semi-inforced tithe, and many European countries have gone so far as to make this a part of tax law. That sort of thing is going to skew the statics to almost meaninglessness.
Re:So do selfish people have defective brains? (Score:3, Interesting)
Particularly when I was working on OpenVPN, I saw a lot of this; most of the folks using the software were doing so for some commercial purpose, and much of the development was either done by the lead maintainer under contract to an organization making commercial use, or (in the case of minor patches) by individual users in the employ of some commercial entity. HylaFAX is similar, in that a strong majority of those involved (in terms of headcount) were directly working for other (non-OSS-centric) employers, and that those most tightly involved in maintaining the software were doing so for personal enjoyment -- but also very frequently under contract. Likewise, a very large number of the folks working on the Linux kernel are paid to do so; for well-established, vibrant projects, it seems to be more the rule than the exception.
In short -- in my experience, the idea of the open source developer being someone who works at night without pay is highly overrated. This holds not only for myself, but also for the many contacts I've maintained from my OSS-centric former employer (who is, incidentally, still in business -- the same business, for that matter).
History (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, we're not particularly capitalist. They say that about 30% of all working Americans work either directly or indirectly for the government or military. I don't know what the figure in Canada, Mexico, or the EU is, but I doubt it's much lower despite their vastly smaller military squanderage.
I agree: altruism is a farce (Score:3, Interesting)
That blows holes in the "selfless" claims to "altrusism", doesn't it?
If contributing to others really was selfless, then you would get NOTHING out of it.
In fact, if would be even more selfless if you were HARMED by contributing to others.
In fact, you can take that a step further and be even more selfless if contributing others harmed not only you, but all your loved ones, too, and also helped your enemies to harm more of your loved ones.
Why not go whole hog and realize that it would be most selfless of all if contributing to others harmed you, harmed your loved ones, helped your enemies, and also violated every sense of morality that you had.
For example, if you were to spend all of your money to help the new Neo-Nazi party build and deploy a nuclear weapon against your family, millions of oppressed people, and for the purpose of increasing Neo-Nazi party power worldwide, then that action would be really, really, really selfless of you.
THAT is altruism. The fake "altruism" that people insist upon is actually really selfish in comparison, as you've admitted that you get "a LOT" out of doing it.