The Altruism Option: psychology

Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts

Saturday, 11 January 2014

When Compassion Promotes Altruism

In my previous post I described how people can experience compassionate emotions when they focus on others’ unwelcome misfortune. Compassionate emotions express people’s yearning for things to be better for those they are compassionate toward. In this post I will explore the relationship between compassion and attempted helping.

Compassionate emotions towards misfortunate others can evoke willingness or desire to help them. This is Daniel Batson’s so-called “empathy-altruism hypothesis”. For clarity and convenience, I am going to call this the compassion-altruism hypothesis. It can be noted however that Batson’s version of this hypothesis is relatively narrow, restricted to altruism stemming from visceral compassionate emotions evoked by others’ distress. Other potential motivators of altruism will be considered in later posts.

The compassion-altruism hypothesis suggests that people who would like improvements in others’ welfare sometimes try to improve others’ welfare. This seems relatively non-contentious, merely being one manifestation of a broader claim that people sometimes try to obtain things they want.

Compassionate people wanting others’ welfare to improve does not mean that they will always be willing or want to try to help.

If the compassionate believe that attempts to help might be futile or even counter-productive, they may decide that it would be better to do nothing.

If others’ welfare looks set to improve without their intervention, the compassionate might choose not to get involved. They may see no benefit in personally helping if what they want will come to pass anyway. They may also actively prefer not to get involved if, for example, they want others – perhaps those in need - to get credit for any improvements that occur.

The compassionate want others’ welfare to improve. Sometimes others’ welfare is best served by resisting temptations to help. Compassionate but effective parents sometimes allow their children to receive painful medical procedures. Compassionate but committed educationalists sometimes allow students to experience mental anguish while trying to work things out for themselves. In such cases, others’ long-term welfare can be best served by resisting compassionate urges to help in the short-term.

Compassionate people want others’ welfare to improve but this is rarely the only thing they want. Others’ misfortune can for example evoke personal distress as well as compassionate emotions. People are often keen to alleviate their own distress. Sometimes personal distress can be reduced by helping others (giving people prudent reasons as well or instead of altruistic reasons for helping) and sometimes personal distress can be reduced by doing something other than helping. When compassionate people prioritise accompanying non-compassionate desires in ways that preclude altruism, altruistic helping will not occur. People upset by social conditions sometimes focus exclusively on attacking those they blame and make no attempt to directly help those in need.

Goals change. This is particularly true when goals stem from transient emotions but even long-term commitments wax and wane, shuffling up and down people’s lists of immediate priorities. Compassion can sometimes be replaced by other dominant concerns before resulting in any altruistic help-giving.

In some situations, compassionate feelings can act as a signal to activate learned routines designed to suppress compassion and altruism. Occasional compassionate pangs often do not prevent soldiers killing, lawyers cross-examining, bankers foreclosing, or capitalists profiteering.

Compassion reflects people’s desires for others’ welfare to improve. People experiencing compassion do not always recognise this fact or keep it focal. It can be easy to confuse a desire for others’ welfare to improve with a desire to do something that might be helpful. If a desire to ‘be helpful’ takes precedence over a desire for others’ welfare to improve, resulting behaviours are likely to be more prudent than they are altruistic. Compassionate but confused people can sometimes seek self-satisfaction from acting in allegedly helpful ways (Ps ↑ Sw) more than they seek satisfaction from others’ welfare improving (↑ Ow). (See earlier post if you don’t understand the stuff in brackets in the previous sentence.) At times, sincere but misguided compassionate people may continue busily ‘helping’ even when their actions do not help.

Key points

Compassion can but does not always motivate altruistic behaviour.

Compassion is likely to motivate altruistic helping attempts when altruism is a person’s dominant goal and helping seems likely to be necessary to and effective for improving the welfare of those for whom people are compassionate.

Compassionate attempted helping does not always result in others’ welfare improving.

Behaviour that is helpful need not be motivated by compassion.

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

Monday, 7 October 2013

Where's the "I" in altruism?

In my first post, I suggested that people sometimes do things because they want to have a positive impact on others’ lives. In my second, I suggested that when people do this, they, their goals, and their behaviour can be called altruistic. I suggested that this was no more contentious than a claim that when people seek to harm others, they, their goals, and their behaviour can be called aggressive.

Understood like this, altruism and aggression are goal-seeking. When altruistic or aggressive, people strive for outcomes that they think will be good or bad for others because that is what they want to achieve.

Grammatically, the altruist or aggressor is a subject whose immediate goal is to try to influence another’s welfare and the other’s welfare is the object of the altruist’s or aggressor’s desire and action. Semi-formally, in altruism a person (P) strives (s) to have a positive influence (↑) on another’s (O) welfare (w) (Ps ↑ Ow) and in aggression a person strives to have a negative influence (↓) on another’s welfare (Ps ↓ Ow).

As also mentioned in my second post, a person can strive to have an impact on his or her own welfare. Prudence, which involves a person striving to improve his or her own welfare, was given as an example. In prudence, the subject (P, the person who acts) is the same as in altruism or aggression. Only the object of their immediate desire and action is different. In prudence, a person strives to have a positive impact on the self’s welfare: Ps ↑ Sw.

Differentiating P and S helps keep clear the distinction between the subject and the object of goal-seeking action. When a person engages in altruism, aggression, prudence, or any other goal-seeking behaviour, the subject is the same; it is the person performing the action in order to pursue their goal. What differs across these behaviours is the object of that person’s immediate desire and action. In altruism and aggression the object is another; in prudence the object is the self.

Differentiating P and S is also useful in trying to keep separate two meanings of the slippery phrase “self-interest”.

Because they engage in goal-seeking behaviour, it is tempting to think of altruists as ultimately irredeemably “self-interested”. They are, after all, striving to achieve things they want and they presumably anticipate some sort of satisfaction if their goals are achieved. But because people pursuing any goal can be called “self-interested” in this sense, even if the immediate object of their desires and actions is not the self, perhaps the term “personal-interest” might be better here. People have all manner of goals or personal interests, only some of which have welfare of ‘the self’ as the immediate object of interest.

As well as being personally interested in the sense of having goals, the prudent are also self-interested in a much more direct way. Their personal interest is specifically to intentionally seek benefits for the self. The self’s welfare is the object of their immediate desires and actions. They have personal goals (“self-interest” #1) to promote their self’s welfare (“self-interest” #2).

People are also self-interested in this additional, intentional, direct sense when they seek to harm the self. For want of a better phrase, I shall call this “self-abuse”: Ps ↓ Sw. In prudence and self-abuse, people strive (and are therefore personally interested) to affect their own welfare (their self-interest). In altruism and aggression, people strive (and are therefore personally interested) to influence others’ welfare (other-interest). The table below illustrates these two different senses of “self-interest”.

(Personal goal) Goal object

Aggression s↓ “Other-welfare”, i.e., harm to other

Altruism s↑ “Other-welfare”, i.e., help for other

Prudence s↑ “Self-welfare”, i.e., help for self

Self-abuse s↓ “Self-welfare”, i.e., harm to self

In my nextpost I will review one of the most sustained programmes of empirical research in the psychology of altruism. I will suggest that it has been severely compromised by almost everyone involved apparently failing to adequately appreciate this essential difference between these two different uses of the phrase “self-interest”.

Key points

The subject of action is the same whenever a person engages in goal-directed behaviour: it is the person engaging in the behaviour to pursue those goals.

Goal-seeking behaviours are differentiated one from another by the object of the action, e.g., help for another (Ps ↑ Ow), help for the self (Ps ↑ Sw), harm to another (Ps ↓ Ow), or harm to the self (Ps ↓ Ow).

Final thoughts and further reading

In trying to keep things as clear as possible, I have not mentioned above a third sense of “self-interest”. This is the notion that some things are ‘objectively’ good for people’s welfare, i.e., ‘objectively in their (self-) interest’. It is possible to say, for example, that a person attempting to be prudent acts from ‘self-interest’ (i.e., pursues personal goals) when trying to promote their ‘self-interest’ (i.e., to improve their welfare as they see it) but ultimately does not act in their ‘self-interest’ (i.e., because alternative actions would have better promoted that person’s objective welfare). I do not believe it is in helpful to continue to use the phrase “self-interest” as promiscuously as some do, especially when trying to understand the phenomenon of people intentionally trying to help others.

Blackburn, S. (2001). Ethics: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Also published as Being Good).

Jensen, M. C. (1994). Self-interest, altruism, incentives, and agency theory. Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 7 (2), 40-45. [Link]

How to cite this blog post using APA Style

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

T. Farsides. (2013, October 7). Where’s the “I” in altruism? Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2013/10/wheres-i-in-altruism.html

Image credits

Dr. Who and Clara link

Monday, 30 September 2013

Altruism and aggression

In my previous post I suggested that people sometimes act as they do because they want to help others and that to this extent they, their goals, and their behaviour can be called altruistic. This seems no more contentious than suggesting that people sometimes act as they do because they want to harm others and that to this extent they, their goals, and their behaviour can be called aggressive. I can think of few more worthwhile tasks than trying to understand people being altruistic or aggressive in these ways.

These conceptualisations of altruism and aggression are as elegant as I can make them. Multiple important things are and are not intended by the words I have very carefully chosen. I will explore all of them in later posts, but here are some headlines.

Altruistic and aggressive actions require an ability to conceive another’s welfare, motivation to influence that welfare, and the ability to pursue that goal. It is possible that things other than people can behave altruistically or aggressively if they have these capabilities. (Maybe certain animals, God, nature, groups, laws...?) It is also possible that, if they lack one or more of these characteristics, some people cannot behave altruistically or aggressively. (Maybe new-born babies, people in comas, the grief-stricken, narcissists, psychopaths...?)

Altruism and aggression are not mutually exclusive. It is perfectly possible to try to harm someone at the same time as trying to help them in other ways. (Think of an angry father holding his daughter just a little too tightly while explaining the importance of her not running out into the road again.)

A person being both altruistic and aggressive towards another can be called ambivalent. A person seeking neither to help nor harm another can be called indifferent. Altruism, aggression, ambivalence, and indifference capture all the orientations a person can adopt towards others.

No one can be altruistic or aggressive all the time, in every way, to everyone. When considering the possible existence of altruism or aggression it is almost always useful to ask, “Who is trying to help or harm whom and in what way?” (To whom and in what ways is a policewoman altruistic, aggressive, and indifferent when she shoots a man because she wants to prevent him killing some children?)

People do not always succeed in their sincere attempts to help or harm others. Even when they do succeed as intended, there may be unanticipated or unwelcome additional consequences. People who seek to help or harm others are altruistic or aggressive even if things do not turn out exactly as they wished. When deciding if a person is, was, or will be altruistic or aggressive, it is their goals to help or harm that count. (Is killing a sick animal altruistic or aggressive? What about relieving someone’s pain with drugs which are likely to kill them?)

It follows that the outcomes altruists or aggressors seek are intended to be helpful or harmful as they, the altruists or aggressors, understand those terms. Others may disagree with their assessments of what is helpful or harmful, including those they are trying to help or harm.

It is not only other individuals that people seek to help or harm. In my next post, I will compare and contrast people trying to influence others’ welfare (altruism and aggression) with people seeking to influence their own welfare (prudence and ‘self-harm’).

I hope you liked this post. If not, I apologise. I was trying to help.

Key points

Altruists seek to influence others’ welfare in ways that the altruists think are likely to be beneficial for those others.

Altruism requires an ability to conceive another’s welfare, motivation to influence that welfare, and the ability to pursue that goal.

When considering potentially altruistic behaviour, it is useful to ask, “Who is trying to help whom and in what way?”

Consequences other than those intended can result from altruistic acts.

Final thoughts and further reading

Parallels can be drawn between altruism and other goal-seeking behaviour and it is useful to draw them. People seem relatively reluctant to use the term “altruism” and relatively permissive in using the term “aggression”. I believe that the two are largely equivalent and should be used equally freely or equally restrictively. (Is a cat ‘playing’ with a mouse altruistic, aggressive, ambivalent or indifferent to its welfare?)

Carlsmith, K. M., & Sood, A. M. (2009). The fine line between interrogation and retribution. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45 (1), 191-196. [Link]

Rempel, J. K., & Burris, C. T. (2005). Let me count the ways: An integrative theory of love and hate. Personal Relationships, 1 (2), 297-313. [Abstract]

How to cite this blog post using APA Style

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

T. Farsides. (2013, September 30). Altruism and aggression. Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2013/09/altruism-and-aggression.html

Image credits

Soldier carrying child from link

Record cover from video link

Monday, 23 September 2013

No such thing as altruism?

When I tell students about my course on The Psychology of Altruism and Helping, someone always announces that “There is no such thing as altruism.” When I ask them to explain, they say something like: “People are selfish. Everything they do, they do to pursue their own interests. Therefore there is no altruism. People never really care about others; only themselves.”

Delighted to encounter such passionately engaged students, I tell them it all depends on how the various key words are used – a claim they will get very used to hearing if they sign up for my course. I then suggest that we start our conversation somewhere other than by arguing about what words like selfish, self-interest, and altruism might mean.

I invite the student to start instead by thinking about the sorts of things that people do and why they do them.

Sometimes, I suggest, people do things because they want to have a positive impact on others’ lives. People with this goal do things like give blood, volunteer, comfort friends, donate to charity, buy Fair Trade goods, become organ donors, help strangers, and leave bathrooms as they would like to find them.

I invite the student to think about their own life. I ask if they have ever wanted to make things better for anyone else and whether they have ever acted on that impulse. I ask if any of their friends are nicer than others; more considerate, compassionate, and caring. Maybe I’m lucky in the students who show an interest in my course, because they keep saying “yes”.

At other times, I suggest, people do things for reasons other than wanting to improve others’ lives. Often without a thought for how such things might affect anyone else, people eat, watch films, drink, chat, and relocate traffic cones.

I invite the students to think again about their own lives. I ask them to identify times when they have done things without even thinking about whether or not their actions might be helpful for anyone else. They can always think of examples.

I then ask the students to consider whether there might be important differences between people doing things without considering the impact of those things on the welfare of others and people doing things because they want those things to have a positive impact on the welfare of others.

I tell the students that I believe there are important differences between such behaviours and that I set up my Psychology of Altruism and Helping course as part of my attempt to understand the more other-considerate, other-serving ones. I say I know that not everyone will agree that “altruism” is a good name for the behaviours I am interested in, and that people will claim that those behaviours are “not really altruistic” but, hey, they need a name! (In my next post I will start an argument that “altruism” is a good name for them.)

I then thank the students for their interest and wish them luck in finding a course that’s right for them. I bid them fare well and hope they have a good life.

Thank you for reading. Considerate questions and constructive comments are welcome.

Key Points

People sometimes do things because they want to have a positive impact on others’ lives.

When people do such things, they, their actions, their goals, and their desires can, to that extent, be called altruistic.

It is important to be able to identify and understand when people are and are not altruistic.

Final thoughts and further reading

Academics routinely confuse themselves and others with jargon. This is not trivial. It impedes knowledge, understanding, and progress.

Jingle-jangle fallacies. (No date). Wikipedia. Link

Rozin, P. (2001). Social psychology and science: Some lessons from Solomon Asch. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 2-14. Link

How to cite this blog post using APA Style

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

T Farsides. (2013, September 23). No such thing as altruism? Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2013/09/no-such-thing-as-altruism.html

Image credits

Girl sharing ice lolly from link

Relocated traffic cone from link