Altruism is the selfless helping of others. However, biologists,
philosophers, sociologists and psychologists have been telling us for some
time that there is no such thing as altruism and imply that it is
self-interest and not actually the benevolent helping of others. This page
looks at the differing underlying selfish reasons why we help others.
1. Universal Egoism: Altruism is Self Interest
Biologists, philosophers, psychologists and sociologists have all held
that "altruism" is never what it seems. That all apparently selfless acts
are self-centered is known in the sciences as 'universal egoism', which
according to the prominent psychologist Richard Gross, "is the dominant
ethos in social science including psychology. [...] Sociobiologists consider
that acts of apparent altruism turn out to be acts of selfishness in
disguise". There is such agreement amongst psychologists and specialists
that it seems "altruism is an impossibility"
1.
If altruism is an illusion, merely a label that covers peoples' confusion
over why they behave in a good way, then what are the causes of behaviour
that seems selfless? A few of the following are looked at in more detail
below:
-
Neurochemical Rewards: The feel-good factor that comes with
doing social good results from our evolved genetic program.
- Personal Pride: A person wants to feel good and justify
themselves in their thinking of themselves as good, so that by helping
others they create their own positive self-identity
- The
Social Reward: A sometimes secret desire to be seen as good by
others (The Goodguy Badge)
- The Want of Power Over Others: To help others is to affirm
ones' own sense of power and control
2. Evolution: Social Species are Programmed to do Good
Social behaviour that benefits others is a feature of genetic programming
in all social species, and its success as a evolutionary strategy has made
it "a part of the behavioural repertoire of social animals, so it can be
expected to develop much further in intelligent and intensely social
animals, like our human ancestors"
2.
The neurological rewards are what you seek when you do seemingly
"altruistic" things. Those who do good often are addicted to the drugs
released in our brains; they do it for the rush even if they don't know it.
This isn't a bad thing, of course, the only negative aspect is that they
think they do it for the general good when in fact they do it for the
neurological high that it brings. An ideal model of unthinking genetically
inherited social behaviour is that of ants and bees and other worker
insects. At this extreme we see that even the most selfless social behaviour
can be genetically predetermined.
The cold facts of evolution, if true, would lead to selfless behaviour of
a gene-protecting nature. Firstly, we would protect ourselves so that we can
have children. Secondly, we would protect our children. Thirdly, we would
protect
close relatives including our children's children. Fourthly,
we protect those of our kin, tribe and locality who are likely to share
genes with us. This is exactly what we find in all social animals
3.
David Myers devotes a chapter of "
"Social
Psychology" by David Myers (1999)" to the study of altruism.
Sociological research has found not only that we have genetic
predispositions to help others, but also that this behaviour focuses on
others in the way evolutionary biologists would predict: First on our
children, our relatives, our perceived tribe, our ethnic group and lastly,
complete strangers. "In the aftermath of natural disasters and other
life-and-death situations, the order of who gets helped would not surprise
an evolutionary psychologist: the young before the old, family members
before friends, neighbours before strangers
4.
The most important text on the subject of biological altruism is "
The
Selfish Gene" by
Prof. Richard Dawkins (1976), which explains in great depth and accuracy
the biological nature of selfishness, and argues strongly that biological
nature is entirely concentrated on the protection of one's own genes
(whether those genes are in oneself or in one's close relatives).
“This book is mainly intended to be
interesting, but if you would extract a moral from it, read it as a
warning. Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in
which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common
good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to
teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let
us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then
at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other
species has ever aspired to.”
Concern for the common good is a feature of most societies because
intellectually and
morally it is logical that this course of
behaviour is better than the more simplistic behaviours that evolution has
endeared us with. Apart from the rational reasons for altruism, there are
other biological factors that result in
pseudoaltruism, and must be
studied by sociobiologists. The psychologist Richard Gross describes some of
the evolutionary forces that cause social species to evolve
altruistic-seeming behaviours:
“The most general explanation of apparent
altruism is Hamilton's theory of kin selection (1964). If we
think of an individual as a set of genes rather than as a separate,
'bounded' organism, then it should be regarded as distributed across
kin, i.e., it shares some proportion of its genes with relatives,
according to how close the relationship is. It follows that it is
possible for an individual to preserve its genes through its own
self-sacrifice; if a mother dies in the course of saving her three
offspring from a predator, she will have saved 1½ times her own genes
(since each offspring inherits one half of its mother's genes). [...]
(see
The Selfish Gene by Dawkins, 1976). [...]
However, we are left with another difficulty - what should we make of
cases of altruism on the part of animals which are not related?
Clearly, kin selection cannot accommodate such cases. Trivers (1971) has
proposed the principle of delayed reciprocal altruism, by which
animals will 'return favours' to other animals which have done them a
good turn or a good turn is worthwhile because it is likely to be
returned. For example, male baboons who do not have a female partner
sometimes form a temporary alliance with another solitary male baboon:
while the latter attacks a male who is 'courting' a female and so
distracts the male's attention, the former mates with the female. Those
males who often give this kind of help seem to be more likely to receive
help in return, so that reciprocation occurs (Packer, 1977) [and] it
pays two pied wagtails to defend a winter feeding territory, even though
they are not related, because in this way they can achieve a higher
feeding rate.”
The foremost evolutionary biologist, Prof. Richard Dawkins, says that all
factors that lead to the evolving of instincts that favour altruistic
behaviour can be summarized into four main types, adding two more to those
we have discussed above:
“We now have four good Darwinian reasons for
individuals to be altruistic, generous or 'moral' towards each other.
First, there is the special case of genetic kinship. Second, there is
reciprocation: the repayment of favours given, and the giving of favours
in 'anticipation' of payback. Following on from this there is, third,
the Darwinian benefit of acquiring a reputation for generosity and
kindness. And fourth, if Zahavi is right, there is the particular
additional benefit of conspicuous generosity as a way of buying
unfakeably authentic advertising.
Through most of our prehistory, humans lived under conditions that
would have strongly favoured the evolution of all four kinds of
altruism. We lived in villages, or earlier in discrete roving bands like
baboons, partially isolated from neighbouring bands or villages. Most of
your fellow band members would have been kin, more closely related to
you than members of other bands - plenty of opportunities for kin
altruism to evolve. And, whether kin or not, you would tend to meet the
same individuals again and again throughout your life - ideal conditions
for the evolution of reciprocal altruism. Those are also the ideal
conditions for building a reputation for altruism, and the very same
ideal conditions for advertising conspicuous generosity. By any or all
of the four routes, genetic tendencies towards altruism would have been
favoured in early humans.”
3. Internal Reasons: Distress, Self-Esteem and Guilt
We help others for personal, internal reasons. These reasons have been
studied by sociologists. David Myers reports in "
Social
Psychology" that noticing others' anguish causes ourselves to become
distressed. One way to relieve it is to help the person. "Indeed, Dennis
Krebs (1975) found that Harvard University men whose physiological responses
and self-reports revealed the most distress in response to another's
distress also gave the most help to the person"
8.
- We help others to relieve our own physiological distress upon
witnessing their predicament.
- We help others to give ourselves self-esteem: We feel useful and
good when we help others.
The reason that these biological impulses can be satisfied by helping
someone is that we are programmed genetically to respond in that way, in
common with other social species. "Nearly all blood donors in Jane
Piliavin's research agreed that giving blood 'makes you feel good about
yourself' and 'gives you a feeling of self-satisfaction'"
8.
Guilt is one of the more persistent emotions. Most cultures have
developed ritualistic and proscribed methods of publicly dealing with guilt,
and it certainly remains one of the biggest motives for doing
good
acts: We feel less guilty after doing something good, even if the deed isn't
related to the original misdeed. In this way, many good deeds go towards
building up a 'karma' against our guilt. Studies have shown that people who
have recently done something wrong devote more time, more readily, to
helping others
9.
This personal balancing of guilt and good deeds can easily be subconscious,
influencing us without us realizing.
“Abraham Lincoln illustrated the
philosophical issue in a conversation with another passenger in a
horse-drawn coach. After Lincoln argued that selfishness prompts all
good deeds, he noticed a sow making a terrible noise. Her piglets had
gotten into a pond and were in danger of drowning. Lincoln called the
coach to a halt, jumped out, ran back, and lifted the little pigs to
safety. Upon his return, his companion remarked, "Now, Abe, where does
selfishness come in on this little episode?" "Why, bless your soul, Ed,
that was the very essence of selfishness. I should have no peace of mind
all day had I gone and left that suffering old sow worrying over those
pigs.”
4. The Social Reward of the Goodguy Badge
Consciously or unconsciously, people tend to behave in a way that boosts
their own social position. Not everyone is good at this, but it is a major
part of all Human psychology. Part of our social self-esteem often includes
the desire to be seen as socially good: In other words, people adopt a
"good-guy badge", to use the phrase coined by
Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan.
“[People] are not in touch with their own
emotions or psychology. To question their own motives is impossible.
They don't know why they seek acceptance from others, why they are doing
what they are doing in life, or where they're going. But they want to be
seen as a good. Every culture develops "good" symbols, and every group
of people come to chose common "symbols of good" in order to feel good
about themselves upon seeing that others, outside their group, do not
display those symbols. This is social psychology in action, and it is
shallow, pretentious and hollow, serving to boost the egos of those who
do not have genuine skills.”
“If social approval motivates helping, then in
experiments we should find that when approval follows helping, helping
increases. And it does (Staub, 1978).
”
People do it unconsciously because they don't have the self-reflection to
understand their own social behaviour. Sociological investigation uncovers
reasons for peoples' good behaviour that they themselves do not know.
Because of this, so-called altruism is a "socially complex" behaviour.
Sometimes people knowingly do good deeds for the benefit of themselves, but
most of the time the underlying selfish motivation is a mystery to the
benefactor.
Higher species come to "swap" good deeds early in their evolution.
Sociobiologists call it "delayed reciprocal altruism", whereby one good act
is an investment for a potential return favour at a later date
6.
Friendship, loyalty, morals and good social behaviour are all selfish
investments in the future: In fact, the more daringly selfless the act, the
greater these potential rewards appear to be to the subconscious.
5. The Want of Power Over Others
The ultimate practical and social philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote extensively and insightfully on Human
psychology. Lee Spinks summarizes Nietzsche's theory on altruism:
“The morality of pity is not selfless
but rather embodies a weak and reactive will to power [...]. For the
feeling of pity always involves a degree of contempt for the person
pitied; and this pleasurable experience of superiority enabled the
'altruistic' individual to believe itself more powerful than before.
Post-colonial critics, for example, have argued that the western
circulation of pitiable images of Third-World suffering - such as
pictures of starving African children - does not fulfil a humanitarian
impulse; the point of these images of helpless victimhood is to
demonstrate that 'we' can help those unable to help themselves and
constitute ourselves as ethical and powerful in the process.”
Nietzsche is famous for classifications of
strength and
weakness. He rightly points out that those who need cheap psychological
tricks to boost their own sense of power are of the
weak kind,
whereas the strong know full well that altruistic behaviour is not what it
seems. The weak help others in order to feel powerful and to have a sense of
control over others. The strong, or the 'noble', do not delude themselves in
this way.
Evolutionists have realised that animals and humans both use giving as a
form of exertion of power. Dominant animals who give most are also saying
they are the most powerful and can
afford to give (time, food, etc)
to others. The dominant will tend to refuse aid given to them from anyone
inferior to them.
7
“The essence of Zahavi's idea is that
advertisements of superiority are authenticated by their cost. Only a
genuinely superior individual can afford to advertise the fact by means
of a costly gift. Individuals buy success, for examples in attracting
mates, through costly demonstrations of superiority, including
ostentatious generosity and public-spirit risk-taking.”
6. The Compatibilist Position
Despite the facts of determinism, a doctrine called 'compatibilism' is
useful. Compatibilism is the acceptance of the use of the word "altruism",
despite its hollowness, because it is nonetheless a useful English word. So,
I talk of "altruism" and mean it to refer to the acts that seem selfless. It
is a way of still getting use out of the word as a piece of paradoxical
English rather than a scientific or philosophical truth. So, many people who
actually argue that there really is a thing called "altruism", if they
insist despite the facts, are normally arguing from a semantic or
use-of-language point of view
1.
So, we can still work to increase 'altruistic' behaviour and we can still
praise it, despite the fact that we know it is a purely caused behaviour. In
fact,
because it is a caused behaviour, we know that our praising of
selfless acts and our moralizing is effective. If altruism was not derived
from deterministic factors, it would be useless to teach children to be nice
because our teachings wouldn't go on to cause good behaviour.
I also view the debate over the reality of altruism to have two levels,
and most disagreements are between those who hold one definition of
altruism, and those who hold another. The two definitions are:
- Surface-altruism: 'Altruism' occurs when one animal does something
good for another, no matter what the underlying motive was. Altruism
exists, therefore, on this shallow, or surface, level.
- Motive-altruism: As there are underlying motives to 'altruistic'
behaviour, 'altruism' is an illusion (because we often don't know our
own ulterior motives, such as kin selection behaviour).
Those who use altruism in the first sense will give instances of observed
altruism in order to prove their point, those who use the second definition
will seek for underlying causes of behaviour in order to dispel examples.
This cycle can continue forever. Most debates are really semantic
differences in the definition of the word rather than genuine disagreements.
7. Conclusion
Biologists, sociologists, philosophers and above all, psychologists, have
held to the "universal egoism" theory; that all apparent altruism is really
selfishness in disguise. Most arguments for altruism are based on ignorance
of the underlying reasons for behaving good towards others or are purely
semantic in nature, not logical.
People behave altruistically for a number of selfish reasons. We are
programmed genetically to behave in a way conducive to the sociability of
the species: This unconscious species-instinct is the closest thing we have
to true selfless altruism. In nearly every other conscious sense, altruism
is an illusion. We behave well because social good behaviour fires off
pleasant neurochemicals in our brains (the pleasure reward), because
consciously or unconsciously we want others to see us as a good person (the
social reward) or to feel good about ourselves (for pride and self-esteem).
Altruism is image and illusion.
Richard Dawkins, the great evolutionary biologist, argues that we should
educate people about the true nature of altruism. He is the author of "
The
Selfish Gene", and says that when we understand our motives better, we
are better equipped to behave well, and overcome the ethnically-biased
altruism that we are born with.
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