Altruism

Definition

Altruism refers to a motive for helping behavior that is primarily intended to relieve another person's distress, with little or no regard for the helper's self-interest. Altruistic help is voluntary, deliberate, and motivated by concern for another person's welfare. When help is given for altruistic reasons, the helper does not expect repayment, reciprocity, gratitude, recognition, or any other benefits.

Background and History

Questions about the nature and importance of altruism have a long history in moral philosophy. For example, the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, who ministered to a traveler's wounds at personal cost while expecting nothing in return, has become synonymous with the idea of selfless giving. Among social psychologists, interest in altruism grew in response to early studies of helping behavior. Those studies tended to focus on the act of helping itself, that is, whether or not one person gave help to another person. As researchers sought to identify the motives responsible for acts of helping, it became apparent that two major classes of motives could underlie helping: egoistic and altruistic. Egoistic motives are concerned chiefly with benefits the helper anticipates receiving. These might be material (repayment, the obligation for future favors in return), social (appreciation from the recipient, public recognition), or even personal (the gratifying feeling of pride for one's actions). Altruistic motives, on the other hand, focus directly on the recipient's need for assistance and involve sympathy and compassion for the recipient.

A key debate has contrasted altruistic motivation with one particular type of egoistic motive, sometimes called distress reduction. Witnessing another person's distress can be profoundly upsetting, and if the helpful act is motivated first and foremost by the desire to relieve one's own upset feelings, the act would be seen as more egoistic than altruistic. The difference is that whereas altruistic helping focuses on the recipient's need (“You were suffering and I wanted to help”), egoistic helping focuses on the helper's feelings (“I was so upset to see your situation”).

The distinction between egoistic and altruistic motives for helping behavior has sometimes been controversial. One reason is that altruistic explanations do not lend themselves to the kinds of reward–cost theories that dominated the psychological analysis of motivation during the mid-20th century. These theories argued in essence that behavior occurs only when it maximizes the actor's rewards while minimizing his or her costs, a framework that does not facilitate altruistic interpretations of helping. Nevertheless, it is clear that acts of helping often involve great personal cost with little or no reward; one need only consider the behavior of individuals who rescued Jews from Nazi persecution or Tutsis from the Rwandan massacre to realize that helping often does take place for altruistic reasons.

Social psychologist Daniel Batson was instrumental in introducing methods for studying helping that is altruistically motivated. One such method involves using experimental variations to differentially emphasize either the need of the recipient or the opportunity to fulfill more egoistic motives. Increases in helping from one condition to the other can then be attributed to whichever motive has been strengthened. Another method involves sophisticated techniques that help identify what people were thinking about as they considered helping. In both cases, research has shown unequivocally that altruistic motives often play an important role in helping behavior. This sort of helping is sometimes called true altruism or genuine altruism, tacit acknowledgment that some forms of helping behavior are more egoistic in nature. Although from the perspective of the needy recipient, it may not matter whether a given act is motivated by egoistic or altruistic concerns, from a scientific standpoint, the difference is substantial.

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