Altruism

I received this comment and thought I would share my response as I feel it can illuminate some of the issues presently affecting our thought.

Comment:
Your ideas about charity and communism are nice, however, as a psychology student, I'm a little surprised. Evolutionary psychology explains away what we view as altruism as evolutionarily advantageous. This is why communism doesn't work, man is not forward thinking enough to realize the benefits of true collectivism and will always try to take advantage of the siutation.

My response:
First let me discuss the merit of evolutionary psychology. I feel I share the view of many psychologists, when I say that evolutionary psychology, while informative, is not empirically testable today, which greatly weakens the arguments. To say something was advantageous a million years ago does not mean it is advantageous today, especially as our social environments are different. One way to create a strong argument for a specific behavior is to utilize different lines of evidence, thus creating a stronger claim. (Evolutionary evidence combined with biological evidence and social evidence paints a clearer picture than any of the individual lines alone.)

That being said, let me address your claim that there is no evidence for altruism as advantageous. First, studies of birds have shown that when a predator is attacking it is advantageous for a bird to call out to the others, even though it puts itself in more danger in the present situation. This is the idea of reciprocity.

One may argue that reciprocity is simple selfish behavior as well, but here they are mistaken. It is a collective behavior for the greater good of all. The bird who makes the warning call does so, because in the long run he will also receive warning calls. So the sacrifice an individual bird makes at one specific time actually pales in comparison to the benefit that bird will take in the long run, as it benefits from other warning calls.

Furthermore, biological evidence supports the argument that altruism is a heritable trait. In a study comparing identical twins to fraternal twins, Rushton et al. demonstrated that identical twins had a higher correlation of altruism (r = .50 males, .54 females) than fraternal twins (r = .23 males, . 26 females, .28 male/female pairs). This study controls for environmental cues as best any study can by comparing sets of twins. The fact that identical twins showed higher correlated behavior than fraternal gives further evidence that altruism is indeed heritable. Furthermore aggressiveness was correlated higher in identical than fraternal twins. For identical males the correlation was r = .33 and for fraternal males was less than half, r = .16. A common argument against the concept of altruism is that has no genetic foundation in the claims. Aggressiveness however can be accepted as genetic because it helped human ancestors survive in nature. This research does not claim, evolutionarily that altruism is more or less helpful than aggression and other ego related behavior. What it does demonstrate is that altruism is not simply a socialized behavior based on an individual’s guilt and distress due to situational and social norms. But in fact it shows altruism has a genetic base, and therefore influences human behavior.

I would also like to point out that even though we tend to explain much of human behavior in terms of self-interest this may actually be a self-fulfilling norm. Please read the Dale Miller's Norm of Self-interest, to which there is a link under the original article.

Lastly, I would like to pose a hypothetical to you. If a society was collective enough that free-riders and highly selfish people were ostracized, how much anti-group behavior would you expect? Much of our behavior is shaped by our relationships with others and whether or not our peers condone or reject the behavior. If this were true one could expect a similar pattern from humans, as was demonstrated by birds. This is exactly the case.

Fehr and Gachter performed a study with 240 college-age students and demonstrated altruistic punishment improves group performance, even when the long-term benefit for punishing an individual is zero. Half of the 240 students performed six punishment trials, followed by six no-punishment trials, while the other half performed the reverse order. Groups of four were formed and each participant received 20 monetary units (MU). With these MUs, a player could put it toward the benefit of the group for a return of 0.4MU, or keep the money. If each group member invested all of his MUs, the total reward per person was 12 MU (total 32 MU). Each investor was unaware of his or her group members. The participants submitted their decision simultaneously, then were informed of their group mates’ decisions. For the punishment condition, a player could decide to punish a group member based on a ten point scale. Each point cost the punisher 1 MU and the receiver 3 MU. To ensure the punishment was truly altruistic, group members changed in each trial, and no participants were with a similar group member more than once. So, a player who chooses to punish is not rewarded in any way. Punishment can only help future group members of the punished individual. So by individual sacrifice in the short-term, the group is helped in the long term. (This seems the opposite of what we see in America today: competition and little sacrifice in the short-run, and the long-term effects are disastrous. One example is our impact on the environment. Small sacrifices in the short-term, rather than no sacrifices, would make the job of reducing our impact on the climate much easier today)

I would like to conclude by saying I am glad you commented. I hope I have shed light on the lay presumptions of altruistic behavior and hope that we can alter the norm of self-interest. Recall, it is not that everyone must always sacrifice him/herself for the greater good. Only that we all must alter our behavior enough so that as a group we will all mutually benefit, more so, than if we are still constantly competing and undercutting one another. And remember your peers note how you act, so set a good example. Not only will you get in the habit of helping, but so may your friends too.