ALTRUISM: CHARACTERISTICS, THEORIES AND ADVANTAGES - GEOGRAFÍA - 2024

The altruism is the principle or practice of worrying about the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue of many cultures and a central concept of several religions.

The word was coined by the French philosopher Aguste Comte as altruism, as the antonym of egoism. He derived it from the Italian word altrui, derived from the Latin alteri, which means "other people."

Being altruistic means showing behaviors that do not benefit yourself, only other people. For example; volunteering teaching children, helping older people take care of themselves, helping a family member to get ahead.

However, there is an open debate about whether altruistic behaviors are beneficial for the individual who carries them out, since the person may be happier and feel more fulfilled when performing these types of behaviors.

In addition, important authors such as Richard Dawkins propose that these behaviors, which do not seem to have benefits for the person who carries them out, if they are beneficial if we think in terms of species and much more if they are carried out with people from the same family, since by helping someone else in your family you are helping your own genes.

Psychological theories of altruism

Behaviorist current

According to this current, all prosocial behaviors (within which altruism is found) are learned through mechanisms of classical and operant conditioning.

This means that altruistic individuals are so because, on previous occasions, when they have performed altruistic behavior they have been reinforced, either by other people or by himself. I think it will be better understood with the following example:

Juan helps his little sister do her homework one day and his parents thank him, so Juan will continue helping his sister as long as his parents thank him.

According to the first definition of altruism this would be paradoxical since it is assumed that altruistic people do not receive any benefits. But, as I have explained above, it seems that this is not entirely true.

According to Bandura's theory, the reinforcers that modulate behavior (in this case the altruistic one) would start out being external, that is, provided by other people and, as the person grows, the internal reinforcers, controlled by she herself.

This would occur in the following way, following the previous example: Juan grows up, and his parents no longer thank him for helping his sister with homework, but he continues to help her because when he does, he feels smarter and likes to see his sister happy.

Another form of learning, included within this stream, is vicarious or observational learning. That is, the person would learn by observing the behavior of other people and the consequences it has. According to Bandura, a large part of social behaviors are learned in this way.

A model that falls within this stream is the Pilavin and Dovidio Reward Cost and Activation Model. According to this model, people carry out behaviors that maximize their rewards and minimize their costs. That is, the person will be altruistic if she thinks that the benefits of helping will be greater than those of doing nothing.

This model starts from the premise that for a person to help, they have to feel activated (in an unpleasant way) when they know that another person has a problem. So it will help to not feel that activation anymore.

The authors who developed this model attempted to predict whether a person would engage in altruistic behavior and, if so, how. To do this, they developed the following table:

Cognitive current

The cognitive current approaches altruism from a moral perspective. So the person will carry out altruistic behavior depending on whether he perceives that this behavior will be morally correct or not.

A model that could be included both within this current and in the behaviorist one is that of Daniel Batson, who maintains that the empathy we feel towards the other person is one of the main motivations we have to carry out altruistic behaviors.

If we have a good relationship with the person who needs help, we will feel empathy and, therefore, we will feel bad when seeing the other person suffer. So we would help the person not to feel bad about ourselves.

This model is supported by studies that have found that babies begin to engage in prosocial behaviors around 2 years of age, the same age at which they develop empathy.

Kohlberg made a model with which he intended to relate behaviors to the level of morality of the person. According to this model there are three moral levels (Preconventional, Conventional and Postconventional) and according to the level of morality in which the person is, they will carry out altruistic behaviors for some reasons or others.

In the following table you can see the reasons that would lead people to be altruistic depending on their level of morality.

In the following video , Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Reasoning are explained very well .

But if altruism follows these rules, why is the same person sometimes altruistic and sometimes not? Researchers Bibb Latané and John Darley asked themselves this same question and developed a decision model about emergency intervention.

According to this model, the decision-making on whether or not to help a person follows 5 steps:

1. Recognize that something is happening.
2. Recognize that the situation requires someone to help.
3. Take responsibility to help.
4. Consider yourself capable of helping
5. Decide what is the best way to help.

Perhaps one of the most studied steps is 3, since the spectator effect can occur here. According to this effect, as witnesses increase, the perception of responsibility decreases (diffusion of responsibility).

Psychoanalytic current

In traditional psychoanalytic theories, altruistic contucts as such do not appear. According to this current, the human being performs acts motivated by instincts and desires from birth and it will be society that will repress and control these impulses.

Later the person will internalize social norms and form their own morality and participate in reprimanding and controlling the actions of other people.

According to this current, people would perform altruistic behaviors to avoid the feeling of guilt, because they have a self-destructive tendency or to resolve internal conflicts.

Sociological theories of altruism

Social norms

Many times we carry out altruistic acts without even having thought about it before, without calculating or planning it. We do it simply because we believe that it must be done.

These altruistic behaviors are motivated by social norms. These rules tell us what we are expected to do, the expectations that society has.

The most important social norms in the study of altruistic behavior are the norm of reciprocity and that of social responsibility.

• Reciprocity rule. According to this rule, when we help a person we hope that in the future they will also help us when we need help, or at least not harm us.
• Social responsibility standard. This rule tells us that we must help people who need help and deserve it, that is, we help out of obligation, even if it is not profitable to help. But we don't help everyone, only those people who we perceive deserve to be helped, not those who we think have looked for the problem themselves.

Theories about the evolutionary sense of altruism

Evolutionary Psychology

There are numerous studies that have found altruistic behaviors in various animal species.

In a study with chimpanzees, it was shown that they displayed altruistic behavior if another chimpanzee asked for their help.

The chimps were placed in separate rooms connected by a hole, each one was given a different test to get their food. To complete the test, each chimpanzee needed the tool that the other chimpanzee had.

The researchers found that if one chimpanzee asked the other for the tool, the other would help, even if the other chimpanzee had nothing to give him.

You might think that chimpanzees are altruistic because they are very close (genetically speaking) to the human species, but cases of altruistic behavior have been observed in other species that are further away from man, here are some examples:

• There are cases of female dogs that have adopted puppies of other species (cats, squirrels…) and have raised them as if they were their own puppies.
• Bats share their food with other bats if they have not found food.
• Walruses and penguins adopt young of the same species that have been orphaned, especially if they have lost their own young.

Protection of genes

As I mentioned earlier, Richar Dawkin argues in his book The Selfish Gene that the main reason individuals are altruistic is because genes are selfish.

This theory is based on the fact that we share a large amount of genetic material with individuals of other species, and even more with individuals of our species and our own family. So by helping other people we are really making sure that the genes we share are maintained and spread through reproduction.

This would be a way of explaining why we are more altruistic with people from our family or similar to us (from our country, from our ethnic group…). And that individuals with greater reproductive potential are helped first (first children and women, then adult men).

Neurobiological theories

Researchers Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman discovered the neural bases of altruistic behavior. In one study, volunteers were given a functional MRI while they carried out a series of behaviors such as donating money (at no cost to the volunteer), refusing to donate money (at no cost to the volunteer), donating part of their own money (at a cost to the volunteer) and refuse to donate part of their own money (at a cost to the volunteer).

The researchers found that, while the reinforcement system (limbic system) was activated whenever the person donated money, another zone was activated specifically when the fact of donating had a cost for the volunteer.

This zone is the anterior area of ​​the prefrontal cortex and appears to be crucial for altruistic behaviors.

Advantages of being altruistic

Many studies have shown that people who regularly practice altruistic behaviors, such as volunteers, have higher indicators of happiness and well-being, both in the present and in the future.

For example, in a study that compared adults who had volunteered when they were young and others who had not, it was found that the former showed higher indicators in terms of satisfaction with their life and lower indicators of depression, anxiety and somatization (suffer physical symptoms due to psychological problems).

Other studies have also found that altruistic people have fewer physical problems and are longer-lived.

So now you know, being altruistic improves both your life and that of others.

References

1. Field, AJ (2004). Reciprocal Altruism, Norms, and Evolutionary Game Theory. In AJ Field, Economics, Cognition and Society: Altruistically Inclined?: The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, and the Origins of Reciprocity (pp. 121-157). Ann Arbor, MI, USA: University of Michigan Press.
2. Gamboa, J. (2008). Altruism. Lime.
3. Moll, J., Kruege, F., Zah, R., Pardin, M., Oliveira-Souza, R., & Grafman, J. (2006). Human fronto – mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation. PNAS, 15623-15628.
4. Walrath, R. (2011). Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development. Encyclopedia of Child Behavior and Development, 859-860. doi: 10.1007 / 978-0-387-79061-9_1595
5. Yamamoto, S., Humle, T., & Tanaka, M. (2009). Chimpanzees Help Each Other upon Request. PLoS ONE. doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0007416