Helping comes easy.
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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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When it really comes down to it—when the chips are down and the lights are off—are we naturally good? That is, are we predisposed to act cooperatively, to help others even when it costs us? Or are we, in our hearts, selfish creatures?
This fundamental question about human nature has long provided fodder for discussion. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin proclaimed that all people were born broken and selfish, saved only through the power of divine intervention. Hobbes, too, argued that humans were savagely self-centered; however, he held that salvation came not through the divine, but through the social contract of civil law. On the other hand, philosophers such as Rousseau argued that people were born good, instinctively concerned with the welfare of others. More recently, these questions about human nature—selfishness and cooperation, defection and collaboration—have been brought to the public eye by game shows such as Survivor and the UK’s Golden Balls, which test the balance between selfishness and cooperation by pitting the strength of interpersonal bonds against the desire for large sums of money.
But even the most compelling televised collisions between selfishness and cooperation provide nothing but anecdotal evidence. And even the most eloquent philosophical arguments mean noting without empirical data.
A new set of studies provides compelling data allowing us to analyze human nature not through a philosopher’s kaleidoscope or a TV producer’s camera, but through the clear lens of science. These studies were carried out by a diverse group of researchers from Harvard and Yale—a developmental psychologist with a background in evolutionary game theory, a moral philosopher-turned-psychologist, and a biologist-cum-mathematician—interested in the same essential question: whether our automatic impulse—our first instinct—is to act selfishly or cooperatively.
This focus on first instincts stems from the dual process framework of decision-making, which explains decisions (and behavior) in terms of two mechanisms: intuition and reflection. Intuition is often automatic and effortless, leading to actions that occur without insight into the reasons behind them. Reflection, on the other hand, is all about conscious thought—identifying possible behaviors, weighing the costs and benefits of likely outcomes, and rationally deciding on a course of action. With this dual process framework in mind, we can boil the complexities of basic human nature down to a simple question: which behavior—selfishness or cooperation—is intuitive, and which is the product of rational reflection? In other words, do we cooperate when we overcome our intuitive selfishness with rational self-control, or do we act selfishly when we override our intuitive cooperative impulses with rational self-interest?
To answer this question, the researchers first took advantage of a reliable difference between intuition and reflection: intuitive processes operate quickly, whereas reflective processes operate relatively slowly. Whichever behavioral tendency—selfishness or cooperation—predominates when people act quickly is likely to be the intuitive response; it is the response most likely to be aligned with basic human nature.
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23 Comments
Add CommentLooks like someone needs to read "The Selfish Gene" (1976) Richard Dawkins. Nice to see further confirmation of his thesis, but this isn't the surprise the title suggests ("after all").
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA better example of an early argument for instinctive human goodness than that of Rousseau's is given in Adam Smith's "The Theory of Moral Sentiments".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is from a summary at the Adam Smith Institute website:
[The Theory Of Moral Sentiments was a real scientific breakthrough. It shows that our moral ideas and actions are a product of our very nature as social creatures. It argues that this social psychology is a better guide to moral action than is reason. It identifies the basic rules of prudence and justice that are needed for society to survive, and explains the additional, beneficent, actions that enable it to flourish.
Self-interest and sympathy. As individuals, we have a natural tendency to look after ourselves. That is merely prudence. And yet as social creatures, explains Smith, we are also endowed with a natural sympathy – today we would say empathy – towards others. When we see others distressed or happy, we feel for them – albeit less strongly. Likewise, others seek our empathy and feel for us. When their feelings are particularly strong, empathy prompts them to restrain their emotions so as to bring them into line with our, less intense reactions. Gradually, as we grow from childhood to adulthood, we each learn what is and is not acceptable to other people. Morality stems from our social nature.]
http://www.adamsmith.org/moral-sentiements
The full summary, and of course the actual book, is well worth a read. Note that Smith is being credited, justifiably in my opinion, with a scientific breakthrough. It seems the recent work reported here in SciAm was anticipated by well over two centuries.
I don't understand your comment about The Selfish Gene. I see nothing in common between this article and the book. Maybe you need to read the book?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is fascinating, but I think the only generalization that can come out of it is that the first impulse of humans living in America is cooperative. Until work is done cross-culturally, we don't know if this is a culturally specific behavior or a tendency from human evolution. When cross-cultural work is done, Western societies seem to consistently be outliers - as an <a href="http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_final02.pdf">Example</a>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBah - tried to hyperlink -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisexample of work referenced:
http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_final02.pdf
I have a problem with many of the statements made in this article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuppose that humans are described by the following statements. We evolved in tribes. Within tribes, we had repeated social interactions with the same people that were similar to the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma and so we evolved tit-for-tat strategies. Also suppose reciprocal altruism and social reputation played parts in tendencies to "play well with others" for the sake of maximizing personal gain.
When we perceived somebody did us wrong we retaliated (tit-for-tat). If we think somebody stole from us we cut off their hands or kill them and possibly start a violent feud.
For people we perceived as out-group (other tribes) we either were violent with right away or required their niceness demonstrated before we'd cooperate.
Of course there is variation in the "sensitivity" of perceiving defection and the size of the response, and variations of free riding cheaters or, when desperate, use violence to take from others for our own benefit.
Suppose civilization changed this. We agree to back a collective enforcement who will investigate and judge guilt, use force, and confine he guilty. The added penalty of taking measures in our own hands helps make us cognitively override our instinct when we have perceived wrongs and call the police instead of beat them up. Since the state is now the "biggest guy in the room" we also don't have to judge if we can beat them or not. It also changes the cost of doing wrong in the first place. Add to this some social welfare help and desperation is lowered so in general violence, theft, and other crimes are reduced.
The above description is entirely consistent with the results of this study. We instinctively cooperate with those we perceive as in-group. But is the above description "good" or selfish? Is the proposed trait we cooperate to maximize our self-interest selfish or not? Is the fact that we are easy to set off and commit violence against perceived wrongs good, or bad? What about the xenophobia (and racism) of out-groups?
Further, given that the "Leviathan" of the collective state reduces our tendency to commit violence and crime, is Hobbes wrong? Given that this civilization didn't cause us to do bad as an override of our natural "goodness", isn't Rousseau wrong?
I'm not claiming this model is exactly right, but it doesn't seem far off. I don't see how claims like good, bad, selfish, or altruistic have value here, and it still firmly appears that Hobbes was more right than Rousseau.
I am surprised that no one seems to have picked up on Simon-Cohen's Science of Evil which seeks to quantify empathy (and lack of) on a bell curve. His work, presented in deceptively simple prose, shows wide variations in social behavior based on brain studies and, to my generally uninformed mind, pinpoints the differences in human behavior and, more important, their origin in what appear to be inherited characteristics. Anybody?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat's in it for ME?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhenever I read about prisoner's dilemma games, they are always about penny ante stakes.
Do I want to look and (more importantly) feel like a scoundrel to gain 7 $, not likely! But, if Bill Gates put up 100000$, I might feel differently!
I am not surprised that we tend to cooperate, that is most likely how we as a species managed to survive and dominate the world, and our instincts lead us towards cooperation for the benefit of all.
Still, if the personal benefit is much higher than the benefit of being "good", I think the outcome might well be more selfcentered.
I try to be a decent person, helping out people
Gahh, forget the last sentence, it might be true, but t'was on another tack, which I dropped, way to much risk of osteoarthritis by patting myself on the back:-(
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting - and important - point!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I was studying social psychology, many years ago, there was a social psychology joke:
"What's difference between a psychologist and a social psychologist?"
"One studies rats in mazes, the other studies American students in mazes"
Of course, it has widened a little, in scope and in geography, but it was close to the bone in those days.
Amazing that this article can come to such a ridiculously contradictory conclusion to the studies it mentions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst of all what is done quickly is NOT what is most likely to be human nature. Setting a default response could conceivably be done at any time. And amazingly the article ignores the fact that the final study they mention implies just that: the default response is modified based on the subject's experience with cooperation. If cooperation is generally good for them they make it the default otherwise they don't.
What is the reason for completely ignoring the actual studies and then asserting they mean we are good after all? The studies imply that people prefer what they think is best for them 100% of the time. It just so happens that some of the time their ability to think through how much something helps them is limited by time and they go with their default: (a default that given the last study was not of their nature but rather learned for when they have no time to think).
When ever I hear evolutionary arguments applied, they typically don't account very well for theory and emphasize ideas more consistent with eugenics. If anything about human nature has emerged through history it's clear we have a need to live with and cooperate with others to survive and that will always involve some element of compromise to gain any advantage. There's also nothing about selfishness that negates the possibility of finding mutually beneficial solutions. I would be more suspicious of the cultural values and economic motivations of scientists that produce "survival of the fittest" theories. (P.S. No where in the Origins of Species does Darwin ever say, "survival of the fittest").
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsidering your study suggests our overwhelming impulse is to cooperate, shouldn’t we replace our systems based on selfishness with cooperative systems and free ourselves from painful decisions & conflicts?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMight conflicting vectors of selfishness only remain because of promotions by the fewer prideful winners of power, not by the more numerous humble reflectors who already concluded (appearing to act impulsively) that cooperation is best for our species, including self?
Psychological studies are an interesting endeavor because they don't actually depict what people actually do when asked to donate time or money for a worthy cause be it helping one or many.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn rapid fire emergencies it's natural to offer immediate assistance, yet single need cases or volunteer efforts it's different.
In my ten years of endeavors in working with four community groups in working toward improving the local environment to collecting donations for the needy I discovered there are some good folks who will offer time, or money or both, yet overall American's are a poor example of goodness in action.
Our overall attitude in America is that we are valued by a measure that we are what we own and it's clear, aid to many in serious need is very poor, unless it's disaster related.
But if we used a benchmark in asking - Am I my brothers keeper, the majority would respond in thought that it's not up to me and someone else will fill the gap.
And the proof of such could not be more apparent than taking note of funders in political endeavors who are extremely wealthy. They'll offer as much as $35 million dollars to a candidate used primarily for TV ads, but something far less to charities such as food banks for those who have an true need.
Though looking at global suicides at present it's also a good measure of demonstrating that when a need is known and known by people who are direct, they're failing time and again and it makes a grand statement as to how we're failing humanity on a broader scale than has been known in recent times.
Perhaps one should remember, actions speak louder than words and in a study where words are offered, it's not the same as action.
As some have mentioned, I also find the research presented in the article not decisive one way or the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOverall, I doubt that thinking along the lines of "do we help others because of the advantages it brings us" or "do we help others no matter how it affects us" is meaningful. But I do believe we are basically a very cooperative species, that the evidence for that is overwhelming.
Put another way, I think we help each other because of the advantages that brings to each other --that's social-- and it doesn't reduce to "am I doing it for myself or am I doing it for others".
Like someone else here at Scientific American suggested:"...cooperation is our first instinct simply because it is rewarded?" The answer has two levels of response, subconscious and conscious. The reward is ultimately the biological survival of the human species whether intuitively achieved at the subconscious level or as the result of a conscious choice from probable alternatives of adaptive decisions as detailed elsewhere*. Even subhuman species would rather cooperate for their biological survival as a species is at stake and pressed from both inheritance and environmentally acquired sources of information. We need to go beyond the biological and concentrate on the psycho-social aspect of 'existential living' to solve the riddle poised by the author, the choice between the intuitive reflex or the consciously controlled reflective behavior. A cursory reading of the expressed 'learned' responses shows that a majority intuitively agrees with the Hobbes' Leviathan interpretation where psycho-social pressures are in controlto guarantee the biological survival of the human species interpretation, what we have called the biopsychosocial (BPS) equilibrium in behalf of biological species survival exhibited as well by other subhuman mammals. But a careful dispassionate reflection on Hobbes formulation reveals it as an update of the Augustinian formulation representing 'divinity' to stand for the unknown explanation for real and relevant metaphysical correlates beyond human species sense-phenomenal and brain combinatorial capacities to resolve or even represent as symbolic or sentential logic for analysis. As elsewhere detailed* the erstwhile Augustinian 'divinity model' evolves and becomes the modern epistemological metaphysical logic model representation carefully rooted in falsifiable and logic parameters of probability of their occurrence as supported by quantum theoretical arguments as explained elsewhere.* At the mesoscopic, real time existential reality of our 4-d space-time experience, we have to reckon with the Ortega y Gasset's dictum "..man is him and his circumstances" justifying his existential need to substitute the Hobbes model for an intelligible theological substitute according to his genetic and acquired environmental circumstances. And perhaps more relevant, how do we know that the psychosocial element (psychic happiness and social acceptance)is controlling the responses of the participants in the study, consciously or not?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this*See:
http://delasierra-sheffer.net/ID6-Internet-wz/Treatise%20final%20version.pdf
Interesting, and it corroborates the research I did at U of Colorado and Ohio State into the topic of "panic" when I wrote a book in the late 70s on the reaction of most persons to emergencies. Most psychologists and sociologists believed it depends on the speed of onset of a life-threatening emergency. Paralysis & occasional selfishness were more likely in sudden crises like historical flash floods in river valleys, and fires where victims can't escape through locked doors, but even then--as in the infamous Triangle Factory fire--there was a notable amount of altruism, entering areas of extreme danger and self-sacrifice. When a potentially fatal emergency develops over several minutes or a few hours--like the Titanic and the Japanese tsunami and radiation crises--altruism seems to prevail among most people, and it includes helping anyone, including strangers. A potentially mass-fatal long range emergency occurring more slowly--like the ecological failure crises which were my topic--can spur many to establish altruistic plans for helping great numbers, but it can also lull many into inaction and paralysis. However, panic is rare and altruism seems to prevail in nearly all life-threatening situations except (perhaps) in the long-range ones which lack immediacy. I'm long retired and unfamiliar with recent research. Any comments?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just sent a comment based on my study of panic and altruism in emergencies a few years ago. Why did it disappear? This happens with SciAm comments, even those well under the word limit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKeep in mind some people want everyone else to think that most people are good, so they can rip them off more easily.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe topic relates to my idea from years back of a game that would better simulate real life, encouraging people to be good by being able to play for either personal points or community points, zero-sum or non-zero-sum. Personal points would mean you can play the game more effectively, but too few community points would mean a cascading loss for all. Getting a lot of community points result in a cascading win for all. It could also include immediate or distant gains or losses. Medium community points mean the game goes on forever. If you're a game designer, feel free to run with it.
In my neuropsychological research with 5000 patients I find that 'intuition' is a function of a competitively established greater competence in the right cerebral hemisphere. In all respects studied, the right hemisphere tends to be more tribally oriented than the left thereby reinforcing the concept of 'in-group' cooperation - it is also faster in decision making than the more analytically predisposed left hemisphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood or evil? Trials are now well underway to test for the potential for good within the human condition, by providing the choice and opportunity to discover new moral insight. They are open to all interested parties. The only prerequisite is having the critical self scrutiny to question the limits of human nature itself. More at http://www.energon.org.uk
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt looks like Catholic church, Hobbes and Freud was wrong since their understanding of human nature was flawed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe results of these and other studies clearly indicate our intuitive behavior, developed from our social experiences, is to cooperate. I've seen results from toddler studies indicating even at that young age cooperative behavior is already apparent. You would think since this is a learned behavior it is likely that someone born into a minimally social environment will have minimal cooperative instincts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne area where I disagree with the article is cooperation itself should not be automatically judged as "good". If a person cooperates with a group by harming others then certainly those being harmed will not see the cooperation as good. History and current events have numerous examples of people cooperating with "evil".
Also, I hope these results do not lead people to think intuition is good and reason is bad. In reality we need to go with our intuition but learn to identify when addition thinking and consideration is needed. In this way we learn how to be cooperative without being easily manipulated. We work together but also bring up concerns and have an expectation such concerns are addressed. We learn to identify situations where harm to us or others is possible so we stop to think before acting.
Lastly, I think we should stop trying to put value judgements on humanity. We do have a desire to have simple explanations for complex systems to make it easier for us to understand our world. However, human behavior is messy and bound by time and context. Our behavior can be "good" one second and "bad" the next or both at the same time. Instead, lets focus on valuing both cooperation and individual contributions while making positive contributions to making the world a better place.