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Altruism is when we act to promote someone else’s welfare, even at a risk or cost to ourselves. Though some believe that humans are fundamentally self-interested, recent research suggests otherwise: Studies have found that people’s first impulse is to cooperate rather than compete; that toddlers spontaneously help people in need out of a genuine concern for their welfare; and that ...
But in his new book Does Altruism Exist?, David Sloan Wilson says these arguments miss the point.Wilson, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University, argues that what really drives altruism in society is not the intention of the person, good or bad, but the altruistic act itself and its effect on the community—in other words, its evolutionary function.
In his book The Altruistic Brain, Pfaff argues that findings from neuroscience and behavioral science point to a new model of altruism—one that sees altruism not as a response to moral authority, but as an instinct that is hard-wired into our brains. In other words, we are “born to be good,” he argues: We have the brain circuitry that ...
The Interaction of Person and Situation in Prosocial Behavior. Brent Simpson University of South Carolina. and. Robb Willer University of California, Berkeley. December 2007. Total Word Count = 8,600. * This research was supported by grants SES-0551895 and SES-0647169 from the National Science Foundation.
Psychologist Sebastian Markett, a study co-author also at the University of Bonn, says the results show how a single genetic mutation can have a large effect on our behavior. But he believes science still has much to learn about the genetics of altruism. “There must be more genes which influence altruistic behavior whose association has not ...
Can You Have Too Much Altruism? Roshi Joan Halifax discusses her new book about the edges of compassion. Roshi Joan Halifax is an esteemed writer, spiritual teacher, founder of Upaya Zen Center and the Nomads Clinic in Nepal’s Himalayas—and she’s spent decades researching the intersection of mind and body through the lens of Buddhism ...
Altruism, Heroism, and the Psychology of the Bystander. Panelists including legendary psychologist Philip Zimbardo and Katrina photographer Ted Jackson discuss the bystander effect, altruism, and the potential for heroism in all of us. By Jason Marsh | March 2007 | TRT 1:19:15. Panelists including legendary psychologist Philip Zimbardo and ...
The results suggest the power that subtle social cues can have on our behavior, specifically on our propensity for altruism. The researchers speculate that, in this case, subconsciously evoking the idea of love also subconsciously evoked ideas about gender roles. So when the men were confronted with a situation that called on them to be ...
The term “empathy” is used to describe a wide range of experiences. Emotion researchers generally define empathy as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. Contemporary researchers often differentiate between two types of empathy: “Affective empathy” refers to the sensations ...
Compassion literally means “to suffer together.” Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. Compassion is not the same as empathy or altruism, though the concepts are related. While empathy refers more generally to our ability to take the perspective of and ...