magazine issue 6 2008 / Issue 7

Altruism: Myth or Reality?

• written by Dan Batson & Nadia Ahmad
• edited by Hans IJzerman

Over a half-dozen experiments have been conducted employing this logic. (To imagine yourself in one, see Box 1.) Results consistently reveal that when empathic concern is low, the rate of helping is lower when escape is easy than when escape is difficult, which suggests egoistic motivation to relieve one’s personal distress. However, when empathic concern is high, the rate of helping is high even when escape is easy, which suggests motivation to relieve the other’s suffering, not the empathic concern. These results clearly contradict the aversive- arousal reduction explanation. They support the empathy-altruism hypothesis instead.

Following a similar logic, experiments have tested the other two egoistic accounts proposed to explain empathy-induced helping—avoid social or self-punishments ( shame, guilt) and gain social or self-rewards (praise, esteem-enhancement). In all, more than 30 experiments have now been conducted to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis against the egoistic alternatives. With remarkable consistency, results have patterned as predicted by the empathy-altruism hypothesis, not the alternatives (seeBatson, 1991, for a partial review). This evidence has contributed to what Pilivian and Charng (1990) described as "a “paradigm shift” away from the earlier position that behavior that appears to be altruistic must, under closer scrutiny, be revealed as reflecting egoistic motives. Rather, theory and data now being advanced are more compatible with the view that true altruism—acting with the goal of benefiting another—does exist and is a part of human nature."(p. 27)

If empathic concern produces motivation with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare, the dominant Western view must be replaced by a more complex view that allows for altruism as well as egoism. Such a shift in our view of human motivation requires, in turn, a revision of our views of human nature and human potential. It implies that we humans are more social than we have thought. Other people can be more to us than sources of information, stimulation, gratification, and reward as we each seek our own welfare. We have the potential to care about them for their sakes, not simply for our own. (One might wonder how empathy-induced altruistic motivation evolved. Recent evidence suggests that it rests on cognitive generalization of the complex, emotion-based human instinct to provide parental care).