Psychology Extended Essay Draft Four:
To What Extent Does Psychology Provide Valid Explanations for Altruistic Behaviours?
Tracy Yang
Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School
International Baccalaureate Programme
Ms. Nicholson
May 2011
Word Count: 3874
Abstract
This essay investigated the research question: to what extent does psychology provide valid explanations for altruistic behaviours? It is a type of behaviour worthy of investigation as it contradicts bystanderism, and triggers interests in researchers from different areas due to its intriguing action where people risk their own lives to help other people or even strangers.
The investigation looked upon explanations for altruistic behaviours from three different psychological perspectives: biological, cognitive, and sociocultural. Biological explanations focused on the evolutionary theories and mainly explained altruistic behaviours in animals. Darwin (1859) suggested the kin selection theory in which provided research foundation for numerous future investigations whereas Trivers (1971) proposed reciprocal altruism theory that explained the altruistic behaviours between strangers. Cognitive explanations established relationship between cognition and altruistic behaviours. Schaller and Cialdini (1988) established the negative-state relief model, which suggested that negative emotions or stress trigger altruistic behaviours. Haidt (2005) investigated morality and found that morality has developmental influence on altruistic behaviours. Sociocultural explanations took religions and cultural factors into consideration. Latané & Darley (1968) showed that people are more likely to display altruistic behaviours when less people are present.
Though weaknesses did influence the validity of the explanations such as over-generalization and the lack of cause-and-effect relationship, integration of all explanations is sufficient to answer the research question. In addition, the findings from the experiments and models could apply to different fields such as clinical psychology to create therapies that could enhance our health through the counseling on altruistic behaviours.
Word count: 248
To What Extent Does Psychology Provide Valid Explanations for Altruistic Behaviours?
Table of Contents
1.I N T R O D U C T I O N.................................................................................................................p. 4
2.D I S C U S S I O N......................................................................................................................p. 5 2.1.B I O L O G I C A L E X P L A N A T I O N S.....................................................................................p. 5
Kin Selection...........................................................................................................p. 5
Selfish Gene Theory................................................................................................p. 5
Group Selection.......................................................................................................p. 6
Reciprocal Altruism Theory....................................................................................p. 6
Mirror neurons / Health...........................................................................................p. 8 2.2.C O G N I T I V E E X P L A N A T I O N S.......................................................................................p. 9
Negative-state relief model............................................................................,.........p. 9
Arousal cost-reward model......................................................................................p. 10 Morality....................................................................................................................p. 11 Empathy-altruism model..........................................................................................p. 12 2.3.S O C I O C U L T U R A L E X P L A N A T I O N S...............................................................................p. 13
Religion.....................................................................................................................p.13 Bystanderism........................................................................................................... p. 14 Social norms/Culture................................................................................................p. 15
3.C O N C L U S I O N.....................................................................................................................p. 16
4.R E F E R E N C E S.....................................................................................................................p. 18
1. INTRODUCTION
The topic of altruism has sparked off numerous researches in psychology due to its peculiar action in which an individual puts his or her life in danger in order to help others or even strangers. To date, it is evident that natural selection is cruel and relentless to the weaker. In order to survive, people tend to be selfish and only benefit themselves in which bystanderism may occur. However, several behaviours do exist regarding people taking risk
to help other people, which do not appear to fit the norm of self-preservation. Helping behaviour is the behaviour that intentionally helps another person while pro-social behaviours have positive social consequences, but does not consider the outcome of the behaviour. Altruistic behaviour is where one helps another person for no reward and even at some cost to oneself.
To explain the complex behaviour of altruism, many approaches and experiments have been done in the fields of psychology and health science. Starting with naturalist Darwin (1859), his natural selection theory inspires other researchers to investigate altruistic behaviours. Psychologists such as Batson (1991) and Darley (1973) study the behaviour and perform experiments in order to find explanations for it. Others such as Schaller and Cialdini (1988) propose negative-state relief model to look at different factors influencing the altruistic behaviours. The findings all appear to provide sufficient explanation for altruism.
Therefore, this present essay will be evaluating the existing explanations for altruistic behaviours and more specifically, the research question is: to what extent does psychology provide valid explanations for altruistic behaviours?
Generally, there are two types of psychological altruism: biological and cognitive. The biological level possesses explanations that examine altruism mainly through the evolutionary psychology point of view such as theories concerning altruistic behaviours in animals, and through the investigation of body mechanism such as mirror neurons. The
cognitive altruism examines factors such as emotion and morality that contribute to altruism in humans are studied. In addition, sociocultural psychology plays a role in explaining the behaviour as it investigates the influence of culture and religion. Despite there are various justified explanations on altruism, bystanderism exists in which people refuse to help other people. Under what circumstances do people become bystanders? And what factors cause bystanderism? Moreover, counter-claims do appear and some explanations are limited in providing conclusive evidence and have weaknesses that prevent them from being valid.
2.1. BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS
The behaviour of al truism surely poses a challenge for Darwin’s natural selection theory; however, the problem is solved as Darwin proposes evolutionary principle for altruism that altruistic behaviours could be seen in relation to what could be beneficial to the group or family an individual belongs to rather than what could be beneficial to the individual alone (as cited in Cronin, 1991, p. 253). Expanding on Darwin’s suggestion, kin selection theory suggests that altruistic behaviours depend on the relationship between ind ividuals. The closer the relationship between individuals, the greater the degree of altruism. Animals such as ground squirrels and birds demonstrate the theory through the way they interact with each other and produce warning about predators. A field study is conducted by Sherman (1977) on the alarm calls of Belding’s ground squirrel. Sherman first discovers the family tree of the squirrel and then a longitudinal study begins on observing the squirrels and their predators. The findings imply the kin selection theory as the alarm calls go off most frequently if there are relatives nearby.
Based on the kin selection theory, the selfish gene theory is proposed suggesting that any species will strive to maximize the number of copies of its genes to be passed o n to the future generation (Dawkins, 1976). Dawkin s’ theory contradicts Wynne-Edwards (1962)'s
group selection theory that altruistic behaviour happens when individual tries to increase the fitness of the whole group. Group selection theory suffers from many critics as it opposes Darwin’s assumption and explains altruistic behaviour at a population selection level rather than an individual level. It occurs slowly and during the selection time, individual selection will have occurred and traits will have emerged even if they do not benefit the whole group. Although Wynne-Edwards’ theory remains elusive and only explains the altruistic behaviours occurred on animals, it serves as a foundation for numerous further studies.
Both kin selection theory and selfish gene theory explain why an individual would go against the natural selection and help its close kin to survive. They are supported by many observations and empirical evidence, and the findings possess ecological validity; however, since they are all evolutionary theories, the variables in the research conducted are hard to control and because most of the experiments are conducted on animals, the theories may not generalize to humans adequately. They are limited in explaining why certain people would risk their life to help a stranger, and the selfish gene theory advocates that genes are the fundamental cause of altruistic behaviours, which is not yet being sufficiently supported.
Trivers (1971) proposes the reciprocal altruism theory as both kin selection theory and selfish gene theory only provide accounts for altruism between kin. The theory suggests that altruistic behaviour between non-related individuals may occur if an individual expects the favour to be returned in the future.
Again, animals provide excellent demonstrations for the theory. Hippopotamuses allow oxpecker birds remove parasites from their bodies so they can get rid of harmful insects and prevent diseases, and in return, oxpeckers are fed. Vampire bats share blood in order to avoid starvation, and they are most likely to share blood with whom they recently shared with (Wilkinson, 1984).
In order to testify the reciprocal theory with humans, a game called p risoner’s dilemma is developed by Axelrod and Hamilton (1981). The game is based on a theoretical story of two prisoners, and the t wo players of the game can choose to “cooperate” or to “defect”. The chart on the following page illustrates the strategies or choices for both prisoners:
According to natural selection, the player who defects will most likely to win; however, when the players are to play the game frequently, the strategy of "Tit for Tat" will evolve which involves cooperation as players will always initially cooperate and then react the same as their adversary. As a result, cooperation will always lead to an evolutionarily stable strategy that supports the reciprocal theory; however, it is questionable whether the results from the game can be generalized to real life.
Many cases concerning economics are also related to the reciprocal altruism theory. In economics, reciprocal altruism is present as more people are willing to walk instead of drive and many companies are using the energy-saving equipments and plans in order to protect the environment. However, economists pre dict that “altruism will not occur when the costs are too high” which excludes the fact of self-sacrifice and is limited in explaining the action of heroes (Monroe, 1996, p. 160). As a result, though reciprocal altruism theory expands upon the kin selection theory and explains the altruistic behaviours among non-related strangers, it tends to only explain “apparent” altruism, whereas the “genuine” altruism stays ambiguous.
Van Baaren (2004) investigates altruistic behaviours in relation to body mechanisms. He proposes that people tend to help others when their behaviours are being imitated. From his experiments, it is found that people whose behaviours are being mimicked show more helping tendency. In response to Baaren’s theory, another experiment is condu cted on the level of empathy and imitation (Stel & Vonk, 2004). Similarly, it is found that people become
more empathetic when imitating others. As a result, researchers conclude that mirror neurons take part in influencing our action of helping others. Despite the lack of evidence of how mirror neurons contribute to altruistic behaviours, recent studies indicate that it is plausible that when observing or imitating others, one has the capacity to feel the emotion that others are experiencing (Wicker et al., 2003). Wicker uses fMRI to test whether participant’s insula will activate when experiencing disgust odour and when observing others displaying disgusted facial expressions. The result demonstrates that the same sector within the insula is activated during both olfactory and visual conditions (as cited in Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2010, p. 117).
To expand on the research, neuroscientists conduct experiments on the lesions of insula and find that patients with no insula have difficulty understanding disgusted facial expression displayed by others (Calder et al., 2000; Adolphs et al., 2003). As a result, it is plausible that there is a specific type of mirror neuron in insula that informs the first-person of the emotion being observed and activates emotional responses. Similarly, when imitating others, mirror neurons in the insula may trigger emotional responses, which explain why people feel more altruistic towards those who they imitated. In addition, when we observe others to be happy, the mirror neurons provide similar emotion in ourselves too. Recent studies show that people actually improve their health if they often help others. By behaving altruistically, the giver’s health enhances through the relieving of stress and the releasing of the “feel good” hor mone endorphins (Sternberg, 2003). Also, there are researches concerning religion and health, and are found that people who are religious or spiritual have better health and live longer (Witviliet, 2001).
Through the four evolutionary theories discussed, certain aspects of altruistic behaviours are justified such as why we behave more altruistically towards our relatives and why we favour to help those who have helped us. Investigation of mirror neurons and brain
mechanisms is developed from biological explanations and opened a new path to discover altruism within human bodies and to identify factors that may encourage or increase altruistic behaviours. However, other factors such as emotion also influence human behaviours to a great extent, and behaviours such as adoption and bystanderism cannot be explained simply through biological perspective.
2.2. COGNITIVE EXPLANATIONS
Shifting from the biological perspective, cognitive perspective demonstrates altruistic behaviours mostly in humans. It investigates cognitive, emotional and motivational factors that contribute to altruistic behaviours. An experiment about receiving electrical shock is conducted by Lerner and Lichtman (1968) to investigate the role of stress in causing participants to behave altruistically. The result is that when the confederate acts distressed, most of the true participants behave altruistically and took over the role to receive electrical shock.
In response to the experiment, Schaller and Cialdini (1988) propose the negative-state relief model (as cited in Crane & Hannibal, 2009, p. 262). It suggests that our egoism leads us to behave altruistically in order to relieve the stress or any negative emotion we experience from observing the bad situation. The model is illustrated below:
The model demonstrates why people would help complete strangers and why some people are unwilling to help others; however, it does not give accurate account of how people will behave and that not all negative emotions affect one’s action to help. Negative-state relief model corresponds but at the same time counteracts with Piliavin (1981)'s arousal-cost-reward model (as cited in Berkowitz, 1984, p. 396). They both involve motivation to reduce the unpleasant feeling but the former suggests that all negative emotions would cause
altruistic behaviours whereas the latter suggests that only arousal associated with the bad situation of the others will motivate one to help.
A field experiment is performed by Piliavin and colleagues (1969) to examine the factors that influence altruistic behaviours (as cited in Crane & Hannibal, 2009, p. 267). There are two conditions with two confederates: a man with disability who appears to be ill and a man who appears to be drunk. The findings support the arousal-cost-reward model as the man with cane received faster and 100 percent help and the drunken man only received 81 percent help. Assessing the situation, the man with disability is helped more because it is immoral not to help and the “cost” of not helping is higher than the “cost” of not helping a drunken man. In addition, the findings support the negative-state-relief model it takes only five seconds responding time to help the cane victim and 109 seconds responding time to help the drunken man. Participants might feel more pressured or unease when the cane man falls than when the drunk man falls. The experiment possesses ecological validity; however, cause-effect relationship cannot be established and several ethical issues such as deception exist.
Morality is involved in the experiment mentioned above and is often related to altruism. John Rabe was born in Germany and moved to China when he was 26. By the time of Japanese atrocities, he protected as many Chinese as he could out of his moral consciousness. What role does morality play in explaining altruistic behaviours? Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt (2005) investigates morality through both religion and politics. He reasons that the moral dumbfounding, the feeling that may cause altruistic behaviours, happens when moral judgement fails to explain what moral intuition has decided. He recognizes that morality differs in every culture and he identifies five components of morality, which includes moral systems that promote individualism and moral systems that protect the loyalty, authority and purity of groups. Developmental influences such as certain
virtues would then be predisposed to children with the central goal of preventing selfishness. In addition, Haidt concludes that the emotion of disgust could provoke religious purity that restrains selfishness and make people behave in a morally accepted way. Haidt's ideas take culture and religion into consideration; on the other hand, he does not consider the role of bystanderism.
To expand the domain of morality, the relationship between morality and politics is studied by asking people to choose their position on a conservative-liberal spectrum and to complete a questionnaire concerning morality (Graham & Haidt, 2006). The result is that liberals tend to value the moral system that protects individuals whereas conservatives tend to weigh the morality benefit to society or authority. From Haidt’s view, m orality may give valid explanations to altruistic behaviours as it could be a developmental influence and a psychological mechanism within us that makes us to behave altruistically. Also, psychologists such as Steven Pinker agrees with Haidt and comments that the feeling of religious and physical purity “could make psychological sense even if it had no place in moral reasoning”, and political psychologist John Jost appraises Haidt’s work as a significant step in investigating morality in political beliefs (Wade, 2007). However, people such as Frans de Waal disagree with Haidt’s perspective. De Waal argues that animals without moral systems often display empathy and behave altruistically, and that there should be only one moral system protecting both individual and group interests.
Emotion is a significant factor in cognitive altruism. Batson and colleagues (1981) propose the empathy-altruism model in which it includes two emotions: personal distress such as terror and anxiety, and empathetic concern such as compassion. The former emotion involves in situations where one does not have empathy towards other people and will consider the advantages and disadvantages of helping whereas the latter emotion involves in situations where one feels empathy and will help altruistically no matter the costs and
benefits. The model conflicts with the idea of egoism as it suggests that empathy causes altruistic motivations. In order to justify the model, a series of experiments are conducted.
One classic experiment involves in a confederate, Elaine, receiving electric shock (Batson et al. 1981). Participants are divided into two treatments: easy-escape in which they only need to watch two shocks and hard-escape in which they need to watch ten shocks. The empathy level of the participants is also manipulated by receiving information about Elaine that matches or fails to match the description that the participants had reported about themselves in a questionnaire before. Participants are asked whether they would exchange with Elaine’s place and the result is that high-empathy participants agree to exchange more than low-empathy participants do when escape is easy. The empathy-altruism model is supported by the result as empathy is a motivation to cause altruistic behaviours. In addition, the model has high reliability as it is triangulated with many experiments such as the one by Piliavin that is discussed earlier. On the other hand, arousal or empathy is not the only motivation and the model alone cannot provide explanation of helping. Moreover, the experiment has several disadvantages. It only studies temporary altruism and confounding variables such as Hawthorne effect and experimenter bias may occur during the experiment. Furthermore, level of empathy is complicated and cannot be measured simply by giving matching description.
Cognitive explanations integrate human altruistic behaviours with emotion and morality. The models demonstrate why one would risk one's life to help a stranger through the examining of the emotions, and the studies on morality indicate the religious developmental influence that may cause altruism. On the other hand, confounding variables such as personality differences and social desirability may lower the reliability of cognitive explanations. The fact that significant factors such as gender and culture are rarely considered raises many bias issues and makes the explanations hard to generalize.
2.3. SOCIOCULTURAL EXPLANATIONS
Although religion is mentioned in the cognitive perspective, it is more often associated with sociocultural explanations for altruism. Generally, religions educate people to help others and to be generous (Oliner, 2008). Several studies have suggested that people who consider themselves religious are more likely than those less religious people to commit time and give selfless help. In addition, religious faith may have positive influence towards people in need, and religious tradition may cause altruistic tendency and behaviours. Judaism advocates that “the ability to give to others is a gift” and that “religions reach their highest level when they stop worrying about other people’s souls and ca re instead for the needs of their bodies” (Oliner, 2008, p. 41). Christians follow the Golden Rule, which is “loving one’s neighbour, clothing the naked, and feeling the hungry," and Hindus believe in reincarnation in which moral and compassionate deeds can lead to a higher status for rebirth. As a result, altruistic behaviours are directly rewarded. Other than religion as a type of social morality discussed earlier, religion may also have certain influence on altruistic behaviours through the idea of afterlife, which suggests that “people who believe in an afterlife of rewards and punishments will be more likely to do good in this world, in order to buy themselves a better position in the next” (Monroe, 1996, p.123).
However, not everyone believes in the afterlife. The relationship between altruism and religion is weak as many nonaltruists have strong ethical codes and many altruists are nonreligious. In addition, religion may appear relevant to altruism, but the direct influence comes from the altruist’s view, not from religion alone. Batson and Darley (1973) conduct a field experiment in which 40 seminarians are asked to receive religious sessions. After the sessions, participants are divided into two groups and are asked to move to another building, one is told to make presentations concerning jobs and the other is asked to speak on the parable about a person who stops to help a stranger. The independent variable is whether the
participants are told to hurry and the dependent variable is to what extent the students stop to help when they encounter a confederate who passed out on their way to the other building. The result is that people who are not in the hurry condition offer more helps than those who are in hurry condition. The experiment is not controlled, confounding variables such as social desirability may occur. On the other hand, the experiment has high ecological validity and demonstrates that religiosity did not affect the helping behaviours. Also, it corresponds to Monroe’s claim that altruism is diverse and that religion cannot be judged as a critical determinant of altruism.
What if people refuse to help others who are in need of help? It is the opposite of altruism: bystanderism. Diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance are the two major factors contribute to bystanderism. People tend to help when no one else is available to assist. Latané & Darley (1968) perform a n experiment on people’s willingness to help when different amount of people are present. The result is that people are more likely to help when they are the only person available. Another similar experiment is performed on pluralistic ignorance by Clark and Word (1972). Participants are asked to stay in one room and will hear about an emergent situation. It is found that the informational social influence occurs as the participants demonstrate more willingness to help when they are in the room by themselves than when they are with confederates who display no reaction. Despite the findings of the researches indicate the factors that cause bystanderism, they lack ecological validity and have low generalizability.
Culture and social norms are important factors in both altruism and bystanderism. People tend to conform to the group they belong to, and therefore, may display different behaviours in specific contexts. Yarrow et al. (1970) discover that children are more likely to learn and display altruistic behaviours with people they are familiar with. However, it is important to note that different cultures have different social norms, and that altruistic
behaviours can be influenced by culture. Individualist cultures promote independent-self and therefore people are more likely to behave altruistically towards in-group people. Contrarily, collectivist cultures are at the relational level of social identity, and therefore, people are more likely to help in-group people and out-group people in order to balance the society.
The interpretation of the findings provides plausible conclusions that the degree of altruism can vary in cultures, and that positive social norms may decrease bystanderism and provoke altruistic behaviours. Sociocultural explanations place altruism in a cultural context and investigate the relationship with environment. Nevertheless, altruistic behaviours may be defined differently in each culture, which makes it harder to translate behaviours cross-culturally. In addition, bias that occurs throughout the process of experiments weakens its application.
3. CONCLUSION
From the investigation of the different explanations and studies on altruistic behaviours, the answer to the research question is that all explanations validly identify altruism; however, due to variations in personalities and cultures, we can only take those explanations as correlations. Biological explanations centre on body mechanisms and evolutionary theories that explain altruistic behaviours in animals. Cognitive explanations establish relationship between cognition and altruistic behaviours. Sociocultural explanations then take religions and cultural factors into consideration, and provide evidence on the how altruistic behaviours vary in different cultures.
Weaknesses do appear in all three levels of explanations. Human behaviours can hardly be generalized from animal experiments, and though many experiments are done in the fields, confounding variables make the results unreliable and cause-effect relationship cannot be established. Further investigation could have be done in finding if particular
emotions would restrict altruistic behaviours, and if altruistic behaviours would disappear due to the need of social conformity to a culture that advocates self-interest.
On the other hand, the strengths of all three explanations are remarkable. Starting with biological perspective, it examines human nature and how our ancestors survive the natural selection by aiding each other altruistically or saving the relatives in order to pass on the genes. Cognitive perspective then bases on the evolutionary theories investigates the altruistic behaviours between strangers and on the emotion that may trigger altruistic behaviours. Integrating the former two with sociocultural perspective, they would provide cross-cultural applications on altruistic behaviours, and answer the question of why certain people in specific cultures are more willing to behave altruistically and why certain people refuse to help. The findings from the experiments and models could apply to clinical psychology to create therapies that could enhance our health through the counseling on altruistic behaviours. In addition, neuropsychologists could use the evidence to do further researches on the brain and altruism, which would then help criminal psychologists or psychiatrists to counsel criminals or people who conduct violence to become more sympathetic and to balance the society.
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