As expected, the IWAH related positively with increased knowledge of and willingness to help with international aid issues. But a few surprising things did pop up. For instance, IWAH related to the personality traits of agreeableness and openness to experience, as expected, but it also related to neuroticism. Although perplexed by this unexpected finding, the researchers suggested that perhaps people who were ‘thin skinned’ and worried more might also be more likely to empathically worry or show concern for others. And while social dominance orientation and in-group identification were predictive of ethnocentric valuation of American over Afghani lives, authoritarianism, self-rated conservatism and religiosity were not. In fact, using a subscale of McFarland’s, Ravi Iyer found that, assuming one is not involved in a zero-sum game, ingroup love does not always equal outgroup hate.
Nevertheless, this study is likely to find itself in the groaner column for conservatives who’ve grown weary of presumed-liberal researchers publishing studies demonstrating how wonderfully self-actualized and mature their own moral tendencies and preferences are. Identifying with your fellow man sounds great, but can there be too much of a good thing? Pathological Altruism, a fascinating book that came out last year, highlights the ways in which giving and good intentions can go terribly wrong. Ideologues can get so addicted to the high of moral self-righteousness that no amount of common sense could convince them that burning a Koran might just not be the best idea. Excesses of empathic guilt and identification can cause women to take abusers back into their lives. Even at the more mundane levels of daily life, we all have competing demands coming from the different levels of self, in-group, and out-group all jockeying for position and favor. If you pour out compassion for outgroup members, you may have less left for your family; if you say yes to every ingroup request that comes your way, you may promote social cohesion and group fitness but sacrifice your own personal fitness.
There are many practical, group level applications for this line of inquiry as well. Creating effective church, non-profit, and social justice organizations depends on the leadership’s ability to convert passive, well-meaning interest into active engagement. Most of us want to live according to our values, but moving from the occasional church attendance or charitable contributions to daily engagement, routine giving, and a full-time commitment to a values-centered life can take a herculean will. In this world of abundant pressures and distractions, it’s hard to find the time to even reflect on what we should be doing, let alone doing it. Conservative church groups and liberal non-profits alike will surely be interested in gaining clarity about the identifications underlying donor behavior. Moving from passive group membership to active, engaged social interest can help donors attain their higher-order needs for self-actualization, even as they help fulfill the basic needs of others.
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.
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33 Comments
Add CommentI have no idea what this article is doing on a science site. Fluff.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIdentify with all of humanity? Who can identify with Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler? Or the most angelic child one has ever met and a pedophile?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo I not understand the question?
No, you don't. It's not about identifying with specific individuals, as you're suggesting, but understanding that all people are human beings and deserving of being treated as such.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, that includes the pedophiles, for example. You don't have to approve of their actions, but you still need to understand they're human beings with a mental affliction and generally unable to control their impulses. This doesn't mean you don't punish them for their actions, but it also means you don't cheer when you hear that one's been brutalized in prison for them.
"We all want to promote world peace and live in harmony, but what does that really mean?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo cannibals in Borneo want to promote world peace? Al-quaida fighters in Iraq? Psychotic serial killers? Innu hunting walruses?
The whole basis of this silly article is some collective liberal western 'Kumbaya' basis of mankind. Au contraire...we are products of evolution and not the creation of some christian mythical being.
Please editors, keep the politically correct garbage off. Humanity is not a scientific term. The term is Homo sapien. There is no universal homo sapien with a collective agenda. Nature is not about agenda.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdid you just compare serial killers to an indigenous people practicing traditional hunting that they have done for thousands of years?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSparkboy: " Who can identify with Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler? Or the most angelic child one has ever met and a pedophile?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree. We have a complex gene code and everybody is different. there may be a Horse whisperer but no such thing as a human whisperer than covers 7 billion folks as diverese as Sparcboy puts it from Mother Theresa to Hitler. Anyone who claims to identify with all of humanity is overlaying their own genetic uniquness, cultural upbringing and moral bias onto everyone.
fitandready: "Do cannibals in Borneo want to promote world peace? Al-quaida fighters in Iraq? Psychotic serial killers? Innu hunting walruses?
Bingo!
Interesting area of study, though I am very skeptical about the idea of pathological altruism. I think if a person truly did feel connected to others, they would work to minimize any unhappiness caused by their behavior, whether to those close to them or otherwise. Claims of self-righteousness seem to me to correlate better with selfish behavior historically. Even those who have done things like force others into slavery managed to claim that doing so was not for their own good, but for the welfare of others. But any independent outside observer should be able to see that the statements as well as the behavior really have nothing to do with altruism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause science is universal and scientists should be able to identify with the whole of humanity, not one particular community!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't have any trouble identifying with all those people. By identifying I mean being able to momentarily step into their shoes and share their feelings, not imprint them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I read a biography about the young Adolf Hitler I'm rooting for him; hoping he could become an artist, a decent man, have a family, a long happy life, and not get lost in paranoid nonsense. That is not how the story ends. Tragedy requires at least hope.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow on Earth can anyone who has an interest in moral identity and pursuing higher goals of moral and personal flourishing be not IWAH? A free individual can only play the best non-cooperative games as an IWAH. No Holidays in Evolution; Nature don't play that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately,it was the result of scientific thinking that people were led to identify themselves with their animal side, which is subject to material insticts, instead of their moral human side.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, somehow rationality has become identified with denial or rejection of emotional life and values. A sort of caricature of how we might imagine a rational alien such as Spock or an android such as Data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi--Your comment is typical of the dead-world view in the guise of intellectual observation. And while we may well be products of evolution the world community adopts social-Darwinism by choice. And, further, your religious/politico comment only serves to reveal your outdated bias and limited imagination. If you do not have enough empathy to understand that we are all the same and compassion is the key to a betterm safer, happier world. You may well be a sociopath in the making or simply brain washed by flat-world thinking. After all, to think, you must open your heart as well as your mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, Fossilnut, the term is not "Homo sapien." The term is "Homo sapiens." "Sapiens" is the singular form. The plural would be "sapientes" (I am assuming that singular-plural is the rationale for your misspelling).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCome on... This is one of the key points of evolutionary psychology. Humans have evolved to act cooperatively with their community/tribe, but to fear and kill when possible those outside the tribe. Expanding the instinctive sense of "tribe" to include all of humanity is a key issue of both evolutionary psychology and the future (if any) of the human race.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe the best thing for humanity and peace harmony is to promote human evolution, environmentalism, energy efficiency, alternative energy, sustainable farming, reduce meat consumption, and population control. Viva La Evolucion
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIdentifying with all people is a huge aim. We are all so individual and then again there are so many different societies I feel it would be impossible to identify with them all people than on a very basis animal level. We only live so long (I'm 92) and the time is really short with the problem to keeping up with all the change. Being tolerant of all those differences can be difficult too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for the article and it seems timely as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGrandness in giving oft is the thought of value to humanity, but to give but $10 to a stranger on the street who's starving to most seems unthinkable and it comes with preconceived conditions.
Yet living with the question, "Am I my brothers keeper?" brings to mind what the benchmark for caring should be. We are all our brothers keeper whether it's in relationship to pulling an errant weed from a street or something far grander, yet it requires first and foremost that we care.
Though as to the works of Hilter, they serve a purpose even today because what we saw then still applies in our time in human trafficking, while sentiments as to the goodness of the poorest woman who lived amongst us in the body of Mother Teresa reminds us of our selfishness.
Yet the future is being written today as to what lies ahead. In life we bargain; if I give this, will I get that? Thus we must have something in hand for a good deed, while random acts of kindness are so rewarding.
Look to the homeless and you'll find wisdom beyond words, but to look to the wealthy you'll find a hollow core filled with things and we should recall, all the money in the world cannot buy a seat in heaven.
Merely a brainwashed love of spend, spend, spend, by the mindless mostly. Like this post something to do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStudies like this are critical...respondent never marches or protests, but signs 100s of petitions, writes 100s of editorials & donates 17% of net after-tax to 80+ radical & eleemosynary groups...he finds satori in the Spartan life...vide Mohandas Gandhi, M. L. King, Ralph Nader, Bill McKibben, Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Anna Politskovskaya & suchlike reformers--every generation boasts a few...studies demo that indulging a taste for luxury provokes almost instant depression, whereas acts of generosity & sacrifice ensure vigesimals of happiness...most people, sadly, pursue the phantoms of wealth, power, prestige & carnal gratification.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGetting lux toys triggers depression, enfeebles immune resonse & curtails life expectancy; donating, by contrast, permanently boosts endorphins, oxytocin, etc
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA great book called Pendulum explains that we are in the "we" cycle. It explains why we help.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“Love of the helpless, the poor and the stranger, are the beginning of brotherly love. To love ones flesh and blood is no achievement. The animal loves its young and cares for them. Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose, does love begin to unfold. Compassion implies the element of knowledge and identification. “ Erich Fromm - The Art of Loving
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://economics4humanity.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/love-in-business/
anyway, opposites attract
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'Kumbaya?? Get a grip.No doubt you lost your vote in the last US election.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this*Identification with humanity* can mean knowing down deep in your heart you are just as messed up as everyone else is; and usually if you don't think you are, you're even more messed up than most and probably haven't looked very carefully at your life or thought to ask how anyone else experiences you. More than identifying with others, compassionate understanding looks at the *why* of people's actions and circumstances...what happened early on to cause such an amazingly violent or joyous & giving human being? Attachment/bonding or lack, during infancy and early childhood will tell. Monkey see, monkey do. That's what needs addressing. Violence to children has to be taken more seriously period, or why indeed are we procreating?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt the risk of the first author (McFarland), weighing in, I would like to add a couple of comments. Gandhi once said, “All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family.” I agree, both intellectually and emotionally, which is why I started studies on identification with all humanity. Maslow argued that psychologists need to study “The Farther Reaches of Human Nature” (the title of his last book), and he regarded caring for all humanity as part of these farther reaches. Again, I agree.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I speak on this research, I regularly receive and two negative replies and two positive ones. On the negative side, some argue that our evolution has made us tribal, and so it isn’t possible to care for all humanity, certainly not as much as one does for one’s nation or other ingroup. Other comments show, frankly, that the idea has no emotional resonance, that the listener can’t understand “all humanity is one family” at an emotional level. Emerson once said, “What we are, that only can we see.” It may be that one cannot understand caring for all humanity unless one does.
But those who reply positively don’t believe we are fated to think tribally, and they most often ask, “How can we increase identification with all humanity?” And wanting to extending caring even further, a few ask, “But what about animals?” I don’t have a good answer to either question.
General concerns for humanity rest upon principles rather than the needs of principals. The fundamental aspirations of mankind are shared. They engender security, food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare and love. Humanitarian concern thus portrays a broader commitment to the general wellbeing of mankind than any self-defined limited culture can offer since each inevitably comes into conflict with others. See www.itsinmybook.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter reading all the comments, I perceived two main arguments. One, we evolved to be tribal, so it is challenging for a person to love all of humanity. Two, it is in fact possible for people if not to love all of humanity than at least feel empathy for all of humanity. I would say that both are right. There is an old philosophy called “I’m OK, you’re OK”. It is an old psychology called transactional analyses. There are four states you can be in: I’m OK and you’re OK; I’m OK and you’re not OK; I’m not OK and you’re are OK; or I’m not OK and you are not OK. The healthiest state you can be in is I’m OK your OK.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my life time, I have experienced every state. In order to be OK and no else OK meant that I had to always be better than everyone else, this was exhausting. Whenever it came to my attention that someone could do something better than I could, my ego took a huge blow. In order to not be OK and make everyone else OK, I was consistently comparing myself to others with more skill. I was miserable and consistently depressed. In order to not be OK and to see everyone else as not OK either, I put all my attention on my faults and other people’s faults. I felt like a horrible person full of faults and no qualities. I only made friends with other people who couldn't see their qualities either. Finally, after a year of talk therapy, I began to look at the world anew. I saw everyone as OK including myself. I saw presidents as OK, murders as OK, jocks as OK, stoners as OK, and rapist as OK. No one has it easy.
I must say I grew up in Girl Scouts, had civic minded parents, and did a year in AmeriCorps NCCC. Needless to say, I did a lot of volunteering and good deeds, but I was still felt depressed. What really made a difference for me was to see that everyone is struggling, and that is OK, for to struggle is to be human.
To struggle is to be human is my epiphany. I learned that happiness isn't in material things or doing for others. For me, happiness is the struggle to live. To me, struggling to do anything is happiness. Struggling to learn a new skill, struggling to figure out why, struggling to live, and struggling to love all of humanity are all happiness makers.
Therefore, yes, we are close to our tribes. Yes, we need more empathy. However, what I think we really need are more people in the world that can see that everyone struggles. There is nothing wrong with struggling. After all, struggling is how, I believe, most humans find happiness.
The article is about a fairly typical piece of psychology research, ie., defining a new personality attribute and seeing if it correlates with other attributes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article is about a fairly typical piece of psychology research, ie., defining a new personality attribute and seeing if it correlates with other attributes.
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