Altruism

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Is there such thing as altruism?

-- Alexandra Carey (alex.carey1@virgin.net), August 31, 2003

Answers

You'll have to answer the question based on doing the research. Most social psychology texts will have a section or chapter covering research on altruism.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), September 01, 2003.

Hi Alexandra, It may be helpful to break the your altruism question down into two questions or two parts. First: Can an individual sometimes aid someone (a relative or nonrelative) in part because they deeply care about the welfare of the person, and do so when they expect little or not gain, but rather a high cost to themselves. If this is what you mean by altruism,I would say yes it is possible, and actually is not that rare until the costs get real high. Second: Can some humans be altruistic in the "pure" sense, where there is nothing for them to gain in any way imaginable, only cost. This would include no real or imagined gain at any time for the helper or his/her relatives. It would also assume that humans have no instinctive tendencie to develop empathy or morality, and that no cultural pressures pushed the helper toward this type of helping. I would think it would be much harder to answer Yes to this question, because it seems there is always some context (developmental or evolutionary) for every human thought or action. You probably know much about cultural pressures put on children to develop empathy and morality, but evolutionary psychologists also often assume that there were selective pressures on our ancestors to evolve a readiness to pick up empathy and morality as we develop in many environments. I think that we should be thankful for what ever type of altruism that humans are capable of (pure or otherwise), and encourage more of it in most people and groups.

-- Paul Kleinginna (pkleinginna@gasou.edu), September 01, 2003.

I strongly suggest that you read Sober & Wilson's book, _Unto Others_, which surveys and analyses a wide range of biological and psychological literature on altruism.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), September 01, 2003.

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