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Are human beings inherently generous or selfish? A new study finds that when people have to make the choice instantly, their first impulse is cooperation—which indicates that generosity is innate. Only when they have more time to consider their choice do they behave more selfishly. The research is in the journal Nature. [David G. Rand, Joshua D. Greene and Martin A. Nowak, Spontaneous giving and calculated greed]
In the study, researchers ran several tests in which each participant in a small group received money and then had to decide how much to invest in a shared group fund. The more time people had to choose how much to donate, the less they gave. Subjects told they had to make a decision within 10 seconds even gave more than others who were told they had to wait the same 10 seconds before deciding.
Because snap decisions are based on intuition, the researchers concluded that generosity is the intuitive human response. But given time, we can reason our way to a more selfish decision.
This intuitive cooperation might be either genetically hardwired, or a cultural construct. Either way, next time I run a fundraiser, I'm bringing a stopwatch.
—Sophie Bushwick
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
[Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.]
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9 Comments
Add CommentSophie, my thinking tells me it is a cultural thing. Intuition too is a part of mental development, controlled largely by your upbringing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the multicultural society I have lived and worked in, I know people whose first instinct would be to grab every whatever for themselves.
Clever experiment now try it with different cultural & religious (include atheists & agnostics separate from each other) groups.
Hi, if you read a paper at link, you will see that they conducted at least the first experiment with 212 subjects from around the world using the online labour market Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismy first thought is to associate it with the individuation of increasing affluence - the more isolated we become (don't need to ask for help) - the more we likely tend to selfish behaviors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgood point about cultural differences tho' - I remember an airline departure gate at Beijing - an elderly Australian woman, arriving at the door the same time as an older Chinese woman, naturally graciously stepped back to kindly let the other woman go first - in no more than 3 seconds, not one, but two!, three!, four!, five! Chinese people slipped through in front of the polite Australian woman - standing right behind her, I heard her intake of breath and quiet 'my goodness me!' - apart from not needing to go back to Beijing, my takeaway is that in a everyone-for-themselves society, people learn to grab what they can, and quickly.
Interesting. Anecdotally, I separate "good" from "bad people by their first impulse upon seeing someone else in distress; do they want to help or take advantage? Ultimobo's airport example introduces the subtlety of whether the "taking advantage" costs the other anything, and how much... a place or five in line to go through a door is a small cost easily borne, especially when one appears to be voluntarily bearing that cost. On the other hand, in a very crowded social setting it is often better form to just get through the door as quickly as possible in order to make room for others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a ridiculous study. First the premise that selfish is wrong is itself wrong. Everyone has to eat, breathe and other needs that must be met to survive. Even the most selfless person usually does it for the selfish reason of their own personal emotional gratification.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen we get to what culture we are doing the test in. Socialism, tyrannies, communism, theocracies all create conditions that cause people to be desperate to survive. Either the need to have food for example is so great that they must do anything to keep and protect what they have to live, socialism breeds this kind of mentality, which then becomes entitlement. Or the need to avoid being killed, such as theocracies and tyrannies where going against the ruling class results in punishment or death.
Of course within every culture are varying levels of socialism and freedom. It is the degree to which a person feels he must protect what he has because it could be taken or it could be the last of it when it is taken that probably is the biggest factor in this ridiculous measure.
At the same time we don't know the rules under which the tests occurred. Split second decisions with little information are riskier and especially with fake money in the test people tend to take more risks. Like playing online poker with fake money. When the game is not real, they will make the wildest bets. Then assume the participants in the test realized this and tried hard, still that risk factor is there. Give someone a few seconds to think about it, then they might consider exactly what this money is going for. Is it an investment? Are they just helping someone in need? Is that person in need really a drug addicted washout and with a few seconds of thought, why would giving that person money be helpful?
Basically, selfishness and charity are not really opposites of a coin of good vs evil. Neither one are inherently good or bad and either can be good or bad. So these really are not good measures for human beings at least not this test.
We already know charity is a natural state because if it was not, men would not stick around to raise children and neither would women. BUT selfishness is also equally natural because surviving itself is selfish and from what I can tell, most people do in fact want to survive.
A good reading about the research at this web page:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/hu-tkt091712.php
Were they traveling together?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy wouldn't generosity enable the species? Is that not our first instinct?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou assume that the study says either of the concept was good/bad. It didn't. Your discussion is reminiscent of something from sociology 101, and is too broad for a serious scientific discussion. Too much assumptions and pseudo-arguments.
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