{"id":41,"date":"2020-10-03T02:46:32","date_gmt":"2020-10-03T02:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/?p=41"},"modified":"2020-10-03T02:46:32","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T02:46:32","slug":"altruism-that-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/2020\/10\/03\/altruism-that-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Altruism that Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

How can a person form meaningful relationships without empathy? In the lecturette, we learn that empathy causes prosocial behaviors such as compassion, cooperation, trust, support, and altruism due to its underlying mechanism of affiliating with others (Batson, 1991; de Waal, 2008). Empathy inspires so many behaviors critical to meaningful relationships. Humans thrive off of forming and maintaining relationships, and empathy plays a huge role in facilitating these processes (Pickett et al., 2004). Without empathy, the world would be a much colder place. How empathy intertwines with altruism, particularly sparks my interest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Altruism is such a tricky subject. A lot of people think that they are being altruistic when they make a \u201cselfless\u201d decision, but are they really being truly altruistic? In terms of empathy-driven altruism, does it inherently include \u201cselfish\u201d aspects?<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, in a world of personal relationships and everyday encounters, I don\u2019t believe that pure altruism exists. There is always an underlying benefit – big or small – for the person performing the altruistic act despite what one\u2019s motivation for the act is. de Waal (2008) explains that empathy-driven altruism benefits the actor by giving him\/her \u201can emotional stake in the recipient\u2019s well-being\u201d (pg. 281). No matter what empathy-driven altruistic act you are performing, you are being offered an emotional stake, which is a benefit in and of itself. The opportunity to have an emotional stake in someone\u2019s well-being is a privilege that we as humans gain satisfaction from, as it allows us to richen our relationship with another person. And, as we know, it is important for humans to form and maintain relationships (Pickett et al., 2004).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I like to think of myself as someone whose empathy-driven altruism is pure. However, when I pause for a moment, I realize that when I help a friend out, send someone a care package, or comfort a friend, I tend to feel happier after the act. No, I don\u2019t only engage in these behaviors expecting something in return or only because I will feel happier afterward. But, when all is said and done, my action makes me feel good and sometimes takes a weight off of my shoulder. Even though I didn\u2019t go into the act with the intention of helping myself, I feel satisfied and happier internally. Our empathy towards a person carries us to follow through with a task regardless of what we do or do not gain. But, at the end of the day, we\u2019re gaining a feeling of internal happiness; we\u2019re feeling good about ourselves. This side effect doesn\u2019t take away from the original intention of my altruistic act, but it suggests that altruism may not be strictly pure.<\/span><\/p>\n

The bottom line is that \u201cit is futile to try to extract the self from the process\u201d of altruism (de Waal, 2008, pg. 292). It is too hard to take yourself out of the equation, but that\u2019s okay. Although helping another person generally makes you feel good, it doesn\u2019t mean that you\u2019re doing it out of selfishness. Essentially, you don\u2019t know exactly how something will make you feel until you do it. So, if that means you perform an empathy-driven altruistic act and end up feeling amazing because of it, it doesn\u2019t make it morally wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether you think altruism can be pure or it inherently always includes a selfish motive, we all need to continue to perform altruistic behaviors. The gain that you receive from an altruistic act doesn\u2019t outweigh the good deed that you did for another. Small acts of empathy-driven altruism make the world a warmer, happier place.<\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/gph.is\/2Ft5blW<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Despite our discussion on the impossibility of pure altruism, there may be some cases for when altruism is driven more by selflessness, and that is in activism. De Waal describes empathy-driven altruism as one that \u201cboil[s] down to helping oneself\u201d because we are using \u201cemotional identification\u201d to essentially put ourselves in the shoes of the person we\u2019re helping, feeling what they\u2019re feeling, and thus alleviating our own discomfort when we help them (292). For example, if I decide to volunteer at a soup kitchen, my encounter with a hungry citizen might make me feel upset or uncomfortable as I imagine what it must be like to be hungry and homeless. But, as I start to serve this person food and talk to them, I may feel satisfied and happier because I had played a role in making their day a bit better. Thus, I\u2019ve not only alleviated a bit of their hardship for that day, but I\u2019ve also alleviated my own discomfort that stemmed from empathizing with their struggle. As de Waal notes, this emotional stake that I have in their well-being is the privilege that makes altruism seem a more selfish desire than a selfless one. So, when does a good deed like this go beyond our connectedness with an individual and towards a purely selfless goal?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I define true activism as commitment to a cause, a movement, or the organization of people towards a common goal. Activism involves a continuous understanding of the local and underlying causes of a social issue and consequent devotion to organizing people and resources around the cause. Let\u2019s revisit the example of volunteering at a soup kitchen. What if after I\u2019ve volunteered at this soup kitchen, I decided to dedicate everyday to expanding awareness around homelessness, organizing the logistical work at this soup kitchen, and dedicating my life\u2019s work to eradicating the housing crisis happening in America. My motivation goes beyond serving the few people I worked with at the soup kitchen and more towards fighting a system that is broken. One piece of evidence that may account for this shift from selfish to selfless motivations is a change in attitude from the results of our work. When we engage in public service, we may feel satisfied because we see immediate results: the person we are helping is happier and thus we are happier. But, with activism, as many activists may relate to, the work is exhausting, because we realize that expansive change\u2013the change that would remedy a broken system\u2013is nowhere near. In fact, this work can often lead people to despair, sharing the pain and hopelessness that oppressed and marginalized communities feel as our country seems to constantly ignore our cries for justice, progress, and equity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, on the flip side, some may say this still has selfish motivations, because we are still working from a place of empathy for our community or even for the hungry citizen who inspired us in the first place. Thus, our work in organizing and advocating for our community is still giving us a sense of purpose that is benefiting our own self-actualization. So, can altruism ever, truly, not benefit ourselves? Probably not. But, I do think that there are levels of altruism and a spectrum of selfish and selfless motivation when we engage in it. Making a donation or sharing a post on Instagram, to me, is less altruistic than organizing a protest, fundraising for mutual aid funds, or even just showing up to protests everyday. Yes, activism is tiring and it feels like it won\u2019t reap results because progress in our country is slow, bureaucratic, and broken. But, when we choose to keep fighting, losing, and fighting again, I believe that we\u2019re taking steps towards <\/span>altruism that actually matters.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Camerin Rawson & Anna Pacheco<\/i><\/p>\n

References<\/span><\/p>\n

Batson CD. 1991. <\/span>The Altruism Question: Toward a Social-Psychological Answer. <\/span><\/i>Hillsdale, NJ:<\/span>Erlbaum.<\/span><\/p>\n

de Waal, F. B. M. (2008). Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: The Evolution of Empathy.\u00a0<\/span>Annual Review of Psychology<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>59<\/span><\/i>, 279\u2013300.<\/span><\/p>\n

GIPHY. (n.d.). <\/span>Be Kind Animation GIF by Red & Howling – Find & Share on GIPHY<\/span><\/i>. Retrieved\u00a0<\/span>October 2, 2020, from https:\/\/giphy.com\/gifs\/redandhowling-animation-cute-3o6nV9Gk LcWIEhR6z6.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pickett, C. L., Gardner, W. L., & Knowles, M. (2004). Getting a Cue: The Need to Belong and\u00a0<\/span>Enhanced Sensitivity to Social Cues. <\/span>Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>30<\/span><\/i>(9), 1095\u20131107.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How can a person form meaningful relationships without empathy? In the lecturette, we learn that empathy causes prosocial behaviors such as compassion, cooperation, trust, support, and altruism due to its underlying mechanism of affiliating with others (Batson, 1991; de Waal, 2008). Empathy inspires so many behaviors critical to meaningful relationships. Humans thrive off of forming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9876,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/socialconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}