People Try To Do Right By Each Other, No Matter the Motivation, Study Finds (phys.org) 96
People want to help each other, even when it costs them something, and even when the motivations to help don't always align, a new study suggests. Phys.Org reports: In research published today in the journal Science Advances, sociologists found that people overwhelmingly chose to be generous to others -- even to strangers, and even when it seems one motivation to help might crowd out another. It is the first study to examine how all the established motivations to be generous interact with one another.
The study involved more than 700 people, and was designed to help researchers understand prosocial behavior. For this study, which was done online, participants had to decide how much of a 10-point endowment to give to other people. The points had monetary value to the participants; giving cost them something. Then the researchers created different scenarios that combined one or all four of the potential motivators for giving. One: The recipient of a kindness is inclined to do something nice for the giver in return. Two: A person is motivated to do something nice to someone that she saw be generous to a third person. Three: A person is likely to do good in the presence of people in their network who might reward their generosity. And four: A person is likely to "pay it forward" to someone else if someone has done something nice for her.
[David Melamed, lead author of the study and an associate professor of sociology at The Ohio State University] said that prior to the experiment, he thought the motivations for kindness might crowd one another out. "People have a self-bias," he said. "If you do something nice for me, I may weigh that more than if I see you do something nice for someone else. But we found that all the motivators still show up as predictors of how much a person is willing to give to someone else, regardless of how the differing motivators are combined." This research helps us understand the remarkable quantity and diversity of prosocial behavior we see in humans, Melamed said. "From an evolutionary perspective, it's kind of perplexing that it even exists, because you're decreasing your own fitness on behalf of others," Melamed said. "And yet, we see it in bees and ants, and humans and throughout all of nature."
The study involved more than 700 people, and was designed to help researchers understand prosocial behavior. For this study, which was done online, participants had to decide how much of a 10-point endowment to give to other people. The points had monetary value to the participants; giving cost them something. Then the researchers created different scenarios that combined one or all four of the potential motivators for giving. One: The recipient of a kindness is inclined to do something nice for the giver in return. Two: A person is motivated to do something nice to someone that she saw be generous to a third person. Three: A person is likely to do good in the presence of people in their network who might reward their generosity. And four: A person is likely to "pay it forward" to someone else if someone has done something nice for her.
[David Melamed, lead author of the study and an associate professor of sociology at The Ohio State University] said that prior to the experiment, he thought the motivations for kindness might crowd one another out. "People have a self-bias," he said. "If you do something nice for me, I may weigh that more than if I see you do something nice for someone else. But we found that all the motivators still show up as predictors of how much a person is willing to give to someone else, regardless of how the differing motivators are combined." This research helps us understand the remarkable quantity and diversity of prosocial behavior we see in humans, Melamed said. "From an evolutionary perspective, it's kind of perplexing that it even exists, because you're decreasing your own fitness on behalf of others," Melamed said. "And yet, we see it in bees and ants, and humans and throughout all of nature."
Breaking News: (Score:1)
Test subjects go out of their way not to look like dicks.
More expensive research I could have saved them time and money on.
Re:Breaking News: (Score:5, Insightful)
Most studies that show people are altruistic are conducted using undergraduates at elite universities.
The results often don't translate well to the general American public. The results apply even less to poor societies and tribal societies.
Re: (Score:1)
The results often don't translate well to the general American public. The results apply even less to poor societies and tribal societies.
Or to really anyone who thinks they're not being monitored at that moment, really.
Re: (Score:3)
In tribal societies, you are always being monitored. People will eventually have a very accurate gauge of who the cheaters are.
Re: Breaking News: (Score:2)
In a tribal society it is also possible that the cheater (with the help of a few enforcers) holds too much power for anyone to punish.
Re: (Score:2)
Like ours!
Re: Breaking News: (Score:4, Interesting)
Eh, being monitored isn't the deciding factor. It contributes for sure, but there are much bigger forces at play. If you are looking at a relatively stable society, people in general will be willing to help each other. Even with major political splits within that society you'll find individuals acting against their stated values, such as white supremacists performing CPR on black people, or democrats agreeing not to call a guy transphobic just because he doesn't want to fuck a tranny.
The problem always is that group-think influences the individual. If one white supremacist sees a black man dying in front of him, there is a fairly good chance that he will help. If 20 white supremacists are standing around watching a black man die, none of them will jump in to help. If anything, one of them may step in to boot-stomp him, and the other 19 will cheer.
None of this is news. Anyone with an IQ over 90 should understand why humanity functions in this way.
Re:Breaking News: (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, you may already be familiar with the paper, but for anyone who isn't there was an actual publication (The Weirdest People in the World [psych.ubc.ca]) on this that tried to replicate a lot of studies in different cultures outside of the U.S. and found widely different results. They have a section on economic decision making that's similar to the experiment being run here. It's a good read and interesting as hell.
Re:Breaking News: (Score:4, Interesting)
You must be an economics major:
More Evidence That Learning Economics Makes You Selfish
https://evonomics.com/more-evi... [evonomics.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Economics (the science) doesn't, really. Business and law curricula, on the other hand...
Re: (Score:2)
More Evidence That Learning Economics Makes You Selfish
https://evonomics.com/more-evi... [evonomics.com]
Perhaps they just become more enlightened.
Which helps more?
1. Giving a homeless person some money.
2. Investing that money in your business and then giving the homeless person a job.
Profit-seeking capitalists do a lot more good in the world than philanthropists.
Re: (Score:2)
It does not appear that you have a clue what's being taught in Economics programs.
Re: (Score:2)
It does not appear that you have a clue what's being taught in Economics programs.
Economists are taught that the invisible hand helps the homeless.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
That's not what Economics programs teach, Bill. It's like saying, "Physicists are taught how to transmute lead into gold."
Do you realize Marx was an economist? Piketty is an economist. There are all sorts of economists. The definition of Economics is the study of scarcity. Nothing more. Look it up.
Re: (Score:2)
Only when it's being taught as a religion.
Um no, not quite. On the right track (Score:4, Informative)
> Profit-seeking capitalists do a lot more good in the world than philanthropists.
You seem to have forgotten that virtually all philanthropists not only ARE capitalists, but very successful capitalists.
Here are the top five givers in America:
Warren Buffet
Bill Gates
Michael Bloomberg
the Walton family (Walmart)
George Soros
Re: (Score:2)
The first one. Not only because many homeless people have mental problems so they won't be able to hold on a job anyway, but because your business is highly unlikely to hire a homeless person in the first place.
Re: (Score:3)
What job will that capitalist give to someone who can't read and/or has a drug problem? If these capitalists are so magnanimous, why is that guy homeless in the first place? Your argument would be stronger if the capitalists paid taxes like the rest of us...
Re: (Score:2)
Your question seems to be "Because there are majority cases, why are there edge cases?" which shows how little you've thought about how things interlink. No matter what "capitalists" paid, it'd never be enough to cover your edge cases and one offs that you didn't like. Way past the point it'd be impossible for them to continue in business. Then you'd be killing the golden goose, and everyone would suffer.
After working for quite some time in a homeless hostel as a cleaner (and talking lots with the around
Sure they do (Score:2)
But we're also a comparatively young species. We're just old enough to start thinking about this stuff in the last thousand years or so.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. And we have not yet managed to get the really dangerous outliers under control. The CEO/President/RichGuy ones.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks to a personality disorder I am asocial and have a certain lack of empathy. I still do things considered good if it doesn't inconvenience me too much and try to avoid doing harm to others even if it does. Empathy makes sense, even if it is emulated in software, so to say.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yes. Or rater using the undergrads that are available. Recruiting undergrads is easy and cheap and there are methods to do it already in place. Getting other people is a lot harder and more expensive.
Re: (Score:1)
While tribalism is a thing, there have been studies where capitalism meets subsistence-based tribes. The resulting attitude is 'one person earning all that money is better than us all being poor'. It's the attitude of 'I had to sweat for everything, so you should too' that seems to be the exception in the world.
Note, that doesn't eliminate the concept of 'paying your own way'. Maybe, demanding everyone sweat is protecting a pretense that rich people earnt their wealth. In reality, 'someone always has
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Incorrect. Often these studies are done across cohorts. Anthropologists have been looking at it for centuries, and game theory has observed it arising. This is sociologists also showing it still exists, which is fine. This is a reinforcement, rather than a revolutionary discovery.
It does translate well in the general worldwide public. There are always people who will help, but there are always situations where involvement really can't be done without the relative cost being too high (i.e. someone going
Re: (Score:3)
You live in Orange County then?
Breaking News FOR YOU: (Score:1)
Theae studies are always done with complete anonymity of the test subjects for the reseachers. So nobody can tell who it was! It's an integral part of the double-blind method. That't study 101!
Which you are clearly completely clueless about.
But hey, it was done online. So it is utterly useless, as people act completely different when they don't have to face those they are interacting with. Empathy is almost impossible online. Because the subject are de-facto anonymous to *each other* too. As there are conse
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
As late as the time of the Cro Magnons humans were rare enough that most people never met more than 30-50 people in their entire lives. Most of the people that you had an opportunity to be kind to would be relatives to one extent or another. Evolutionarily altruism makes sense under those types of conditions, since evolution doesn't care about survival of individuals just gene lines.
Re:Kindness is selfishness done to a greater degre (Score:4, Interesting)
The incentive is there for much larger scale altruism, if only you have an effective way of correctly identifying cheats and punishing them. People seem to be quite willing to pay a high personal cost to punish a cheater, and that makes sense when paired with strong altruism.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, no. This "argument" only works if you break abstraction layering and that makes it invalid. If you do this right, then selfishness and kindness are both just mechanisms because they are on the same abstraction level. If you go one level more concrete, they are very much distinct.
Re:Kindness is selfishness done to a greater degre (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe in the animal kingdom that's true, but among humans with higher reasoning some of us try to be good people for the sake of being good people. There is no higher pursuit that self improvement and that includes the way you treat others.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's nothing like what Peterson is saying. His claim is that by self improving you can improve your lot in life... Which is true to an extent, the main problems are that his advice for self improvement is batshit and that he is very much against working with others to improve together or to improve society as a whole.
It's also a blame game, if someone is struggling it's their own fault and they should work harder, a classic conservative idea. By rejecting the idea that society can be unfair it becomes impos
Re: (Score:3)
That's exactly not what Peterson is saying.
He sees emergent behaviour. He wants people to be as good as they can be. Every person has limits, and he thoroughly acknowledges that. What he also says is that single limits are not the limitation of your engagement with the world; there are other strengths which will serve people better in other areas.
He's exactly FOR working with other to improve together as he's often stated that mentoring other to improve is one off the best ways to advance a general fitne
Re: (Score:2)
Problem is he claims to hate post-modernism, which is basically the stuff you claim he doesn't hate. Working with others to improve society, acknowledging that society is responsible for some things rather than just the individual etc.
To be honest I'm not sure he actually understands what post modernism is, or maybe he does but kinda pretends it's something else because if he didn't it would contradict is arguments.
I heard claims he was doing lectures again, not seen him pop up anywhere. Last I heard he had
In fact... (Score:1)
Re:In fact... (Score:4)
There are definitely a bunch of anti-social people in middle management of large companies, but my experience with the leadership of both large and small companies is that they spend a lot of time looking for opportunities for mutual benefit with other companies. That's how you create good long term customers & suppliers - find a good fit where you're both stronger together.
My experience with small family run businesses is that they give generously to their community.
Re: (Score:2)
Research shows that the individualist, me-first, dog-eat-dog ideology of capitalism is against human nature.
Not so. We are inherently creatures of inner conflict because our evolutionary success has been shaped by both individual success as well as group success. Individualism is every bit as much an inherent human drive as is sacrificing one's own selfish best interest to that of the tribe. E.O. Wilson's writing on the subject (The Meaning of Human Existence, or The Social Conquest of Earth) are some of my all time favorite science books.
Re: In fact... (Score:1)
Yes, except on the US, which rhose studies were based on, that you learned in school. Which were toppled.since then, by repeatig them elsewhere. Turnig the basis of the entire field on its head.
So are you saying Americans (and partially Europeans) are a new species? Homo sociopathis? :D ;)
Lizards VS bees! May the best ones win!
Interesting study, but some thoughts (Score:3)
Are we sure that people just aren't more generous in a non zero-sum game where the potential losses are so low that people might not care? Also I'd always give 10 tokens for each decision just to try to get everyone else to do that since would maximize the total payout for everyone participating.
Re: (Score:1)
Interesting take. You've basically pointed out that this study might actually be accidentally a very clever way to solve for the "prisoner's dilemma."
Re: (Score:2)
Most, not all. (Score:5, Insightful)
The take away should be that most people do the right thing but there are groups of people who will fuck you over and take you for everything you are worth. Sociopaths are by far the most damaging individuals to any society.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
They probably have not, but libertarians are usually quite pliable when they are not hidden from responsibility for their actions by the Intertubes or vote anonymity.
In fact, in real life one never sees libertarians with a spine, unless they be working for a government agency and have behind them the full power of the state creating a safe, disagreement-free zone for them to be in.
Re: Most, not all. (Score:3, Funny)
Did I understand you correctly? You provided so many examples, links, citations and facts i was overwhelmed so I asked.
Re: Most, not all. (Score:1)
With libertarians it is exactly what you wrote, only replacing mytribe with me.
Sounds like I have a better chance with him
Defective mirror neurons? (Score:2)
Decided to comment here, at what is the only official "Funny" point of the discussion. Not much of a joke, but if it were, I'd say the deeper truth underlying your [Way Smarter Than You's] joke involves the default values of trust. Research shows that the default cases are that we tend to "trust" people in "our group" and distrust people who are not in "our group". The catch is that people think at different levels. For example, some high-minded people are capable of regarding all of homo sapiens as "my gro
Re: (Score:2)
No, you did not understand me. Your statements are just bad form. You didn't use strict, your variables are not declared as local, and are initialized from bare words, which return nothing useful. Your coding style sucks, and that's why you're beefing up your ego on ./ of all places, Way stupider than most.
Re: (Score:2)
Split or steal (Score:3)
Reminds me of the old tv game show Goldenballs.
At the end, the two contestants have to make a secret choice. Split the pot with your opponent and take half, or steal in the hope that your opponent chooses split so that you can take all. If both players steal, they both lose and get nothing.
The players then get a moment to talk to each other to convince each other of their intentions. People that seemed so convincing turned out to be the most deceptive liars.
A little money and people will prove on national
Re: (Score:3)
Known in economic theory since 1830s as "Cournot competition", and generalized in game theory since 1944 as "The prisoner dilemma", with the low-value prize being the "Nash equilibrium" solution.
Re: (Score:3)
There was a guy on there who told the other player he was going to steal but would share half of it anyway. It was an interesting hack - the other player has no real choice but to share and hope that he keeps his word because if they decide to steal as well they can be fairly certain that they will get nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
Well don't leave me hanging...what was the outcome?
Re: (Score:3)
See for yourself: https://youtu.be/S0qjK3TWZE8 [youtu.be]
I think Kilroy put it better though. https://youtu.be/wGU5A0nPHsI [youtu.be]
Re: (Score:2)
If you believe your opponent can't be trusted, then announcing that you are stealing but will share is the logical choice.
1) the audience may not like you, but you will not have to suffer the injustice of the liar taking the pot
2) You still have the option of keeping your own word and splitting the pot afterwards.
But as you say, that would be a hack. Personally I think the greedy people don't consider the actual value of their thirty pieces of silver in the long run. What is your reputation worth?
Re: (Score:2)
Spoiler alert the guy actually shared as well. His goal was only to force the other guy to share.
Re: (Score:2)
Drat. No mod points.. I really liked that tale.
I've seen too many people do good things not to believe that in general, "people try to do the right thing".
Alas, the world is imperfect and poorly understood, which is (in my eyes anyway) the root of so many of the problems we have. Sometimes shoring up a symptom only increases the pressure at the actual problem. Not done through malice or anything else, just incomplete information.
Re: (Score:2)
Sociopaths at the top that is. A very small number (probably just 2 or 3 at this time) can kill the whole human race if they try.
Not a solid study (Score:1)
From the actual paper:
"The experiment was conducted using Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online crowd-sourcing platform that is used frequently for behavioral experiments in the social sciences (36–38). Turk workers read a brief description of the study, including a basic overview of the procedures and a summary of expected pay."
That means the pool of subjects is not randomized at all but actually all of them have a vested interest, which already would raise doubts about the data, not to mention the fact
But Game Theory... (Score:1)
Most people like to help each other. The issue is that our system isn't built on these direct transactions.
To make money to pay my bills to the Utility company, I don't just simply have to be nice to my friends, I have to go make money. I don't make money helping just the people that I consider friends. I have to work for a company. The company's bottom line does not work well on altruism, it only works when they get paid. If you don't pay the company, you will talk to the lawyers and debt collecto
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It's supposedly a learned behaviour. But there is likely genetic traits involved as well.
I think it comes down to a point of view in the end. It pretty much defines a political position as to how populations should be balanced. Things like social safety nets, immigration, and birth control vs genocide.
Re: (Score:2)
Karma (Score:2)
Karam is a beautiful thing, man.
For All Our Faults, Most Us Want Best for Others (Score:3)
I mean, we are judgemental and cruel to those we think "deserve" it but, overall, we want a better world for all..
I think we generally believe those who deserve punishment should be punished to help them happen.
Personal, I have never felt that way, but I have long noticed that others do.... more or less
In so many scifi stories, the robots or AI takes over and ends us all. I think this is because subconsciously, we know how messed up we really are, as a species. In spite of all this, I believe there are redeeming factors..
--Matthew C. Tedder
Virtue Signaling... (Score:1)
It's call virtue signaling.
To see the truth of folks, they need to think they can get by with doing anything they want. There is nothing mysterious about people doing things under social pressure.
People often will not step outside of the boundaries they are culturally raised in because social pressure keeps them in line so they will conform to the ideals that social pressure demands.
Most of the benevolence that you see is usually for public performance and it is effective too! Just like most leaders... re
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. Virtue signalling requires a non-anonymous context to work. When you observe it in practice, one characteristic is that the effort to advertise the "good" done is often significantly higher than the actual "good" done. Like donating 100k to charity and then spending 1M to blast all over the media how perfect a person you are.
In an anonymous context, virtue signalling is pretty reliably eliminated. That is one of the reasons for the invention of an "all seeing" "God", because then the virtue signalling
Multiple motivations (Score:3)
People (Ayn Rand) tend to assume one motivation, rather than multiple. This is an oversimplification. Almost everything I do has multiple motivations. I am bored, so I got on the internet. But I also like to tell people stuff - I got an arrogant streak. And I am not the only one that does things for multiple reaons.
Doctors for example do get paid, but most also want to help people. If someone gets sick on a plane, they don't ask to see your insurance card they just treat you.
If you are married, chances are you have had sex with your spouse for multiple different reasons. You probably enjoy the sex, but also like your spouse. You might ALSO do it because you want to maintain the relationship, and ALSO because you want children, and ALSO because they took out the garbage/made dinner/etc.
It's not one reason, it's several.
Did they repeat this study in Eastern Europe? (Score:2)
This has never been true in my experiance. (Score:2)
Group Selection (Score:2)
Group Selection [wikipedia.org], the alternative view as advocated by Konrad Lorenz (the goose imprinting guy), Edmond O Wilson (the ant guy) and others.
Re: (Score:2)
Which people? (Score:1)
Because I distinctly remember that one sociologist rewrote the book, by noticing all studies thar sociology was based on had been done with American students, repeating them elsewhere in the world, and noticing that people everywhere (except partially in Europe too) were the complete opposite of those Americans! (I don't know if he tested other Americans too, or just assumed those students stood in for all Americans. Ditto for Europe.)
They put their community first, an had a lot of empathy. While those stud
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
From life long experience (Score:1)
What a crock of shit. If the risk helping an innocent victim effects them in some way no chance in hell. The eaiset path to the truth is the most comfortable for most people whether true or not. If it is beyond that people will not help you.
Our survey said (Score:1)
WEIRD sources (Score:2)
Jonathan Haidt identified this in his book: that most psycho-moral studies use people from western societies who are uniquely weird: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic - a collection of characteristics making them as a group extremely unusual across humanity, and Americans in particular are the most WEIRD of all.
Essentially, they are a teeny subclass not representative of the vast bulk of humanity.
GOOD POINT (Score:2)
Also, they filter out mentally ill people which can end up as our leaders even if they are a minority.
It is not perplexing at all: Tit for tat (Score:1)
"From an evolutionary perspective, it's kind of perplexing that it even exists, because you're decreasing your own fitness on behalf of others,"
It is fairly well known phenomenon, named as Tit for tat [wikipedia.org]. And it is advantageous where it works. When you are in an environment where it does not pay off, it does not work there. You can judge regions according to the prevalence (or lack) of presence of such a behaviour in respective population.
BTW An involved version requires to have memory, to remember who did not cooperate. Though such a modification is only valid for (effectively) small populations, since you cannot reasonably remember for a large gro
Re: (Score:2)
We've only had the opportunity to form large groups within the last 15,000 years or so. For 99% of our evolution as a social species a "large" group might have consisted of a couple dozen people who met once or twice a year. As I pointed out higher in the thread, humans were exceedingly rare until very recently, most people would only have met 30-50 other humans in their entire life and most of them would be relations. Today (pre-COVID19 anyway) you could easily meet that many in a single meeting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, my comment does not disagree with your statement.
I would only add that the necessity to somehow distinguish among people for remembering who cooperate, is one of the reasons for grouping people according to skin colour: you can easily remember it even if you live, say, in LA. This might be one of the reasons of the systemic racism that I hear about these days.
You want to know what people are REALLY like? (Score:2)
People who are well-fed, not in any danger, comfortable, not broke, etc, can afford to be nice, and courteous, and generous to others. Get 'em drunk, and you usually find out what they really think, and put them under pressure of some sort or another, and you find out who and what they really are beneath the thin veneer of 'civilization' that they put on, like makeup on a womans' f
More examples? (Score:2)
I'm not impressed when you say ants and bees do it. That's usually going to be an intra-colony relationship, so it's just kin selection, right?
Humans are a good one, though. They're always interesting, and famous for how social we are.
But it says "throughout all of nature." Did they have more examples? And are they anything that would surprise us, not falling under the usual selfish gene explanations?
By 'people' they mean... (Score:2)
...non-orange people, obviously.
My experience as a paper boy years ago (Score:2)