The Psychology of Altruism: The Good Samaritan (Science’s Version)

“Most of us only care about money makin’... selfishness got us followin’ the wrong direction”, raps the Black Eyed Peas in “Where is the love?” Is the norm nowadays truly to only care about money makin’, rendering the Samaritans who still do things out of the goodness of their hearts the exception? The disciplines of evolutionary and cognitive psychology beg to differ.

From an evolutionary perspective, the motivations of altruism, or “biological altruism”, reside in a pre-wired, biological desire to ensure the genetic survival and reproductive success of genetically similar others.

In 1975, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson published Sociobiology, which was regarded by the vast majority at the time to be one of the most groundbreaking evolutionary theories ever. Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection and the “survival of the fittest” implied a machiavellian world in which individuals clawed their way to the top. Wilson offered a novel postulation - certain types of social behaviour like altruism are often genetically programmed into a species to aid their survival. In the context of Darwin’s theory of ‘every man for himself’ Natural Selection, this kind of selflessness or altruism did not compute. E.O. Wilson resolved the paradox with a ‘one for all and all for one’ theory called “kin selection”.

According to the kin selection theory, altruistic individuals would prevail because the genes that they shared with kin would be passed on. As the whole clan is included in the genetic victory of a few, the phenomenon of beneficial altruism was later also referred to as “inclusive fitness”.

Wilson would later announce in 2010 however, that he no longer endorsed the kin selection theory that he had developed for decades, after having conducted new research indicating that self-sacrifice to protect a relation’s genes do not drive evolution, and that altruism actually evolved for the group of the community rather than for the good of preserving individual genes. In other words, the significance of family has been dampened; altruism appears to emerge as a protective mechanism for social groups regardless of whether they are kin or not.

Cognitive theories in psychology on the other hand, examine the role of empathy and various other emotive motivators of altruism. They emphasise the cognitive and social processes involved in helping another person, and unlike evolutionary theories of altruism which center on the passing on of genes to future generations, are more concerned with the internality of human nature on an individual level. Psychological theories are based on the idea that specific states of mind, such as empathy, egoism, and a negative mood, can influence the degree of help provided to a person in need. Two pertinent examples of these include the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis and the Negative State Relief Model.

The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis (EAH) was devised by Batson (1981), which argues that acts of altruism are not necessarily motivated by a selfless desire to help someone in need, but by egoism instead. Batson proposed that people may extend support to derive praise or external reward as opposed to acting out of a desire fuelled by genuine humanitarianism. Batson was particularly interested in distinguishing between prosocial behaviour based on empathy (true altruism) and prosocial behaviour based on egoism (motivated by self-serving needs), and famously stated that “egotistically motivated helping is directed toward the end goal of increasing the helper’s own welfare; in contrast, the person’s helping is altruistic (empathic) to the degree that they help from a desire to reduce the distress or increase the benefit of the person in need.” Therefore, according to the EAH, those who tend to feel high levels of empathy for a person in need will be more likely to offer help compared to those with an inferior capacity for empathy.

On the other hand, the Negative State Relief Model (NSRM) was established by Schaller and Cialdini (1988), and it considers the extent to which personal discomfort at the sight of another’s distress motivates altruistic acts - altruism driven by a sort of motivation akin to the aforementioned egoistic related ones. When someone witnesses another in need of help, they can experience negative emotions including sadness, guilt, anxiety, distress, and discomfort. By this principle, the NSRM assumes that if an individual feels empathy for someone in need, then they are more likely to experience such sadness and guilt-ridden feelings about it. The onset of this negative mood may then prompt the individual to offer help in order to improve their own hope, hence making this model directed towards the egoistic motivation of alleviating one’s own distress (‘self-rewarding’) rather than simply helping the person in need. According to the NSRM, there are two ways to alleviate the unpleasant symptoms experienced when in the presence of someone in need: to walk away (out of sight, out of mind), or to stay and help (extinguishes guilt). Either of these decisions should then reduce or eliminate the negative state.

The Oxford dictionary defines altruism as a “disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.” Based on the aforementioned theories of psychological egoism, psychology evidently suggests that no act of sharing, helping or sacrificing can be deemed altruistic in its true and unadulterated form, as the actor can be in a position where they receive an intrinsic reward in the form of personal gratification. That is not to say though, that humans are inherently selfish - we as a collective species actually engage in more altruistic acts more often we think, even directed at strangers and amidst an absence of reciprocation!

Reference List

Mattis, J.S., Hammond, W.P., Grayman, N., Bonacci, M., Brennan, W., Cowie, S.-A., Ladyzhenskaya, L. and So, S. (2009). The Social Production of Altruism: Motivations for Caring Action in a Low-Income Urban Community. American journal of community psychology, [online] 43(1-2), pp.71–84. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-008-9217-5. 

Dolma, T. (2015). Different levels of negative emotions and their impact on prosocial behavior. [online] Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1212&context=etd. 

Sagepub.com. (2024). Available at: https://sk.sagepub.com/ency/edvol/socialpsychology/chpt/empathy-altruism-hypothesis. 

www.psychologytoday.com. (n.d.). The Evolutionary Biology of Altruism | Psychology Today United Kingdom. [online] Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-athletes-way/201212/the-evolutionary-biology-altruism.