Week 13 Flashcards
Altruism
Altruism: A voluntary helpfulness that is motivated by concern about the welfare of other people, rather than by the possibility of personal reward
Reasons for altruism
We are often motivated to behave kindly for self-centred reasons:
(a) we want to avoid the personal pain of seeing someone suffer, or the guilt of not helping people in distress,
(b) we want to feel good about thinking how we’ve improved other people’s lives.
But, if people feel empathy for someone else, they often demonstrate altruism even when these selfish options are denied them.
Evolutionary approaches to “being nice”
On the surface, helping others in a way that is costly to the self seems to be an evolutionary paradox. But theorists make the case that altruism makes sense from an evolutionary perspective … that it is a form of “enlightened self-interest”.
helping your kin helps fulfil your evolutionary mission of furthering your DNA. protecting your ingroup helps your own survival chances. humans are bound by norms of reciprocity … so we help others on the understanding that we will receive help in return. helping others may be a signal that you have psychological and material resources, which increases your partner potential. Humans are capable of extreme acts of altruism that defy traditional cost-benefit analyses: Risking your life to save the lives of strangers Depression and burnout among healthcare professionals
Other examples of altruism
Other animals also engage in altruism, although in these cases the actions can be fairly easily explained in terms of kin protection. Humans are outliers in terms of our capacity to help each other.
Our capacity to help may be one of humans’ big survival advantages as a species.
Ironically, it may even help at the individual level – a big predictor of longevity in old age is the extent to which people provide others with support
In the “dictator game”, participants are given a sum of money, and told that they can give as much of that money as they want to a partner.
Pure economic analyses – built around the assumption that people are self-interested – would predict that people would mostly give $0. But on average, dictators give about 28% of their pie.
Data on altruism
Distribution of mean contributions from dictators to recipients …this is the frequency of means across 616 studies
Based on individual data
and people still give (although less so) even when they’re anonymous
and people still give (although less so) even when they’re anonymous
And look at old people!
Moral circle
In the last 200 years, moral boundaries have extended to places (beyond kin and in-group) that would have once been considered strange. We now presume that moral rights extend to every (innocent) person, and increasingly to animals as well.
Moral expansive scale
In the last 200 years, moral boundaries have extended to places (beyond kin and in-group) that would have once been considered strange. We now presume that moral rights extend to every (innocent) person, and increasingly to animals as well.
Aggregate score calculated:
inner circle = 3, outer circle = 2, fringes = 1, outside = 0
Scores on this measure uniquely predict
Willingness to donate a kidney to various recipients
Willingness to donate to various animal and environmental causes,
Willingness to sacrifice one’s life in order to save a range of human and non-human entities in a hypothetical “psychopathic dictator” scenario
Adapted Moral Expansiveness Scale for kids
24 entities, 12 categories
Human – family, in-group, out-group, revered, needy, villains
Non-human animals – high-sentient animals, low-sentient animals, food animals, pets
Plants, objects
Average donation amount
Giving as a share of disposable income has stayed relatively steady at around 2%
Charities that people like to fund
RSPCA- 63% Greenpeace- 100% Australian Red Cross- 18% World Vision- 78% The Smith Family- 59% Compassion-99%
DIFFERENT PEOPLE, DIFFERENT CHARITIES
Females women’s rights human rights environment -amnesty international -earthwatch institution Younger donors animal protection environment -WWF -Greenpeace Religious donors religious charity -Compassion -The Salvation Army Males economy national security -Crimestoppers -Wounded Heros Australia Older donors health disability international charities -The Fred Hollows Foundation -Alzheimer's Australia Community activists secular charities -The Smith Family -Oxfam
Motivational crowding
Titmuss (1970) argued that it might be counter-productive to offer financial incentives to give, because it takes away from the “warm glow” people feel about giving (“motivational crowding”).
Subsequent research suggests he might have been right. Mellstrom and Johannesson (2008) offered participants the opportunity to become blood donors either (1) with no compensation, (2) in return for money, or (3) in return for money, but participants had the chance to donate the money to a charity.
The power of images
Visual images are exceptionally powerful in terms of capturing attention to a humanitarian crisis, and getting people to feel empathy.
It has been argued that “single victim” images are more powerful in this sense than multi-victim images. The evidence is reasonably consistent on that … and charity groups routinely use single-victim images or single-victim narratives (particularly of children) to increase donations.
Too much empathy
But some have argued that overstimulating empathy can cause people to withdraw (“burnout”).
Eckel et al. (2007) primed participants with emotionally moving stimuli about victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Participants in Minnesota (geographically distant from New Orleans) gave more in this condition than in a control condition … but participants from Texas (geographically close and host to 135 000 displaced persons) gave less.
Others have argued that empathy produces “emotional giving”, which privileges heart-warming stories over more urgent needs.
This has led to an “effective altruism” movement, which argues that people should make rational cost-benefit decisions about the causes they should support, and the way in which they support those causes
Factors affecting altruism
The greatest predictor of whether somebody will be altruistic is the extent to which they feel compassion. Families who teach their children to think how their actions will affect others are more likely to be altruistic later in life
You’re more likely to be altruistic when you’ve seen another person be altruistic (modelling)
Altruism is more likely when people are not in a rush
