The Altruism Option: Aggression

Showing posts with label Aggression. Show all posts

Thursday, 26 November 2015

Can empathy foster baseless aggression?

“The dark side of empathy,” intones Paul Bloom: “How caring for one person can foster baseless aggression towards another”. This is the dramatic headline for Bloom’s review of Anneke Buffone and Michael Poulin’s (2014) paper with an equally striking title: “Empathy [interacts with other things] to predict aggression for others – even without provocation”.

It is common knowledge to the point of cliché that people can be a bit belligerent towards others who threaten or harm those they love. But caring fostering baseless aggression? That would be news…

In this post, I summarise and critique Buffone and Poulin (2014). It is not a favourable review. I find no compelling evidence that empathy can foster baseless aggression.

Other than when stated otherwise, all quotes are from the Online Appendix to the article, accessed a week or so before this piece was posted to ‘The Altruism Option’ blog.

Summary of Study 1

Psychology undergraduates were instructed (and rewarded with course credits) to recall an event during the past 12 months in which “someone they cared about [‘Person A’] had a serious conflict with another person [‘Person B’]”. Participants were given some examples of such conflicts, including being “physically assaulted”, “in a bad relationship”, or in a “conflict at work”.

Aggression was measured by adding up the number of ways (from 0 to 3) that participants remembered confronting Person B, i.e., “using physical force”, “verbally”, and/or “in another way”.

Distress apparently experienced by Person A during the conflict was measured by the question, “To what extent do you think this conflict was emotionally harmful to the person you cared about” (1 = “not at all; 7 = “extremely”).

Empathy was measured by taking an average of participants’ memories of how much they felt each of the following during the recalled event: compassionate, softhearted, sympathetic, moved, tender, and warm (1 = “not at all”; 4 = “somewhat”; 7 = “extremely”). This is a standard measure of what is variously called “empathic concern”, “compassion”, or “sympathy”.

Main result: When the conflict was thought to be relatively emotionally harmless for Person A, higher participant empathy during the conflict was significantly associated with fewer forms of confrontation of Person B (95% CI = [-.18, -.06], ß = -.54, p < .001). When the conflict was thought to be relatively emotionally harmful to Person A, participants’ empathy during the conflict was not significantly associated with the number of forms of confrontation participants engaged in (95% CI = [-.01, .14], ß = .28, p = .09). Seriously. That was the main finding.

Secondary result: This ‘distress x empathy interactive effect on aggression’ was apparently moderated by two of the three gene variants the researchers investigated (AVPR1a rs3 and OXTR rs53576 but not AVPR1a rs1).

Issues with Study 1

What was found. A ‘distress x interaction’ effect on ‘aggression’ was found in Study 1 but it appears not to have been the one the authors suggest (and that commentators such as Bloom proclaim). Buffone and Poulin predicted and claimed to have found that high “empathy would predict aggression on behalf of a distressed, but not a non-distressed, empathy target” (p. 1408). If we temporarily accept their terminology, what they actually found in Study 1 was that low empathy predicted aggression on behalf of a non-distressed, but not a distressed, empathy target. When Person A was high in ‘distress’, there was no significant effect of empathy on ‘aggression’. To repeat, the effects of empathy on ‘aggression’ occurred only when Person A was low in ‘distress.’ Moreover, this effect was that lower empathy predicted higher ‘aggression’.

‘Aggression’. Properly interpreting the findings of Study 1 depends crucially on identifying what the key outcome variable actually measured. In particular, how valid was it as a measure of aggression? That is, to what extent did it measure aggression and nothing but aggression? To me, it looks likely to be very low in validity. Strictly speaking, it measured numbers of forms of confrontation engaged in, with none of those forms necessarily being acts of aggression as most people would understand that phrase.

To recap, in Study 1 aggression was thought to have occurred if participants “confronted” Person B in one or more of three ways, i.e., using physical force and/or verbally and/or “in another way … e.g., through the justice system [or] getting assistance from others”. By such reckoning, a father pinning someone down to end a violent assault on his young daughter would be considered aggressive. So too would a mother politely asking her son to stop being so mean to her cherished daughter-in-law. Ditto a man suggesting to some friends that they should stop habitually using offensive humour in front of a colleague they all liked and respected and who felt upset by it. Ditto a woman calling the police to report that her husband was being mugged. And so on.

Sensible debate can be had concerning “what aggression is” and how to define and measure it but I would argue that few of the actions just considered are well-described using the label ‘aggression’. The best collective term I can think of for such actions is “intervention”. Crucially, intervention is often motivated by altruistic and moral desires, with aggression being at most a secondary concern and often altogether absent.

In truth, the key outcome variable was not even intervention. It was the number of different types of intervention participants reported engaging in, i.e., physical and/or verbal and/or “another form”. A woman who once held back her husband’s arm and said “Stop scaring our son!” would score “2” for aggression while a man who bit, kicked, scratched, punched, and pummelled his wife every day for a month would score “1”.

How many forms of intervention someone engages in is a very strange measure and is arguably a very imprecise instrument for measuring aggression.

Variability in the dependent variable. A tiny percentage of the sample engaged in more than one form of ‘aggression’. Of the 69 participants in the sample, most (43) engaged in no ‘aggression’ at all; most of the rest (21) engaged in only one form of ‘aggression’ (mostly verbal); only 5 people engaged in two forms of ‘aggression’; and no one (0) engaged in all three forms. This means that the reported behaviour of a very small amount of participants will have had a relatively enormous effect on the results found. (This is because the researchers’ analyses sought to account for differences in 'aggression' and a very small number of participants provided what little differences there were.)

‘Distress’. As mentioned above, participants were asked, “To what extent do you think this conflict was emotionally harmful to the person you cared about?” I would argue that distress is not the same thing as “emotional harm”. One can be distressed without being emotionally harmed and one can be emotionally harmed without being distressed. More importantly for current purposes, participants could easily have answered this question in the affirmative if the emotional harm they perceived happened after the serious conflict. It is common to hear people say things like, “I used to think that I enjoyed the arguing but now I understand that I was deeply damaged by our relationship.” Emotional harm as a subsequent result of conflict cannot, of course, be a determinant of any actions (e.g., ‘aggression’) during that conflict.

Empathy. Participants were instructed, “Thinking back on the conflict experienced by the person you cared about, please try to remember your feelings [to] describe how you felt at the time”. Leaving to one side the likely accuracy of such memories, two things can be noted about these instructions. First, they avoid the problem of the ‘distress’ question by specifying that participants are to respond with respect to events at the time of the conflict. Second, unlike with the ‘distress’ question, these instructions do not say that participants should indicate how much they felt empathy specifically with respect to Person A. It seems perfectly possible that some participants may have felt compassion towards both parties in the conflict and that some may have felt compassion specifically towards Person B. I am not joking when I say that I often feel sorry for anyone in conflict with one particular person I care about.

Sample sizes. The main analysis in Study 1 employed a ‘between-subjects’ design. That is, if a participant was in one condition (e.g., the ‘low empathy/low distress’ one) they were not and could not be in any of the other conditions (in the example just given, the ones that involved either ‘high empathy’ and/or ‘high-distress’). This means that about 17 participants were in each of the main ‘distress x empathy’ conditions. That is a small sample size. Other analyses had eight conditions, where each of the conditions above were split according to which version (or versions) of a particular gene participants had. This is also a ‘between-subjects’ analysis and it means that the overall sample size has to be divided by 8 to work out the maximum number of participants in each condition. Only 51 participants were typed for one particular gene. The analysis examining the moderating effect of this gene on the ‘distress x empathy interaction’ therefore had a maximum of 6 participants in each condition. Actually, some cells must have contained even fewer participants. (For example, only 16 participants had “A” variants of the gene rs53576. Splitting these across the key ‘distress x empathy’ conditions means a maximum sub-sample size of four participants with this gene type per condition.) In short, the sample size for Study 1 was way too small to appropriately use many of the statistical analyses reported. (Apparently, “you need 47 participants per [condition] to detect [even] that people who like eggs eat egg salad more often than those who dislike eggs.”)

Numbers of measures. Study 1 included a lot of variables beyond those used to test the key hypotheses. Some of these were identified as “control variables” (p. 1409) and many more can be found in the Online Appendix (which ends with a note mentioning that “several other” measures were also administered). Many of these ‘additional’ variables were not included in any analysis that I could find, not even all the listed “control variables”. Some of these variables might easily have been used in combination with or instead of some of the ones that did receive attention. Empathy relationships, for example, were tested using a standard measure of “empathic concern” but another standard measure of a type of empathy (vicarious personal distress) was administered but not used. Similarly, a question was asked about Person A being “physically endangered by” the conflict but this was also not used, alone or in combination with the question asking about emotional harm (which was used as the sole indicator of ‘distress’). Similarly, variables might easily have been combined in different ways to those reported. For example, instead of compiling their rather odd measure of number of forms of ‘aggression’ participants engaged in, the researchers could easily have additionally or instead used a measure of whether or not participants engaged in any form of ‘aggression’. The more measures are included in a study, the more likelihood there is of finding apparently important results ‘by chance’, especially if one explores what happens when certain measures are combined in various ways, others are split to see what happens with each component part, etc. Such an approach is not “scientific” but it is common.

I could go on but enough already. Maybe Study 2 provides more compelling evidence.

Summary of Study 2

Psychology undergraduates were instructed (and rewarded with course credits) to read a letter allegedly written by another student on the same course and allegedly taking part in the same study (“Person A”). Person A’s letter included the information that he or she had recently bought a new car and “had never been this low on funds”. Participants in the “low distress” condition also read that this “did not really bother” Person A because he or she was “pretty sure things will get better soon, plus at least I have a new car”. Participants in the “high distress” condition read Person A report that the situation “really scares me, to be honest. What if I need to pay for something I didn’t expect?”

In each distress condition, half the participants were told to read the letter “as objectively as possible and pay attention only to the facts presented. Please try not to get caught up in thoughts about how the person feels”. The other half of participants in each distress condition were told to “try to imagine how the person … feels … and how it has affected his or her life”.

Participants were then told that Person A was to take part in a maths competition with another student on their course (“Person B”) and that the winner of this competition would be awarded $20.

Participants were also told that “THE PURPOSE OF OUR STUDY IS TO EXMAINE THE EFFECTS OF PAIN ON MENTAL PERFORMANCE, AND WE ARE USING HOT SAUCE AS A SOURCE OF PARTICIPANTS’ PAIN. WITH THIS IN MIND, we would like you to assign an amount of hot sauce to [Person] B”.

Aggression was measured by how much hot sauce participants allocated to Person B. This was scored either “on a 6-point scale ranging from no hot sauce to three teaspoons … in half-teaspoon increments” (p. 1415) or, more likely, on a 7-point scale from 1 = none to 7 = 3 teaspoons in half-teaspoon increments (Online Appendix).

Main result: “An empathy manipulation increased aggression … against the empathy target’s competitor, but only when the empathy target was described as distressed” (p. 1417). “In this study, the competitor was an innocent [person] about whom the test participant did not have … any cause for provocation” (p. 1418).

Secondary result: As in Study 1, the ‘distress x empathy interactive effect on aggression’ was apparently moderated by two of the three gene variants the researchers investigated (AVPR1a rs3 and OXTR rs53576 but not AVPR1a rs1).

Issues with Study 2

Baseline for “baseless” ‘aggression’. There are at least two complicating factors in considering the amount of hot sauce allocated as a valid measure of aggression (and nothing but aggression). First, participants – all of whom had been told that Person A was short of money - may have been trying to help Person A win the $20 competition prize by making things more challenging for Person B. Such altruism would undoubtedly have been a bias in favour of Person A over Person B but it is far from clear that it would be properly thought of as aggression towards Person B.

Perhaps even more importantly, participants were told – in block capitals – that the purpose of the study was to examine the effects of pain on mental performance and that hot sauce was being used to bring about such pain. They were also told that they could assign up to 3 teaspoons of hot sauce, which they presumably thought was very safe to do. Allocating hot sauce was therefore not in and of itself an indication of aggression. At some non-zero level it was (perhaps also) complying with the apparent requirements of the experiment. How much hot sauce was ‘enough’ to do what the experimenters said they wanted? That is, at what level did allocating hot sauce become clear evidence of aggression, i.e., a deliberate attempt to harm Person B in addition to or instead of wanting to fulfil the experimental protocol (and/or help Person A)? The short answer is that we don’t know. As far as I can tell, participants were not asked if they were trying to be aggressive. In the absence of a control group (in which participants would not have been given distress information about Person A and would also not have been given instructions about how to read their note), all we can do is look at difference in hot sauce allocation across conditions to see if something can serve as a “baseline” level above which aggression might be indicated.

Empathy, distress, and ‘aggression’. Here are the key results for the ‘empathy x distress interaction on aggression’ analysis reported on pp. 1415-6, with the vertical axis indicating how many half-teaspoons of hot sauce were allocated (with 1 = zero and 7 = 3 teaspoons):

The authors focus on the fact that when Person A reported relatively high distress, participants in the perspective taking condition (assumed to have relatively high empathy) allocated more hot sauce than participants in the objective reading condition (assumed to have relatively low empathy). This is the basis of their claim that, in such circumstances, “empathy leads to aggression” (p. 1416). Other interpretations of these results are possible. Most obviously, maybe something about being in the objective-reading condition lowered aggression when Person A was in distress.

It might be thought that the low other-distress conditions provide a baseline from which to evaluate other results. In these conditions, after all, there seems no obvious reason to expect participants to have been aggressive (rather than, say, simply complying with perceived procedural demands, trying to do Person A a favour, or similar). Hot sauce allocation in these conditions fell between M = 3.91 (when participants were perspective taking) and M = 4.64 (when they were reading objectively). When Person A reported distress, participants following perspective taking instructions recommended allocation of hot sauce that fell at about the top end of this potential baseline (M = 4.70), while participants reading objectively recommended allocation of hot sauce at levels that fell a little below its bottom end (M = 3.57).

In other words, the significant distress x empathy interaction seems to be being driven at least as much by what is happening when there is thought to be no empathy as when there is, suggesting that at least some of the key results in Study 2 came about from what happened when participants were told to be objective and Person A was in distress - which seems to have reduced ‘aggression’ towards Person B. Ignoring this fact makes the authors’ emphasis at best partial.

Empathy and Distress. Any interpretation of the results in Study 2 relies heavily on the intended manipulations having worked. That is, participants in the “high distress” conditions need to have perceived more other-distress than participants in the “low distress” condition and participants in the “high empathy” conditions need to have felt more empathy towards Person A than people in the “low empathy” conditions. As far as I can tell, no checks were made to ensure these things.

The empathy manipulation in particular looks as though it might not have worked as intended. Participants in the perspective taking condition were told: “Try not to concern yourself with attending to all the information presented, because it will distract you from recall for the relevant information”. Not attending to all the information may have led some participants not to pay attention to the perspective taking manipulation (which was placed at the end of the letter) and/or the instructions’ emphasis on the need for “recall of relevant information” may have undermined attempts to evoke emotional empathy. Participants in the objective conditions were told to “pay attention … to the facts presented”. This may have led participants in this condition to become particularly aware when Person A revealed their money concerns and enhanced participants’ other-understanding and concern, i.e., their empathy. The possibility of any or all of these processes undermining the success of the ‘empathy’ manipulation makes it particularly unfortunate that there was no report that participants in the perspective-taking condition experienced more empathy than did participants in the objective reading condition. Without that reassurance, it is difficult to confidently attributed differences across the ‘empathy’ conditions to actual differences in empathy across those conditions.

The above paragraph is of course mostly based on speculation and possibility. But in the absence of evidence from manipulation checks or similar, so is the authors’ interpretation of their results. The authors of course assume that their empathy and other-distress manipulations worked as intended. And maybe they did. But maybe they didn’t. Without knowing, no one can confidently say what differences across conditions led to any differences in outcome variables.

Summary

Both studies in Buffone and Poulin (2014) are multiply flawed. Prominent among their problems is how they measure aggression. Study 1 measured aggression by counting how many different ways participants remembered intervening (physical, verbally, and/or in another way) when cared-for others were in various sorts of conflict with third parties. Study 2 measured aggression by seeing how much hot sauce participants allocated to someone who they were instructed to cause pain to and who was in mentally-demanding competition for a cash prize with someone else who participants were informed was in need of money. Even if these crucial outcome measures were thought to be valid, there are multiple reasons why one cannot confidently interpret the results of either study, e.g., problematic measurement of key variables thought to causally affect aggression, a lack of control groups and manipulation checks, inadequate sample sizes for the analyses run and the conclusions reached, etc. And if one puts all of this to one side, one of the two studies had results which do not support the authors’ central claim.

In short, Buffone and Poulin (2014) provides no good evidence for the extraordinary claim that increasing empathy fosters baseless aggression and/or aggression without provocation. And, as far as I know, no one else does, either. And I’m willing to bet that no one will.

Sadly, I’m also willing to bet that nothing anyone says will deter Paul Bloom from continuing his campaign “against empathy”.

References and further reading

Bloom, P. (2015, September 25). The dark side of empathy: How caring for one person can foster baseless aggression towards another. The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/09/the-violence-of-empathy/407155/

Bloom, P. (2014, August 26). Against empathy. Boston Review, http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/paul-bloom-against-empathy

Bloom,P. (2013, May 20). The baby in the well: The case against empathy. The New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/20/the-baby-in-the-well

Buffone, A. E., & Poulin, M. J. (2014). Empathy, target distress, and neurohormone genes interact to predict aggression for others-even without provocation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 1406-1422. doi: 10.1177/0146167214549320. And its Online Appendix: http://psp.sagepub.com/content/suppl/2014/09/10/0146167214549320.DC1/10.1177_0146167214549320_Online_Appendix.pdf

Picture credits

Dangerous love [Link]

Saucy costumes [Link]

How to cite this blog post using APA Style

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

T. Farsides. (2015, November 26). Does empathy promote baseless aggression? Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2015/11/can-empathy-foster-baseless-aggression.html

Saturday, 3 October 2015

Deep reasons for superficial altruism

In earlier posts I suggested that we can use the word “altruism” to refer to the phenomenon of people being concerned about the positive welfare of others. In this post I argue for the importance of a distinction between having (‘superficial’) altruistic concerns and (‘deep’) reasons for such concerns.

Let’s start with some fine art:

Although not explicitly shown in the masterpiece above, Huey, Dewey, and Louie each want their Uncle Donald to be happy. Because of this, and also because they believe he will be happy if (and only if) they behave well during a forthcoming visit to the cinema, they are all keen to overcome their mischievous nature and to behave impeccably throughout the trip. To this extent, then, they each share at least a superficial altruistic desire (i.e., they want Donald to be happy) and a superficial altruistic motive (i.e., to behave well because they believe this will promote Donald’s positive welfare; in this case, his happiness).

How we recognise superficial altruism largely follows from what has been said already and is relatively straightforward. We can infer Huey, Dewey, and Louie’s superficial altruism towards Donald to the extent that they: (a) desire good things for him; (b) anticipate being pleased when (desired) things go well for Donald and dissatisfied when they do not; (c) act to try to promote his positive welfare (as they see it) when doing so seems necessary and sufficient to bring about the situation they seek (e.g., Donald’s happiness) and efficient (i.e., when doing this does not interfere with things they value more); and (d) derive satisfaction when they think that (valued) things have gone well for Donald and are displeased when they have not. The more confident we are that Huey, Dewey, and Louie have such desires, expectations, motives, and reactions, the more confident we can be in our judgements that they are superficially altruistic towards Donald.

The term “superficial” in this context does NOT mean “unimportant”. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are concerned about Donald’s positive welfare and they are motivated to promote it. These are manifestations of the phenomenon I am interested in and want to understand. Other things being equal, I would prefer Huey, Dewey, and Louie to desire and to take reasonable efforts to promote Donald’s positive welfare than to not care (i.e., to be indifferent) about it, or to desire and seek to make things worse for Donald (i.e., to be superficially aggressive). This means that I would be well advised to both recognise superficial altruism when I see it and try to understand where it comes from. Being able to identify it is essential if it is to be studied well. Understanding where it comes from is likely to enhance prediction and control of it.

Notwithstanding the fact that Huey, Dewey, and Louie genuinely do have concern for Donald’s positive welfare (i.e., they are superficially altruistic), they nevertheless have different reasons for that concern.

Huey loves and respects his uncle and is sad that Donald has been down in the dumps for so long. The love, respect, and compassion he has for Donald means that he would be delighted if Donald were to enjoy a happy spell. What Huey really and truly wants is for Donald to be happy and (other things being equal) Donald being happy would directly add to Huey’s own happiness. Thus, we might say that Huey is deeply altruistic towards Donald.¹ This deep altruism explains the reasons for Huey’s desires, intentions, and likely behaviour at the cinema, as well as his likely reactions to various possible events that eventually unfold there.

Dewey adores his mother, Della, and knows that she is worried sick about her brother, Donald. Dewey desires anything that he thinks will bring his mother happiness and is more than willing to do whatever it takes to bring this about. Dewey is sure that his mother will be delighted if Donald enjoys a happy spell. This is reason enough for Dewey to want Donald to be happy and to make efforts to bring this about. Thus, although Dewey does want Donald to be happy and is motivated to make him so, this is instrumental in service of what he really and truly (and deeply altruistically) wants: his mother’s happiness.

Louie loves nothing better than eating sweets. He particularly likes the pick-n-mix sold at the cinema. Louie knows that Donald likes to buy his nephews treats when he is happy – but only when he is happy. Louie’s passion for sweets is the main factor that needs to be grasped to understand why he intends to be well-behaved on the cinema trip. Thus, although Louie does want Donald to be happy and is motivated to make him so, this is instrumental to what he really and truly wants: happiness for his future self. Although his superficial altruism is real, deep down Louie is fundamentally self-interested; literally interested in the welfare of his imagined future ‘self’.

Understanding the deep reasons for it helps predict which changes in circumstances will affect superficial altruism, and why. Because Dewey’s real but superficial concern for Donald is contingent both on his love for his mother and his mother’s love for her brother, if Dewey falls out with his mother or she falls out with Donald, Dewey will have lost his (deep) reason to be (superficially) altruistic towards Donald. Similarly, if Louie goes off sweets or finds a better supplier than Donald, he too will have lost his (deep) reason to be (superficially) altruistic towards Donald. This is because Dewey and Louie’s concern for Donald’s welfare, while genuine, is not deep. Deep down, they care much more about other things that happen to lead them to care about Donald. This is not the situation for Huey. His superficial concern for Donald stems specifically from a deep concern for Donald. He cannot stop caring about Donald’s positive welfare without losing his love, respect, and compassion for Donald.

In the scenario above I have used “love, respect, and compassion” as an example (deep) reason for (superficial) altruism but it is important to recognise both that (a) this is actually a combination of possible reasons, each one of which alone might provide a deep reason for superficial altruism, and (b) there might be other deep reasons for superficial altruism not included in this bundle. I will say more about this elsewhere (including in “Final thoughts and further reading”, below).

In summary, to effectively identify, explain, and potentially control the phenomenon I am interested in, it is useful to distinguish between superficial altruism (versus superficial indifference and superficial aggression) and (various) deep reasons for that altruism.

Key points

Concern for the positive welfare of others (altruism) needs to be differentiated from a lack of concern for the welfare of others (indifference) and concern for the negative welfare of others (aggression).

This differentiation is best done at the ‘superficial’ level of whether or not people have such concerns.

There are various possible reasons for having ‘superficial’ concerns. For present purposes, reasons for superficial altruism differ mainly according to how directly perceived positive welfare of another brings satisfaction to altruists. Some reasons lead to a very close link between perceived positive other-welfare and altruists’ personal satisfaction. Other reasons mean that perceived positive other-welfare is the first step in a chain of events that may ultimately lead to satisfaction of other desires that are ultimately more important to superficial altruists.

Footnote

1. Another phrase that is sometimes used to describe ‘deep’ altruism is to say that Huey is “directly” altruistic towards Donald (or similar). This is then contrasted with “instrumental” altruism, which is where Donald’s positive welfare is desired, appreciated (to some extent), and sometimes sought not as an end in its own right (sometimes called an “ultimate” end) but as a means to some other end which is what is ‘really’ desired (with Donald’s welfare being desired only because of its instrumental value towards this other ultimate end). I really don’t mind what terminology is used as long as it is used consistently and constructively. A problem with the terms mentioned in this footnote is that, sooner rather than later, someone will argue that “ultimately” people only seek things they want and that ‘therefore’ everyone is “really only self-interested” (or some such) and “there is no such thing as altruism”. Thus, Duey for example does not seek Donald’s happiness as an ultimate end in its own right but ‘actually’ seeks it only instrumentally because he (correctly) anticipates that it will contribute to his own happiness, therefore he is ‘really’ self-interested and ‘true’ altruism doesn’t exist. Such arguments quickly become tiresome. More importantly, they lead to incorrect conclusions. They lose the crucial distinctions between “superficial” altruism, indifference, and aggression; between different “deep reasons” for superficial altruism; and between these two levels or foci of investigation.

Activities that may enhance understanding

1. Think about other (‘deep’) reasons for superficial altruism and draw pictures to represent them. How would you draw Stewie anticipating feeling guilty if he doesn’t cheer Donald up? What about Phooey who is a passionate Ducks’ Rights activist who will feel proud if he can improve the life of even one duck? Or Zooie who believes that her God is pleased whenever she makes any duck happy? Or Kookie who wants to have Donald as a loyal customer and is sure that this will be facilitated if she keeps him happy? And so on.

2. Listen to the Radiolab episode The Rhino Hunter (http://www.radiolab.org/story/rhino-hunter/). By spending $350,000, Cory Knowlton won an opportunity to kill a black rhino – which he subsequently did. Black rhinos are magnificent beasts and an endangered species. To what extent is Cory superficially and deeply altruistic (and towards who or what)? What is your evidence? What further evidence might help you decide?

3. Imagine that Huey, Dewy, and Louie want Donald dead and are willing to bring their wishes to fulfilment by joining in a hunt intended to kill him. Most people would be happy to call their desires, motives, and subsequent actions “aggressive”. Imagine now that Huey’s aggression stems from virulent hatred for Donald, that Dewey’s stems from a belief that Donald has a virus that makes him a potentially fatal threat to all who come into contact with him, and that Louie’s stems from a desire to earn the bounty that someone has put on Donald’s head. Do you now want to say that only Huey is ‘really’ aggressive towards Donald because Dewey is ‘really’ acting in service of his community and Louie is ‘really’ only acting in self-interest? How does your answer ‘fit’ with your intuitions about ‘real’ altruism?

Final thoughts and further reading

One possible (deep) reason for (superficial) altruism is thinking that morality requires one to promote the welfare of particular others. Peter Singer’s commitment to utilitarianism, for example, gives him a reason to care about improving the welfare of those who will most benefit from his help. Having this as his only reason for action severely curtails how able Singer is to consider other concerns morally defensible, e.g., concerns for himself or for others who are not among those who would most benefit from his help. For details, see:

Farsides, T. (2015, September 05). What is the most good you can do? The Psychologist. http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/what-most-good-you-can-do A review of Peter Singer’s The most good you can do: How effective altruism is changing ideas about living ethically.

Another possible (deep) reason for (superficial) altruism is identifying with an in-group. If the identification is extreme, people can come to prioritise the welfare of the group over all other concerns. Two references relevant to this are:

Everett, J. A., Faber, N. S., & Crockett, M. (2015). Preferences and beliefs in ingroup favoritism. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 9, 15.

Swann, Jr., W. B., Gómez, Á., Buhrmester, M. D., López-Rodríguez, L., Jiménez, J., & Vázquez, A. (2014). Contemplating the ultimate sacrifice: Identity fusion channels pro-group affect, cognition, and moral decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(5), 713-727.

Probably the most studied (deep) reason for (superficial) altruism is having compassionate feelings for another in need. The best treatment of this I know is:

Goetz, J. L., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010). Compassion: An evolutionary analysis and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 136 (3), 351-374.

Another possible (deep) reason for (superficial) altruism is wanting to think of oneself as a loving or good person and thinking that this requires caring about the welfare of others. Two references relevant to this are:

Boegershausen, J., Aquino, K., & Reed, A. (2015). Moral identity. Current Opinion in Psychology, doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.07.017

Colby, A., & Damon, W. (2010). Some do care. Simon and Schuster.

Image credits

Ducks: Original artwork

Animal skins from link

How to cite this blog post using APA Style

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

T Farsides. (2015, October 3). Deep reasons for superficial altruism. Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2015/10/deep-reasons-for-superficial-altruism.html

Thursday, 19 December 2013

Alternatives to Selfishness

I want to understand a phenomenon and it is important to me to be as clear as I can be about what that phenomenon is. Please allow me one more try.

Playing to my strengths, I shall make full use of my artistic talent...

I am the person on the left. The thought-bubble reveals that I have a concern. I want something nice to happen to someone or something. Specifically, I want something nice to happen to one of the people or things in the right-hand column.

I might want nice things for me and only for me. If so, my concern will be literally and purely me-ish or, to use the more common term, self-ish. The object of my concern will be my self and only my self. Such concern will sometimes motivate me to try to pursue nice things for myself. In such circumstances, I will try to help myself.

I might instead want nice things for someone or something other than just myself. I might want nice things for you, or for a particular cat, or for my community, or for humanity, or for the poor, or for countless other potential beneficiaries. This is the phenomenon I want to understand: concern for the positive welfare of anyone or anything other than just the self. I want to understand concerns that are other-ish rather than purely and solely self-ish. And I want to understand when such concerns motivate attempts to help others.

That’s it! I want to understand people being concerned about the positive welfare of others, whether that concern is expressed in thought, feeling, and/or action.

This is the phenomenon I want to understand. I call it “altruism” and I think there are three good reasons for doing so. First, the word literally means other-ism, which highlights the central feature of the phenomenon I am interested in. Secondly, “altruism” allows useful comparisons with “selfishness” (with concerns only for one’s own welfare), “aggression” (with concerns for others’ negative welfare), and “indifference” (without concern). Thirdly, “altruism” is a word often used in ordinary discourse when discussing the phenomenon I seek to understand. This is most apparent when people claim its absence. When someone says, “X isn’t being altruistic” they mean that - perhaps despite appearances and claims to the contrary - X is not in fact concerned about somebody else’s positive welfare.

“The map is not the territory” is a phrase sometimes used to remind people about the difference between things and the symbols used to represent those things. My interest is in a particular phenomenon and I use the word “altruism” to refer to that phenomenon. I don’t mind (too much) if other people use other words for the same thing or use the same word for other things, just as long as everyone is clear. Problems arise, though, when people focus on the map instead of the territory. When people insist that “altruism” is this or means that, they are often making claims about the territory based on their preferred maps rather than trying to choose or mark out an appropriate map after a close examination of the territory. Even this would be fine if the people doing it were careful, but often they are not.

People sometimes make claims like “organ donation is motivated by benevolence rather than altruism” (Ferguson et al., 2008) or that “empathy is more powerful than sympathy” (Matthews, 2013). Such assertive, fact-like claims would only make sense if the words used in them had fixed meanings that corresponded clearly to real-world phenomena. A cursory look at any relevant literature will make it blindingly obvious that this is not the case. Daniel Batson (2009), for example, differentiates eight commonly-used meanings of the word “empathy”. One of these is identical to what people usually mean when they use the word “sympathy” (Wispé, 1986). Given this, to say that “empathy is more powerful than sympathy” is almost nonsensical and it certainly risks being misleading. Ditto claiming that “organ donation is motivated by benevolence rather than altruism”. “Empathy”, “sympathy”, “benevolence” and of course “altruism” are “essentially contested concepts”. People will probably always disagree about how they should be used.

Many scholars approach “altruism” in this “the map dictates the territory” way. Such scholars will not like me calling the phenomenon I am interested in “altruism” because it does not have some or other condition that they think is essential to use the word “altruism” properly. Experience tells me that such people are usually best avoided if one is interested in understanding a phenomenon rather than getting waylaid by dubious claims about what particular words really mean.

To repeat, I am interested in the phenomenon of people being concerned about the positive welfare of others and I think “altruism” is at least as good a word as any for this phenomenon.

With sincere best wishes (please see the ‘diagram’ above if you need help interpreting this).

References/further reading

Batson, C.D. (2009). These things called empathy: Eight related but distinct phenomena. In J. Decety & W. Ickes (Eds.), The social neuroscience of empathy (pp. 3-15). Cambridge: MIT press.

Essentially contested concepts. (No date). Wikipedia. Link

Ferguson, E., Farrell, K., & Lawrence, C. (2008). Blood donation is an act of benevolence rather than altruism. Health Psychology, 27 (3), 327-336.

Map-territory relation. (No date). Wikipedia. Link

Matthews, C. (2013). Why empathy is more powerful than sympathy. Huffpost Healthy Living, Dec 12. Link

Wispé, L. (1986). The distinction between sympathy and empathy: To call forth a concept, a word is needed. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 314-421.

How to cite this blog post using APA Style

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

T. Farsides. (2013, December 19). Alternatives to selfishness. Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2013/12/alternatives-to-selfishness.html

Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Empathy for the Devil? Jo Berry visits US

In my initial posts, I argued that attempts to help can be called instances of “altruism” just as people are happy to call attempts to harm instances of “aggression”. In this post, I consider altruism and aggression in the context of a particular real-world event.

The picture above shows the Grand Hotel in Brighton the day after it was bombed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Among the dead was the Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Antony Berry.

A week ago, Sir Antony’s daughter Jo visited the University of Sussex (US).

Jo is known to the public mainly because of her relationship with Patrick Magee, the man convicted for planting the bomb that killed Jo’s father.

At Jo’s first session with US she told the story of how the bombing had affected her life. During her second session, Jo took questions from me in an interview format. Both sessions ended with Jo answering questions from members of the audience.

Although key aspects of Jo’s story can be pieced together from various places, it was fascinating to hear her tell it herself. Thoughts cascaded. Parallels and contrasts abounded. Ironies arose. Impulses clashed.

Jo thinks that dialogue promotes peace and harmony and that an absence of dialogue with enemies makes bad situations worse.

Jo thinks that dialogue promotes peace and harmony because dialogue increases empathy (understanding of others’ experiences and of their reactions to them); empathy facilitates recognition of others’ humanity; recognition of others’ humanity facilitates altruistic concern (caring about the others’ positive welfare); and altruistic concern promotes intolerance of things that systematically harm those cared about.

Jo thinks that an absence of dialogue with enemies has detrimental effects on both sides. Those refusing to speak or listen come to demonise the other and lose sight of the other's humanity. They then become obsessed with and haunted by the others’ apparent barbarity and evil. They react with further defensive entrenchment and assault, fuelling mutual enmity and conflict. Each of these consequences of refusing to talk and listen are accompanied and exacerbated by increasingly losing sight of one’s own humanity.

Those who feel their grievances are not heard feel increasingly victimised, morally outraged, and constrained by the limited means at their disposal to put things right. They demonise the enemy, become obsessed with and haunted by the others’ apparent barbarity and evil, react with further defensive entrenchment and assault, lose sight of others’ and their own humanity, and increasingly contribute to a spiral of aggression and violence.

Jo’s beliefs have led to, or at least are accompanied by, commitments to pacifism and to dialogue with those who harm others. In reaching out to her father’s killer, Jo sought peace.

My thoughts on Jo’s beliefs and stance will become clear to anyone who continues to read this blog. For now, I would like to record just one personal observation about Jo’s visit - I really enjoyed chatting with her over coffee. There was a relaxation of roles: mine as concerned host and academic seeker of truths, hers as humble bringer of insights earned through pain. I felt that that was when each of us was most in touch with our own and each other’s humanity, when we were chatting.

The rest of this post is in sections. In the section immediately below I summarise some of the key points of Jo’s story, as derived from a limited selection of sources given towards the end of this post. (To maximise readability, I do not give specific citations for each quote. Students – don’t adopt this practice in essays!)

In the second section below I include a few students’ recollections of Jo’s visit. (Thanks for sharing these, folks.)

The third section below is at present a rough transcript from near the beginning of my interview with Jo. Hopefully, this will provide a flavour of the interview as a whole, an audio recording of which I will also include when I can work out how!

Some key points from the story of Jo Berry and Patrick Magee

On October 12, 1984, an IRA bomb killed 5 people, including Jo’s father. Two days later, Jo “made a personal decision … to bring something positive out of this emotionally shattering trauma and to try and understand those who had killed him.” She “chose to give up blame and revenge, instead taking responsibility for [her] pain and feelings, transforming them into passion for peace.”

Two or three months later, Jo met a man whose brother had been killed by a British soldier. The conversation persuaded Jo that she could “build a bridge across the divide”.

During several subsequent visits to Northern Ireland, Jo met people involved in and affected by ‘The Troubles’. It was the first time she felt that her “pain was being heard”. She also “began to understand the reasons why someone may choose to join a paramilitary organization”.

Jo found this process “too emotionally challenging as [she] had yet to deal with [her] trauma”. On top of this, she received negative reactions – including death threats – for saying on air in 1986 that she might one day be willing to meet those responsible for her father’s death.

Jo withdrew to home-educate her daughters.

In 1999, Jo was shocked to see Patrick Magee released from prison after he had been given 8 life sentences in 1986 for planting the bomb that killed her father.

In 2000, Jo and Magee met for the first time. Jo wanted “to put a face to the enemy and see him as a real human being”. She was initially told that Magee “didn’t want to meet her: he wasn’t interested in being understood by the middle-class daughter of a Tory toff.” When they met, Jo says that Magee denied having said this.

Magee “felt obliged as a Republican to explain” his actions. This is what he spent the first hour and a half of the first meeting doing. He told Jo that he’d “got involved in the armed struggle at the age of 19, after witnessing how [members of] a small nationalist community were being mistreated by the British. Those people had to respond.”

After this, Jo says, Pat (as she now knows him) took off “his political hat”. “There was a moment of silence. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘I don’t know who I am anymore’, he said. ‘I don’t know what to say. I’ve never met anyone like you, with so much dignity. What can I do to help? I want to hear your anger. I want to hear your pain.’” Magee later said that “he was disarmed by the empathy [Jo] gave him, that he would have found it easier” had she been angry and blaming. Then “the political hat would have remained firmly attached”.

Jo’s eagerness to listen and understand was “cathartic” for Magee. In that moment, the political justification for his actions “didn’t matter… As an individual [he] carried the heavy weight of knowing that [he] had caused profound hurt to this woman … A political obligation henceforth became a personal obligation”.

Jo says it was part of her healing “to hear [Magee’s] story and reach an understanding of why he chose violence”. Magee says meeting Jo helped him “remove blinkers, see the bigger picture and understand that there are human beings on all sides”. He came to believe that he had failed to appreciate the humanity of his enemies just as they had failed to appreciate him and his kind. He also came to believe that his aggression had caused him to lose part of his own humanity (or at least lose touch with it) and damage the humanity of many of the people affected by his actions.

Since that first meeting, Jo and Magee have together and apart promoted peaceful means of conflict resolution and avoidance. Foremost of these means is willingness to engage in dialogue. For Jo, such dialogue prevents demonising of “the other” and allows people to retain or reconnect with their own humanity and that of others. For her, “violence is never justified.” For Magee, dialogue is necessary to prevent oppressed people feeling that they have to turn to armed struggle. “I am not a pacifist”, he says. “I could never say to [those] who felt themselves oppressed, ‘Take it, just lie down and take it’”.

Jo thinks that what Magee did was “evil” but that Magee himself isn’t. She thinks one has to separate the sin from the sinner, “to avoid blame and find a new way of thinking that will break that cycle of violence.”

Jo thinks that she has probably used the word “forgiveness” too freely. She now believes that it can lock people into a “me right and you wrong” attitude that “won’t change anything”. But she feels that she “can experience empathy and in that moment there is no judgment. Sometimes when [she’s] met with Pat [she’s] had such a clear understanding of his life that there’s nothing to forgive”. “Had we all lived each other’s lives”, she says, “we could all have done what the other did.” For her, “the question is always about whether [she] can let go of [her] need to blame and open [her] heart enough to hear Pat’s story and understand his motivations. The truth is", she says, "sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. It’s a journey and it’s a choice”.

Magee says he is “not seeking forgiveness”. He stands by his actions, although he feels he will always carry the burden that [he] harmed other human beings”. Forgiveness won’t bring back the dead, he says. “The hope lies in the fact we continue to meet in order to further this mutual process towards understanding.”

Sources

Berry. J. (Undated). Jo Berry – Founder. Building Bridges [Link]

Berry, J., & Magee, P. (2010). Jo Berry & Pat Magee (Northern Ireland). The Forgiveness Project, March 29. [Link]

Grice, E. (2009). The Brighton bomb: Jo Berry – at peace with the man who murdered my father. Telegraph, October 7. [Link]

Hall, C. (2009). Brighton bombing 25 years on: Making friends with my father's killer. Guardian, October 10. [Link]

Magee. P. (Undated). Dr Patrick Magee. Building Bridges [Link]

Rea, L. (2011). Victim’s daughter meets IRA bomber: An interview with Jo Berry. Restorative Justice Online, May 12. [Link]

Three students’ recollections of Jo’s visit

Student 1

I was quite moved by Jo flagging up that, even though she acknowledged that her story was a ‘big one’, she believed many, many people had events in their lives that could be addressed in the way she had addressed her loss. It made me think of a big event from my own life... I have really wondered after Jo’s talk how [meeting an abuser] might have affected my recovery.

Student 2

What struck me about Jo, from the offset, was her calm and placid demeanour. She looked and sounded like she had just finished some deep relaxing meditation, but she was fully awake. The structure of the talk was fantastic for both past and present day... I left feeling like I had been in the presence of someone who, on the surface, seems to have reached a place where her ability to ‘understand’ left me feeling humbled. It was a real pleasure to listen to her story, no matter what internal judgements one makes.

Student 3

One of the main things that I took from the talk was the blurred distinction between whether I was experiencing empathy or sympathy or neither. At several points I felt like I was empathising with Jo... and could understand the emotional turmoil she must have experienced. I felt strongly internally conflicted however as she got into the later stages of her talk and her forgiveness of Pat Magee. This highly traumatic and complex experience is unlike anything I (and probably most audience members) have had to face in life, and so I was not fully able to relate/empathise. But I also struggled to understand/sympathise with Jo. To be honest I was kind of frustrated, angry even... I resented her ability to forgive and even befriend a man who to her knowledge has never said he regretted killing her father... However, what most annoyed me was that I wholeheartedly agree with her core message, that forgiveness and reconciliation between conflicting parties is quite obviously a superior pathway... I know that in her situation I would not have been able to make that leap and would not have reacted well to anyone who suggested I try... It was a truly fascinating talk that has left me unsuccessfully attempting to solidify my own opinion re: forgiveness and justice.

Tom interviews Jo: An excerpt

Jo: I spent the first five years of my life mainly with nannies and hardly seeing my parents... And then my mum separated from my dad when I was six and our lives completely changed... My mum... became friends with people like Roald Dahl. So he was a big part of my childhood. And artists. And, she had like a bohemian house... We were discussing all sorts of interesting ideas. And my father was actually very strict. I remember we used to have to have special clothes when we saw him... So, quite a lot of contrasts that I had to manage.

My father married soon after and had two more children. So we had two homes: very different values, very different disciplines. My over-riding thing as a child was that I could never make my parents happy. When I was with my dad, my mum was upset; when I was with my mum, my dad was upset. So I grew up just always feeling like I wanted to be in two places at the same time, which I think is quite often true of children with divorced parents.

In those days there was no one to talk to about things like that. You just didn’t [laughs]. So I got on with it.

I always seemed to be the one who got in trouble in my family. I don’t know why. Still don’t know why [laughs]...

But over the years my father softened... My mother carried on being quite, adventurous. She’d take us on unusual holidays. Different experiences. So I grew up with a whole lot of people around in my life. I used to go to Buckingham Palace. That was part of my life. Go to 10 Downing Street, because of [laughs] my father. At the same time, I’d meet people from different parts of the world. So quite a variety of experiences.

I remember being really, really unhappy at boarding school. It was a very strict, girls-only boarding school... How much like a prison. These teachers were just like sadists [laughs] and just delighted in punishment. It was the most ridiculous thing. Feelings were not allowed.

I have to say, feelings were not allowed in any part of my childhood.

My mum used to say, just before she became a person-centred counsellor, she’d say, “You can either be tired or joyful” and that was it! So, you know, not a great kind of place to learn about feelings.

And I was a very feeling child. So, I was often called a cry-baby. I used to cry a lot. And I carried on crying right through my boarding school. Eventually they asked me to leave. [Laughs.] Because I was, too difficult.

And that was fantastic. So at 14, I left this prison and came back to London. And, my mum was very involved with her own life. She didn’t really notice me too much. And I discovered, in a whole street, was a squat. And I went there after school, and eventually during school. And there were like all these people there who’d just come back from India, Afghanistan, everywhere like that. And they had bells and incense and played Ravi Shankar music and smoked dope. And I was just like, “Wow!” So that opened my eyes to life quite a lot. And I started reading Jung and Herman Hesse. I just loved the young people I was meeting. I just loved. There was a freedom they had that I really wanted. They weren’t constrained by who they were, where they came from. No one asked them who their father did. You know? They were just living their lives.

... It gave me a thirst, I wanted to go to India, overland to India... So school seemed completely irrelevant. How I got ‘A’ levels I don’t know. I didn’t work very hard. [Laughs.] ...

Tom: [I ask about her father’s and her own commitment to peace.]

Jo: I did eventually start meditating. I did get to India and I lived there for a couple of years. And during that time, just in my early 20s, I wrote letters to mum and dad apologising for being so difficult and, appreciating them, and appreciating how difficult I had been. So I’m making peace with them. I came back in June ’84 and my dad was going through a really hard time. He had financial problems and he was also arrested by the police... I think that was very shameful, to be arrested by the police. I remember I wrote him a note after it happened and I said, “I can see this is really difficult for you and you need to know that your friends stand by you and will understand you and will love you for it. And those who criticise you were never your friends... And I love you whatever you do.” He never wrote back. He still found it hard to communicate his emotions. But I found out, after he was killed, that he had the letter under his pillow.

...