Real World Altruism

Introductory waffle

This is very much a work-in-progress blog post, written in a bit of a rush. I hope to edit it ‘sometime’ to make it more clear, readable, and engaging, especially for non psychology students.

During the second seminar of my altruism module, each student chooses a behaviour that might sometimes be, at least in part, motivated by altruism, i.e., concern for the positive welfare of another or others. They can but do not have to choose from the following list:

adoption, blood donation, body-part (e.g., bone marrow, egg, sperm, organ) donation, business practices, caring, citizenship, courageous resistance (including whistle-blowing), courtesy, driving, environmentalism and animal welfare, heroism and emergency intervention, honesty, internet behaviour, liberalism, lying, mercy killing, philanthropy (charitable giving), religious action, rescuing, romantic relationships, sexual behaviour, shopping, social activism, surrogacy, tax-paying, terrorism, tipping, vaccination, volunteering, working, etc.

Each student then spends part of the following week researching links between altruism (as defined above) and their chosen behaviour. They produce a poster summarising what they have found important or interesting. In the third seminar, they explain their posters to each other and explore implications of similarities and differences across behaviours. We end with a whole-group discussion. The vast majority of students put a lot of thought and effort into their posters, which do not contribute to the grade they will get for the module. Thanks, guys. You rock.

Below are some of the more important issues that tend to come out during whole group discussions of students’ findings – albeit sometimes with a heavy steer from me.

Behavioural specificity

If one’s goal is to identify and understand causes of something, it is crucially important to be very precise about what that thing is. Otherwise explaining, identifying, measuring, and manipulating that thing will at best be a hit-and-miss affair. At worst, the misses will far outnumber the hits.

I have spent a considerable amount of time detailing precisely how I think the term “altruism” can usefully be understood (e.g., here, here, here and especially here). It is important to also be as clear as possible about any behaviour alleged to stem from or express such altruism.

“Organ donation”, for example, is not the same thing as “giving consent for one’s organs to be posthumously removed and used for transplant or research purposes”. It is common for people to be enthusiastic about the former general concept but disconcerted when thinking about the latter specific possibility. As recognised long ago (Farsides, 2000) and recently demonstrated empirically (Seiegal et al., 2014), attitudes towards these distinct things can differ considerably.

This is not pure semantics. Champions of behavioural markers of altruism rarely give due attention to what, specifically, they mean by the target behaviour. This is particularly true if common terminology sneaks in words that might encourage assumptions of an altruistic motive, e.g., “caring”, “donating”, “giving”, “volunteering”, etc.. It is perfectly possible to “give” someone a lift in a car in return for money - in which case, of course, it is not a gift.

“Sure, I can give you a lift”

Which of the following is the behaviour that best represents a specific act of “blood donation”: allowing someone to take blood out of one’s arm; allowing someone to take a blood sample to be tested for a medical condition; allowing someone to take blood from one’s arm in return for pay; allowing a vampire to feed on one’s blood in exchange for a promise of immortality; or allowing someone to take blood from one’s arm because one has an expectation that it will be used to try to improve someone else’s welfare? If one chooses the first option it encompasses all the others and there will be no distinction between people ‘giving’ blood for personal gain and people giving blood in an attempt to help others (or indeed for any other reason). If one wishes to restrict the phrase “personal act of organ donation” to something like the final option (as I would), one no longer has a strictly behavioural indicator. Instead, one needs to have a pretty good idea that people are giving or donating their blood in an attempt to improve others’ welfare. One needs to know something about their goals and motives.

Monroe et al. (1990) and London (1970) reached very different conclusions about the motives of people who engaged in the behaviour of “rescuing Jews from Nazi persecution in wartime Europe”. This may be because London allowed in his sample people who received pay for their rescue and Monroe et al. omitted such people. “Rescuing”, “rescuing for pay”, and “rescuing without pay” are arguably very different behaviours, quite possibly with distinct antecedents, explanations, and consequences.

Ditto “volunteering”, “mandatory volunteering”, and voluntary volunteering (Stukas et al., 1999).

Now you try! What is an act of “giving to charity?” Is it transferring ownership of money or other resources from one person to a charity (for whatever reason, e.g., tax-avoidance); is it a person doing this specifically in an attempt to help the charity in some way (e.g., as a vanity project); or is it a person doing this in an attempt to help whoever or whatever the charity claims to act in support of?  These are not identical things! Only the first is purely a behaviour. The others are behaviours engaged in for particular reasons.

Focused altruism

When they are altruistic, people want good things for specific others. Their attitude towards people and things other than the targets of altruism (including their selves) cannot be taken for granted: it could be similarly positively concerned, indifferent, or indeed aggressive. Someone who wants a particular charity to thrive may not care about the fate of other charities. Someone who wants a particular country to thrive may want other countries to suffer in pursuit of this goal. People who want the best possible life for their children may have no active concern about any other child.

Multiple motives

People can have different motives for doing the same behaviour. Any behavior that is sometimes motivated at least in part by concern for the positive welfare of others is sometimes also or instead motivated by non-altruistic concerns. I cannot think of a single exception to this claim.

This is true for any all ‘prosocial’ or ‘helping’ behaviours, including caring (Cicirelli, 1993; Feeney & Collins, 2003); celebrity endorsement (Kelly et al., 2014); community involvement (Batson et al., 2002); egg donation (Kenney & McGowan, 2008; Limiñana-Gras et al., 2014); environmentalism (Gagnon-Thompson & Barton, 1994 ; Schultz et al., 2005); giving blood (Sojka & Sojka, 2008); ethical purchasing and investment (Bravo et al., 2012; Nilsson, 2009); organ donation (Johnson & Goldstein, 2003; Guedj et al., 2011; Robbins et al., 2001; Sanner, 2006); philanthropy (Piferi et al., 2006; Schervish, 2005); rescuing (Reicher et al., 2006); safer sex (Nimmons & Folkman, 1999); social activism (Cable et al, 1988; Russell, 2011); surrogacy (Blyth, 1994; van Zyl & Walker, 2012); and volunteering (Allison et al., 2002; Clary et al., 1998; Omoto & Snyder, 1995).

It is also true that practices often engaged in for self-interested reasons can also or instead be pursued for altruistic ones, for example paid work (Amabile et al., 1994; Brewer et al., 2002; Coursey & Pandey, 2007; Wrzesniewski et al., 1997), vaccination (Hershey et al., 1994), staying alive (Russell, 1999), and suicide (Blake, 1978; Van Orden et al., 2010).

Similarly, behaviours many think of as immoral, antisocial, or otherwise inappropriate can also be motivated, at least sometimes and in part, by concern for the positive welfare of others, e.g., cheating (Gino et al., 2013); civil disobedience (Passini & Morselli, 2011); lying (DePaulo & Kashy, 1998); killing and letting die (Freidman & Resnick, 2007; Georges et al., 2007); military disobedience (Linn, 1996); terrorism (Ginges et al., 2011; Kruglanski & Fishman, 2009; Victoroff, 2005); and whistle-blowing (Kesselheim et al., 2010).

Finally, sometimes people refrain from particular behaviours because they think that any attempted help would not actually be in the best interests of those whose welfare they care about (Gilbert & Silvera, 1996).

A consequence of all this is that behavioural markers of altruism are a lot more difficult to identify than might be thought. Many behaviours that are often motivated by concern for the positive welfare of others are sometimes motivated by narrow self-interest (or worse) and many behaviours (including “doing nothing”) that are often motivated by narrow self-interest (or worse) are sometimes motivated, at least in part, by concern for the positive welfare of others.

To be scientific and to have a justified claim to inform policy and practice, theories of altruism need to explain and be informed by people’s behaviour. But a science of altruism is unlikely to produce good theories unless careful attention is paid to the relationship between particular behaviours and the role played in their production by concerns for the welfare of others (and other motives). Many theories considered on this module make bold claims to be scientific because they focus on behaviours and not the motives that may lead to them. Such an approach may (or may not) provide good accounts of the origins of those behaviours but they (a) need to be very clear about the defining characteristics of those behaviours, and (b) should not assume that those theories tell us tell us very much about the phenomenon I am most interested in, i.e., concern for the positive welfare of others. This is even true - indeed it is especially true - if they claim to be studying “altruistic” behaviours.

“X can cause Y” does not entail that “X (only and always) causes Y”

That “X can cause Y” does not mean either that “X will always cause Y” or that “X is the only cause of Y”. Milgram (1970) demonstrated that obedience to authority can cause people to administer apparently fatal electric shocks to someone pleading for their torture to stop. This does not mean that obedience to authority always leads to torture (e.g., an authority may forbid torture) and nor does it mean that people only torture others because of orders to do so (e.g., they may take it upon themselves to engage in torture whether authorities encourage or dissuade such behaviour).

I honestly find it difficult to believe how many ‘scientific’ papers demonstrate that a particular motive can lead to an allegedly altruistic behaviour and then invite or reach the conclusion that the former “therefore” (always) leads to the latter and that the latter “therefore” is always the result of the former. This drives me nuts!

Let me give you an example; one of many.

Griskevicius et al. (2010) demonstrated that people’s concerns for status can motivate them to pay high prices for ‘green’ products when doing so is a route to the status they desire. I have no issue with this other than thinking, “Well, duh!” I do have an issue with a claim that such a finding provides good evidence either that people with status concerns will always pay high prices for ‘green’ products or, more importantly, that all behaviour apparently motivated by environmental or altruistic concerns is in fact always and only motivated by status concerns. To me, such a conclusion is beyond silly. Readers doubtful about this are invited to re-read the section immediately above.

Changing Motives

Reasons for initially engaging in particular behaviours may differ from reasons for continuing to engage in those behaviours. People may start doing something for one reason but keep doing it for other reasons. People may also start doing something for one reason and then stop doing it for exactly the same reason, e.g., if someone volunteers to cheer themselves up but then discovers that volunteering makes them more miserable.

Accordingly, people may start doing something for altruistic reasons but continue for non-altruistic reasons (Nelson & Folbre, 2006) or vice versa (Callero et al., 1987; Charng et al., 1988; Ferguson et al., 2012). Similarly, people may start something for one set of reasons but stop for the same or for different reasons (Beldad et al., 2012; Davis et al., 2003; Schroer & Hertel, 2009; Snyder et al., 1999).

In other words, just as motives can differ across people (see “Multiple motives” above), they can also change (‘within’ people) across time.

Situational motives

Motives can also differ across situations. Concern for the positive welfare of others depends on all manner of things that vary across situations, e.g., the others’ perceived need, perceived opportunities for change, how much the others are considered deserving of good or bad things happening to them, etc. We will study a whole raft of such factors later in the module.

Mixed Motives

People often have a variety of motives that exist at the same time or in quick succession. Motives can act in concert to promote particular behaviours or they can be incompatible and result in confusion or apparent inconsistency (Campbell, 2010; Merrell, 2000).

The considerations in the last few sections reiterate the main point made at the end of the first: there is no one-to-one correspondence between a particular behaviour (e.g., giving money to someone else) and a particular concern motivating that behaviour (e.g., altruism, narrow self-interest, morality, aggression...). The same motive (or set of motives) can lead to different behaviours and the same behaviour can stem from different motives (or different sets of motives). As well as being important when trying to predict and explain particular behaviours, such issues will be important again next week when we consider measures of altruism.

It’s not just self vs. other

Because of the history of the word “altruism” and on-going theoretical confusion, it is common for people to consider altruism in terms of a conflict between self- and other- interest. It is important to realise that there are far more interests at stake than this.

Because people can be concerned about the positive welfare of various others, altruistic concerns can co-exist and sometimes conflict with each other and with other, non-altruistic, concerns. People can be simultaneously concerned about “the general good”, the welfare of various specific others, their own welfare, doing what they consider to be God’s will, etc. (Bleske-Rechek et al., 2010; Kurtz et al., 2005). 

“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country”. E. M. Forster

Multiple methods

People can pursue all manner of different methods to seek to establish particular aspects of others’ positive welfare (Monnickendam et al., 2007; Van der Cingel, 2011). Someone who “wants to make the world a better place” may attempt to do so by giving blood, being political active, volunteering, or doing any number of other things. This again reiterates the point that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between altruism and any particular behaviour.

Altruism matters

It is common to hear people say things like, “As long as the behaviour keeps happening, who cares what motivates it or if such motives are altruistic or not?” I do and I think you should.

If people help others only instrumentally, in service of, for example, narrow self-interest, they are likely to provide such help only to the extent that it keeps serving that particular interest. If those motives are better served by not helping, then helping will stop. If the motives are adequately served by low-effort, poor-quality behaviour, then low-effort, poor quality helping is what is likely to be provided. If the motives come to be seen as better served by being unhelpful or maybe even callous or aggressive, well...

To the extent that people help others because they seek those others’ positive welfare, their helping will track what seems to be in the others’ interest and it will be less dictated and distracted by other (e.g., self-) interests.

In lots of different ways, people provide better care for others when they genuinely care about them (i.e., about their positive welfare) than when they provide ‘care’ primarily in pursuit of narrow self-interest (i.e., to obtain benefits solely for the self): Bendapudi et al. (1996); Cappellari and Turati (2004); Clary and Miller (1986); Finkelstein (2009); Horn (2012); Mowen and Sujan (2005); Penner and Finkelstein (1998); Shim et al. (2012); van Zyl and Walker (2012); Wright (2007).

Altruism can be rewarding

People concerned about the positive welfare of others can find helping them rewarding (Berg et al., 2001; Brouwer et al., 2005; Harbaugh et al., 2007). This does not mean that they are impervious to costs of helping (Snyder et al., 1999).

Enough is enough

People hope for satisfaction of their desires and seek satisfaction of their motives. People’s desires and motives fade when satisfied. People who merely want to make a donation to charity want to do that. They do not necessarily want to give to the most effective charity and they will not necessarily welcome an ‘opportunity’ to work out which of several charities is most effective (Breeze, 2010; Buchheit & Parsons, 2006).

Any reader doubtful about this might want to re-read the “Behavioural specificity” section above.

Barriers can be as important as motives

Encouraging altruism has two often-related but clearly distinct aspects: encouraging particular motives and removing barriers that inhibit people from having or acting on such motives.

Just as there are multiple motives for engaging in any particular behaviour, so too are there multiple barriers (Guedj et al., 2011; Hyde et al., 2012; Morgan, 2006; Newton, 2011; Sanner, 2006; Sojka & Sojka, 2008).

Context matters (a lot)

Altruism and helping are more pronounced in contexts where such qualities are valued and rewarded than they are in other contexts and they are least pronounced in contexts where those qualities are anathema and punished (Abolafia, 2002; Lois, 2007; Park & Smith, 2007; Rotolo & Wilson, 2006).

 Ability and opportunity matters

Effective helping requires means and opportunities as well as motives (Bekkers, 2005; Gillath et al., 2005; Gross, 1994; Stern et al., 1999).

To the extent that altruistic helping requires specific abilities and opportunities, distinct sets of qualities will need to accompany altruism for such helping to be effectively provided (Rand & Epstein, 2014; Shepela et al., 1999).

  

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How to cite this blog post using APA Style

See: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/ 

T. Farsides. (2014, October 13). Real world altruism. Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2014/10/real-world-altruism.html