Nostalgia: Altruism

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome
to why we do what we do. I'm still doing
it for the hell of it, host Abraham.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
And I am your Bleeding Heart host Shane.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do, and sometimes we
release these nostalgia episodes, which are a re release of
a previous episode, and then at the end of that discussion,
we come back and just put a little a little
topping on there, add a little little krem de la creme,

(00:46):
extra contents to say, what's happened the last several years
since we last published this, what are our thoughts, if
they've changed or evolved on this topic, etc. And that's
what we're doing today. This is a nostalgia.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yes it is, and so we are going back and
revisiting our episode on altruism. I gotta say, originally my
view on altruism was pre cynical. I'm sure when you
listen to the episode, but you know, it's been five
years since we've talked about the subject, and I'd like
to return to it and we'll see if my thoughts
have changed.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Very good, I appreciate that. Yeah, dear listener, If you
are joining us for the very first time, this is
like the first time you ever decided to listen to
an episode of ours and you've never heard anything else,
then thanks for joining us. We're happy to have you here.
I hope you enjoy what you here in this discussion
and that you keep coming back for the future episodes
and that sort of thing. If you're a returning person,
then welcome back, or are so glad that after your

(01:40):
first choice to listen, you came back a second time.
Anither way, If you'd like to support us, you can
join us on Patreon, leave us a rating, and review,
like subscribe, tell a friend. I'll talk more about those
things at the end of this discussion. But if you
are here on the day that this publishes, you are
on top of your stuff. And it is July fifteenth,
which means be a dork Day, yep, and happy be

(02:01):
a dork Day to you and to you Shane and
to you Abraham. It is also I Love Horses Day. Yeah,
it is National give something away Day. Hopefully not a
whore I mean may maybe it's been nice to give
away a horse, but also love your horse.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
I mean yeah, I get me. Isn't that the whole
is net where gift horse comes from.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, don't look it in his mouth.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
That's what. Don't look at the mouth. Yeah, that's a
real problem. It is Developmental Disability Professional Day. Love that.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, very important. National Stamp Out Spiking Day. I think
this has to do with spiking drinks. But there's a
day dedicated to the that movement.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yes, yes there is. It is National Gummy Worm Day.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Okay, okay. It is National hot Dog Day or hot Dog.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
I can never hear the word hot dog and not
think of like the Mickey Mouse Club, which was like
a show that my daughter watched when she was little,
and they would do the hot dog dance and they'd
go hot dog. And that's every time I hear the word.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
You don't need to I think of Joey Chestnut a whole.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Different relational frame. So now I've got Mickey Mouse and
Joey Chestnut linked together because of a tube meet.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yes, yes, good, good for you.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
So strange happy that exists now, Yeah, thanks, National hot
Dog Day. I also think of Ferris Wheels because of
Coney Island. So it is National pet Fire Safety Day.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Speaking of hot dogs.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, we're we're gonna end up doing a mini on
hot dogs at some point in time. It's gonna be
a real problem.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah. I don't know what happened.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Why we do what we do really took a turn
when they did the hot dog episode.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
This was there jump the shark moment. It's National Respects
Canada Day. I do I do respect Canada.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, yeah, somebody, I think it was Don Henley from
the Eagles. Somebody put out a song called the fifty
first State, and I think it was aimed to talk
about how, like, you know, we are neighbors and we
should be getting along. But like I think it was
really titled. I don't think they should have called it
the fifty first Tea. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, that's that's that's a little bit of a trigger
for some people at this point.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
I think, yeah, yeah, ye, yeah, yeah yeah. It's National
Tapioca Pudding Day.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
I love tapioca pudding. Actually learned how to make my
own tapioca pudding several years ago. I haven't done it
in a while though.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Of course you have these random skills. It's great, it's right.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
It's random. It is take your poet to work day,
not against their will. Hopefully, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
I mean I keep my poet ready to go for
work just for this day. Yeah, they have to make
sure it feeding water your poet. It is National baby
food Week.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Baby food baby is the poet. It must be fed. Yes,
National Ventriloquism Week.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Okay, creepy, it is Operation Safe Driver Week.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
And it is rabbit week. Lookout, lookout for those wast
cly webbits. Yeah, all right, Well, we don't just talk
about the holidays, even though it kind of seems like
that's all we We actually talk about other stuff, and
we're here specifically to talk about altruism and the way
that these nostalgias work. If this is your first time,

(05:08):
is we're going to play that whole entire episode that
we originally aired, and then we're going to come back
after the end of that discussion and just add some content,
some stuff to our thoughts, does anything new, if our
thoughts have evolved, et cetera. And then if you're joining
us for the first time, you won't already know this.

(05:28):
But then we end each of our full length discussions
by providing some recommendations about something. It's usually unrelated to
the topic we just discussed. It's just here's a thing
I'm recommending, and that's a fun thing that we do,
and I look forward to it because it's fun. So
stick around through all of that and get to the
new stuff at the end. Get to hear those recommendations,
and then we'll have you on your way. And I

(05:50):
appreciate you being here in the time that you took
to to listen to the things that we had to
say about this. But I think that we're about ready
to jump in. But let's give a little background here.
The original episode on altruism was published on February second,
twenty twenty. Uh those were the days.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah for those of you who can think, who think
of that date? Yeah, that was the before times. Yeah,
that was shortly. That was like right before. That's like
a month before the pivot. So we talk about times
in history, the major inflection points that signaled like a
change in direction.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, that time was one of those.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Yes, yes, for sure. The original intent was to evaluate
whether altruism could even exist, since it was you know,
it involves the some type of naturally occurring reward as
a result of engaging, like people are going to give
you stuff for it, And we got to talk about
this in a little bit in the episode. I think
what we discovered was a bit more complex. My original
thought was again, I don't think that it exists, and
then getting into the episode, I think I landed somewhere different.

(06:52):
But I do think and we're going to see this
as we go. The research hasn't changed all that much.
Give you a spoiler alert, despite the fact that we
went through a pandemic in the middle of from the
time this episode was aired until today.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
All Right, with that, I think we are ready to
transition to the OG episode. Play that and then come back.
Are you ready for the jump? Yeah, let's party, all right,
see you on the other side. Here's younger Shane and Abraham.
All right, welcome to Why We Do what We do.

(07:27):
I will be your host, Abraham, and I'm Shane. And
so today we are going to talk about something selflessly. Yeah, selfishly.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
There's no benefit to us about this topic, none whatsoever,
or is there, So let's step right into this.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Shane fortunately did a lot of the did primarily all
the Lake work on researching this, so we want to
kick us off. Shane.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, I have very strong opinions about this one, so
I'm sure it'll it'll come out as we go through perfect. Yeah. So, Abraham,
I have a question for you. Have you ever donated anything?
I have.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
I've donated lots of old things that I didn't want anymore.
I've donated some old board games and clothes and books
and stuff like that. And I recently, just in the
last couple of years, maybe in the last year, actually
have finally, this late in life, gotten into donating blood
and platelets. And interestingly, as we record this, not that

(08:20):
this means anything to anybody else out there, but I'm
going to be scheduled to donate platelets later today.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Oh nice. So is that altruistic or benevolent? I don't know.
We'll have to figure that out. Have you ever volunteered
your time?

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Volunteered? I was forced to do community service once volunteered. Yeah,
I did volunteer for a couple of campaigns. But that
almost seems evil in retrospect.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, that's some like straight up Malpeesians type of stuff.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
But I feel like I have volunteered my time for
small amounts of things. How about you. Have you donated
or volunteered your time?

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Oh? Yeah, I have. I was also always under the
impression that I couldn't donate blood or platelets or anything
because I was for Like when I was younger, I
was told I couldn't because I had tattoos and you
had to wait like a year to do it. Same
now I guess that's not the case, which is awesome.
I definitely volunteered in school. Actually that's how I got
into the field that I'm in, as I volunteered with

(09:16):
Special Olympics and spent a lot of time with that, oh,
which was awesome and wonderful, but also as a means
to an end of the time because it was as
much as I loved doing that, it helped me get
my scholarship.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
So there's some stuff there, right. Another one too, is
like paying it forward, right, so like buying somebody's coffee
or you know, just kind of doing some outreach like that.
Like I used to do that at Starbucks. I would
either like every now and again, just like drop a
free coffee on somebody, not literally, but like be like, hey,
here's a free coffee for you.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
Just from the roof.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Enjoy this, ah, and just like throwing throwing cups of
coffee out. Funny story, one time I saw a person
coffee is so valuable. I saw a person get hit
by a car in the parking lot and not drop
their coffee, Like they were walking and they got hit
by a car and they fell to the ground, did
not spill a drop of their coffee, but they have
their priorities straight, Yeah, they didn't. It was wild. So

(10:07):
I gave the person a free coffee for surviving that.
So anyway, I guess the thing when we kind of
talk about this is why do we do these things?
Why do we donate, why do we volunteer? Why do
we do these things for other people when there's no
overt benefit to us, Right, there's not really anything that
we're getting out of it. We're just doing it to
quote unquote be nice. So why do we do these things?
And some people will try to explain this away as

(10:27):
altruistic behavior or you know, this idea of altruism, which
is we do things for the benefit of others, right,
And I.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Think there are also those who argue, and we'll get
into this more, but that we don't ever do anything
just for other people, that there's always some kind of
self gratification that occurs.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
So that's kind of like the two sides of this
it's people believe that there are there there is no
benefit to the human person or or self, and so
they're going to do things just for the goodness of
good and then other people will say it's great that
you're doing that, and we don't want to say that
it's a bad thing, but there's still some benefit to
the self. And so that's kind of what we're going
to try to unpack here a little bit. So some

(11:06):
other questions we want to answer to within the idea
of altruism is going to be what is it and
is it helpful? And I think that's the thing, is like,
it's great that we can define this, but is it
helpful to really know what this is in general or
is there something more beneficial to know?

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah, I mean that's a great point that we always
want to start with making sure that we're on the
same page about what we're discussing, and so defining our
terms seems appropriate. And so one definition that we have
here is the principle focus on concern for the happiness
of other living things.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, that's pretty simple, right, Just like I'm concerned about
somebody else, I'm concerned about their well being, I'm concerned
about what they are, like how they're feeling or what
they're going to get out of this whole situation. Now.
A primary aspect of that includes the idea that actions
are taken regardless of the outcome to the person engaging
in the act. So I'm going to engage in this
behavior to benefit somebody else simply because I want that

(11:56):
person to benefit without any regard to what happens to me,
without any regard of benefit. And I think Kurt Vonneguet
has a really great quote, being a humanist means engaging
in good or it's something along this line, is like,
being a humanist means that I do good things regardless
of the promise of benefit or promise of heaven or
something like that. It's a really great kind of perspective.

(12:16):
And that's kind of what altruism is all about, right,
Like that's what they kind of say. So, but ultimately
what this means is that altruistic acts and altruistic behavior
itself is selfless. There's no benefits of the person, nothing
comes to the person that's engaging in the behavior. They're
just doing it to do good.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
They're not motivated by some reward or some promise of
a reward or something like that. Now I'm thinking about
with my donating platelets thing they do occasionally try and
give me like some kind of ticket, Like I think
I've gotten free tickets to the rib cookof which is

(12:53):
like cool, thanks guys. And I think I also got
free tickets to like a beer fest, and so as
a teetotaler, I'm like cool, thanks guys. You know me
so well, it's funny.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
It's funny to think of, like you going into donate
platelets and it's to benefit some other living thing, and
then you get tickets to go to a barbecue, which
does not benefit those living things.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Accurate. Well, my platelets weren't for the animals anyway, I suppose.
Oh man, the opposite of altruism is ads. All right,
we're back, But now did you run across in your

(13:39):
research whether or not there has to be something aversive
about the altruistic act to like you do it even
though it sucks for you.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yes, we do talk about that. Now. There are some
times where people will go above and beyond, and we'll
kind of touch on this later as we talk about
pathological altruism, where it gets to the point where you're
engaging in so much good that it actually becomes harmful
to you. Like it's benefiting everybody else, but it becomes
a detriment to you as the self.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
They explored that a little bit on The Good Place
that show that I talk about at NonStop. Oh do
they Yeah, So essentially, I don't want to give away
too much, but there is a character who is described
as essentially being the best person who's ever lived, and really,
upon closer inspection, they discover that he's like making himself

(14:29):
miserable all the time and having a crappy life just
so that he can, I guess, maximize his goodness so
he can.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Continue to be the best person that ever lived.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, And so it kind of starts to look both
sad and in ways kind of gross, sort of like, wow,
you're like really driven by this one thing, and it
seems to be it almost turns back on itself and
almost becomes selfish in a way.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Oh yeah, And that's one of the arguments that we're
going to make here, or I kind of dig into
a little bit so for the sake of clarity and
just kind of getting into the definition and really kind
of understanding what we're talking about selflessness. Refers to the
idea that there is no benefit for a certain act
or for certain acts. So when we talk about selflessness,
we're talking about engaging in behavior doing things that are
completely selfless, which means that we are not gaining from

(15:18):
engaging in these behaviors. The person engages in some act
without promise of reward is simply put, they do it
just to do good. They do it just because out
of the goodness of their hearts. That's why people do
these things.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Right, They're just all about the Nike.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Just do it. They've gone full call on Kaepernick on this.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
So cool. All right, Well, there are definitely a lot
of different perspectives on how you might break down some
ways of thinking about altruism, and so one of them
I'll begin with here is the social evolution perspective, and
this one essentially states that you engage in altruistic activities
or altruistic behaviors because it benefits the community and improves

(16:00):
your sort of tribes, the tribe that you belong to,
their chance of survival within the sort of larger context
and setting that you're in. So you do something for
the long run, for the greater good, because it benefits
the tribe that you identify with that you're a part of,
which might even be like the entire species. But generally
a lot of people are thinking about just their immediate community,

(16:21):
which can be any size. You know, it could be
the country or the state, or the city, or the neighborhood,
or even just the household you're in.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah, and I think you see this one sided a lot.
This particular perspective cited a lot. It's like one of
the primary reasons why people might engage in it. And
when we start getting into like the idea of evolutionary
traits that are related to this, this is kind of
where it comes from, this idea that the community benefits
as a result of the behavior that you engage in.
Lack ants like that's humans are just just big, clumsy

(16:50):
ants really with with the worst sense of smell.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
And not very strong.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
We're not very strong either, yet we've got a lot
of It's amazing that humans have made it this far.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
It kind of is I mean, it really speaks to
the importance of our language and how that contributes to
our quote unquote intelligence. And I think about this a lot. Actually,
because our species has no natural defensive traits, we have
no natural hunting capabilities. We have no anything. Really, we're
very weak, ill equipped creatures, and yet somehow we've managed

(17:22):
to dominate the entire planet and then destroy it. And
surely because we can behave with respect to things that
aren't there.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, I mean, I just think of it like this,
Like you mentioned, like our hunting capability. It's like our
sense of smell sucks, and a lot of us have
to wear compressed minerals over our eyes to see better.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yeah, and we're slow. We don't have any natural weapons,
but like we don't have claws, laws suck. The one
thing I can say is we do have pretty fantastic
eyes relative to most other species. Like, we don't have
the best eyes on the planet, but we're in like
we're in the top. We're in the the one percent
club in terms of a good vision go humans. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
So anyway, So, so social evolution is one of those those
perspectives they talk about with altruism. There's a benefit to
the community. So it's not a direct benefit to the self,
but the self has like this residual benefit if the
community does well. Right, So I'm gonna keep framing it
back to this idea that altruism doesn't exist, okay, by accident.
There's also something called reciprocity, and so the idea of
reciprocity when we talk about altruism is that if I

(18:20):
help others, then there could possibly be a benefit of
them reciprocating the help. So you'll see this a lot
in communal places, where if I put my neck out
and I help you, then eventually one day, if I
need it, hopefully you'll help me. And that's kind of
even the idea of like Social Security in the United States,
where it's okay, so I'm going to pay into this
thing with the idea that hopefully people continue to pay

(18:41):
into it so that I'm taking care of in my
old age when I retire. So reciprocity speaks to that
idea is I'm going to engage in it. I'm doing
good now. I'm paying it forward now with the idea
or the possibility that it's going to come back to
me later.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Right, So would you include in this the sort of
pay it forward. I so sort of I'm going to
stop and help someone on the side of the road,
not thinking that that person necessarily is going to help me.
But if I sort of put that out in the
world that when someone needs help and you stop and
help them, then next time I need help, someone might
stop and help me. Does that do you like that
fits into this?

Speaker 2 (19:14):
I think pay it Forward is a little bit different.
I think that it does kind of just say like, Okay,
well I'm gonna buy this person's coffee because but I
feel like it's hard to ignore that idea of like, well,
maybe it'll come back to me. We do good. I
think people do good for good's sake, and it's maybe
like the primary motivator, but there's probably this piece where
you go back and you're like, Okay, well it's going
to come back to me some way, like if I

(19:34):
put good out there, Like because I hear this all
the time when people say like, oh, you just put
good energy out and it comes back to you. That's
the kind of stuff you receive and that's very arm cherry.
But anecdotally you hear that and it's like, well, that
just means that you're putting that out there because there
is a promise of some benefit later, or even like
just a chance of some benefit later. You're gambling with
the idea that there's a benefit later.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
You know that really just highlighted for me that doing
good for goodness sake that Christmas song, and that they're
specifically promoting do good for goodness sake so that Santa
will give you presents. So I'm sort of it just
it just occurred to me how ironic it was that
that is even in that song.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, it's weird, right, Like, I guess my thing will
be And I'll just as a quick caveat because i
know I'm getting off topic here, but the caveat is
like if it's good, then it can't be bad, right like,
which is like a very like non committal thing, but
like if you're doing good, even if there is like
the want of reward, like you're still doing good and
there's still some kind of like benefit that comes out
of that.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Right. Yeah. I think that's a good point. I'd like
to come back to that when we're sort of making
our take homes.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
So I think in line with this reciprocity idea is
another idea called the or sort of referred to as
resource availability, really suggesting that we engage in altruistic actions
because helping another person may lead the access to resources
at a later time. And I think that some somewhat
similar to it might lead to help at another time.

(20:59):
This one just says instead of help, it's resources which
can be helped. But this sort of a similar idea.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, And I think all those kind of relate to
the idea of social evolution too, where it all ties
back to like, if the community benefits, then I'm going
to get help. There's resources available for me in the community.
It's all there, right, It all ties back to like,
I'm going to benefit from this on some level, but
I'm going to continue to help because that means that
our community is going to thrive and our species will survive.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
So there are some people that also think that there
are there's some research, I should say, on the idea
of there's there being some kind of neurological process related
to altruism. And what this kind of posits is the
idea that there's a subgenual cortex or the septal region
essentially with neurological processes it's activated and thought to be
related to social attachment and bonding. So there are some

(21:46):
people that have the perception that altruism has to do
with bonding in those social attachments, and it does have
that biological process. Now, this would suggest that giving, in
particular helping and all that results in pleasurable neurological processes,
which I could say from my perspective, I've given, I've donated,
and I've felt good about it, you know, like that's
felt good. And so what you'll see too though, and

(22:08):
then kind of what they've posited here is that individuals
with damaged venture medial prefrontal cortex is actually struggled with
making moral decisions, like they would struggle with helping others
and making those things that are and we're getting into
like this idea of moral and morality, which is a
little bit nebulous, but sure they would struggle with these
ideas of moral decisions and helping others. And that kind

(22:28):
of suggested that there was a neurological or a biological
process related to altruistic decision making.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Got it, Yeah, that makes sense. I'm thinking about the
fact that how your brain would even interpret something as
being a good act requires a lot of semantics. And
so while I understand that way are biological organisms in
our brain is critically important, I think the context that
allows us to access that as being important is a

(22:53):
really interesting feature of how we would determine whether or
not we would expect our brain to register that is
being semantically important and therefore registered as something to feel
that sense of reward. I'm just thinking again that when
we reduce it to something of just saying like, oh,
this part of our brain becomes activated, then I feel
like that doesn't tell me very much, and I think

(23:14):
that perhaps we could do better.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, we lose a little bit of nuance related to it, right,
Like we lose some of the things that go into
you know, because at the end of the day, you've
got if things are paired up and you go I
always I can't help but have that behavioral bent and
it's like, well, like why is it important to be
good to others? Like why does this feel good? And
it's because it's probably paired up with something. But I
think that there's yeah, it doesn't tell us much except

(23:37):
that we just kind of lean back on that idea
of like, oh, it's our brain, and it's like, well,
that doesn't tell us literally anything about why it shapes
up or where it forms or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, And nevertheless, I guess maybe to play my own
devil's advocate, But just thinking about that, this idea of
the social bonding and all of that sort of stuff
that it From an evolutionary perspective, it does make sense
to say that we would be bio logically sensitive to
feeling reward when we help our own species.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, I can understand that perspective.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Okay, So as nuanced as that is not, I think
that does help me wrap it inside of a context
that makes sense to me. I think everything makes a
little more sense than the context of evolution to me.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah. And actually a lot of the research will kind
of point that direction too, which is cool. Here's an
example of a company that is not giving back. Here's
ned and we're back.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
All right, let's talk about psychological altruism. Sounds so fancy.
This position posits that there is motivation to increase one's
own welfare through help to others, and so in contrast,
psychological egoism instead would argue that there is no true
altruism because any benefit, even intrinsic benefit, negates the definition

(24:57):
of altruism and cancels out the selflessness. And as we've
discussed in many of these there is often a component
of reciprocation or reward or return on your investment and help.
And what I'm unclear on this position is whether intention
is important. Do you do it with the motivation that
you'll have that reward or you do it just because
you think it's a good thing to do. But then

(25:18):
the reward is that it feels good and maybe even
get a reward later down the road, but you weren't
expecting that, or maybe you weren't even expecting it to
feel good but it does anyway, or you know, I'm
not sure if that's important inside of this one, but
the basic argument just seems to be that altruism can't
really exist because anything you do that is supposed to
be good or benefit somebody else ultimately benefits you in

(25:40):
one capacity or another, even if you don't want it to.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, and that's actually the biggest point of contention when
it comes to altruism in general, is that you've got
this idea that, on one hand, selflessness, you can do
good for good's sake, And there is some it feels
good and all that, but that's still defined as altruism
and altruistic types of intention and all that underneath that
psychological altruism definition. But then psychological egoism comes in and

(26:07):
goes Nah, there's no such thing, because there are other benefits.
Even if it is like just something just volunteering because
it feels good, or or donating platelets just because you
want to help people, even those things under psychological egoism
will argue that those things feeling good is a benefit
that you receive, which makes it inherently not selflessness. That's

(26:27):
the biggest point in contention within the argument of altruism.
And I didn't really see anything about intention. I didn't
see a lot of research or discussion around that. It
was more so the outcome or the benefit of the
actual act itself.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, it does seem to suggest that really what's at
play here is nothing can be altruistic in the sense
of it being completely selfless. Because as selfless as you
might try and be, even feeling proud about the fact
that you did the right thing or knowing that you
did the right thing, and maybe even if you don't
feel proud, you know that you did the right thing

(27:01):
could be enough to be the sort of again, as
you said, that self reward in a way.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, And that's where the definition is so critical, because
that at one point in time, what are you defining
as benefit, What are you defining as like, you know,
benefiting the organism, worth the community, or anything like that.
And that's where it gets hairy because some people will say,
here's the complete definition, which includes any sort of feeling good,
neurological or biological process, and other people will be like, well,
that doesn't really count. We're talking about tangible rewards or

(27:28):
it really depends on what your definition of reward and
benefit is. In this context, everything is nothing and nothing
is a Oh, welcome to our podcast on existential crises.
So there is a sociological perspective on it, but it
is very similar to social evolution, so we don't need
to spend too much time on that. It does kind
of share some of the same characteristics where altruistic behavior

(27:51):
benefits the community as a whole, benefits the species as
a whole, and promotes that pro social behavior. But I
think the last point I want to touch on in
this area and this subject, as far as these perspectives,
is this idea of pathological altruism. This is kind of
when help goes wrong, like when helping people goes wrong,
and like you're doing so much good that it's actually
doing you harm and impacting your health. And your well
being and stuff. And I imagine this is a pretty

(28:13):
prevalent problem in any helping profession, where it's like you
are just going out of your way to help people
and help people and help people, and you're burning yourself out.
And we could talk all day about self care, but ultimately,
what you see with pathological altruism is that you're engaging
in all this help, You're engaging in all these behaviors,
You're doing all these things, and you're willing to help
to the point where it becomes a deficit to yourself,

(28:34):
Like you are doing all this stuff and it's actually
causing you more harm than good, and it actually results
in a level of harm to the volunteer, Like it
could be health outcomes, it could be financial burdens, all
these things, you go into, all this debt just to
help people you're sick, like, it could be all these things.
But pathological altruism can become a pretty serious problem for
some people.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Who that's scary.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yeah, right, Could you imagine helping so much that like
you die from it?

Speaker 1 (28:59):
The movie So Pounds comes to mind, yes, yes, without
spoiling too much about it, I mean the movie is
pretty old now, I think it's twelve or thirteen years old.
But even still, we have somebody who's willing to literally
give everything that they have, literally everything that they have, everything.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Literally everything.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
That sounds to me like this idea of pathological altruism.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
But then again, there is some benefit to that guy, right,
like there is relief.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Sure, that's fine, Well, that was dour. Let's ask the
gods what they think about this.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
In my research on altruism, it brought me to the
discussion of religion and spirituality, which I think, as part
of the human experience, is important to note, especially when
you're talking about giving and doing good and those being
like kind of basic tenets of a lot of major religions,
it's worth noting. So as far as like a religious
perspective of altruism goes, it's very prominent in Buddhism mechanism

(30:00):
to promote happiness, the idea within Buddhism. And this is
a sweeping generalization, so if I know, there are more
specific sects and there are more specific breakdowns and denominations
of these different religions. So but kind of coming across
my general research around this, what you see in a
lot of like Buddhist types of viewpoints. Is that you're
giving back to the world and living things, and essentially

(30:21):
it serves a purpose to improve one's happiness and support
spiritual growth. So I think I always go back to
like this idea of karma and what karma is, and
essentially karma is you do good, you are giving back,
and you are treating the world well, and you kind
of go into all this, but ultimately what karma is
is like a look this really cool token economy, right

(30:41):
like if you really think about it, like you, so
you're racking up these these points essentially, and this is
this is how I understood it. So if I'm wrong,
please give us feedback and stuff. But how I understood
it when I was studying Buddhism and when I spent
time as a zend Buddhist for a little bit, was
that you rack up points, and you rack up good points,
and you rack up bad points, and you kind of
have this score when you pass away, and then that

(31:01):
score translates into what you reincarnate into at the end
of your life, until your spirit becomes so enlightened that
you can move past this mortal coil.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
So life is like a giant arcade and as you
acquire more and more tickets, you can use those tickets
to buy something like an upgraded life. Or if you
don't get very many tickets because you're not doing very good,
then you are going to turn into a beatle.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yep, yep. That's my very general and very probably pompous
and insensitive understanding of it.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
And not a beatleism John Ringo, George or.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
Paul or the fifth one, whoever he was.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
The gunman on the grassy. No.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
So.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Other religions such as Jainism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, et cetera,
also have some form of altruism in their basic teachings
and often use this idea of sort of be good
to others and versions of the Golden Rule as a
way to build the more of altruism into their guidelines
and their doctrines and whatnot.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
And most everybody is familiar with some version of the
Golden Rule, like you, there's so many out there, and
it's amazing to see that, you know, across the globe
and across centuries that people kind of they try to
teach this general thing of like be good to others,
do unto others as they would do unto you, like
stuff like that. You know those phrases, and you'll see
that translated in a bunch of different ways and interpreted

(32:27):
a bunch of different ways, And here are couple. It's
generally universal teaching. But what you'll see is that it's
not that different of an idea. So according to ancient
Greek texts, you'll see the quote or the term avoid
doing what you would blame others for doing, which I
think is a pretty good thing. Like if I'm going
to be mad about somebody doing something, I'm not going

(32:47):
to do that same thing.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, it's kind of the opposite. It's like, don't do
what you don't want other people to not do.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Right. It was interesting. There were three appeals. There was
a what to do, what not to do, and impawer
ethic appeal to the golden rule, which is like do
good to others so they'll do good to you, don't
do bad so that people don't do bad to you,
And do what feels good to you or feels good
to others, so they do what feels good to you.
It's like, it was like a strange kind of thing

(33:15):
like that.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Well, it kind of makes sense too, because it's sort
of like a lot of the things that I prefer
others wouldn't. So just saying treating them how I want
to be treated would actually be very considerate. But treating
them how in the manner or the general kindness with
which I like to be treated, which is to say,
treat them in a way that I expect they would
want to be treated, is what would be going on
with that in pathic one. But if I may quote

(33:36):
from the Bible, quote you shall not take vengeance or
bear a grudge against your kinsfolk, love your neighbor as
yourself I am the Lord end quote, Leviticus nineteen eighteen.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
All right, So another one too that you'll see in
TOBD four fifteen is due to no one what you yourself dislike.
So again like it's pretty much don't.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Be a jerk right from the off mal profit tobit
another one quote, none of you truly believes until he
wishes for his brother and what he wishes for himself.
End quote. And I'm not entirely try to say this,
and Nahuawei's forty fifth hadth thirteen from Islam.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it either, So
I don't want to I don't even want to attend it,
but what I'll say is that the key point here
is that the teaching here is consistent with just being
good to people, and it's probably great for establishing kind
of a moral compass within those contexts to help each other.
But is it actually altruistic? Because there seems to be
a benefit of the person you're talking about religious teachings.

(34:37):
Within each of those religious teachings or spiritual teachings, there
is a promise of reward in the afterlife. So at
that point in time, by definition, can you call that altruistic?

Speaker 1 (34:46):
Fair enough?

Speaker 2 (34:47):
All right?

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Can't we segue into what the scientists and the science
says yes.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
So, as we were kind of digging into the research,
what I wanted to ask is does altruism exist? Can
it exist? And kind of those things that we asked
at that at the top of the episode. Now, as
a quick note, as I was doing my research and
pulling some articles on this, what we found is that
a lot of the research was done in the seventies
and eighties. There's not a lot of current research on this.
There's usually a lot of comments on this, and there
seems to be expansions on this, so you'll hear us

(35:14):
reference pro social behavior a lot, because that's kind of
where it seems to have gone. But there's a lot
of talk and a lot of debate around the idea
of altruism versus benevolence, and so that's kind of where
the research is going to go in the last like
I would say, two to three decades.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
So are we just a few decades behind the level
of interest in this? And no one's going to listen
to this episode?

Speaker 2 (35:36):
That's us, you know, we're right on topic with the eighties.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
All right, So from Stitch, Doris and Rotor, and this
is in twenty ten, so there one of the more
recent ones. They wrote a chapter in altruism and discussed
further understanding from the psychological egoism perspective as we had
described earlier, the one where doing good that always benefits
you and so it's not really altruistic. And so they
describe understanding what ultimate desire means as an end goal

(36:03):
for altruistic behavior as well as a desire for the
wellbeing of others. So essentially there's no convincing argument that
these are really in any way different from one another.
The sort of psychological altruism versus the egoism. Further, evolutionary
theory provides little support on either side of egoistic versus
the altruistic debate. Rather, the argument is made that a
social psychology accounting of altruism is the most appropriate and

(36:26):
work by Batson and colleagues has moved this theory forward.
And you have some of the research from bats And
to describe here as well.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
Do you think anybody's ever studied adtruism? And we're back.
So the chapter that we just talked about is from
twenty ten. Now, a lot of the bats And research
is from the eighties, so we've mentioned that before. And specifically,
the article that I want to cite here is bats

(36:53):
in nineteen eighty seven that discusses pro social behavior as
both egoistic and altruistic. And this is where it's still
gets money, because like, you've got people on one side,
you've got people on the other, and then you've got
Batson here like it's both and you're like, okay, all right.
So essentially, what Batson says is that if the goal
is to benefit the self, and this is kind of
where it gets into intention. If the goal is a

(37:14):
benefit the self, then egoism is at play, right, the
idea that I'm working to benefit the self, I'm doing
this for selfish reasons, not selfless reasons. Right. So if
the goal is the welfare of others, though, then altruism
is the primary player. And so in this scenario you
have to understand what intention is and motivation is to
be able to call it either altruistic or egoistic in
terms of the type of behavior you're looking at. But

(37:36):
the article posits that to assume all pro social behavior,
because we're talking about behavior that benefits others and it's
good for the community and good for the person and
all that that all pro social behavior. If we are
looking at it as self serving, it's cynical, which made
me realize how cynical I am as a human being.
I was like, oh, yeah, no I am. I'm not
only am I skeptical, I'm pretty cynical. Now. What Batson does, though,

(37:59):
is he brings up or they bring up a way
to categorize contemporary pseudo altruistic views into three specific types.
So first, you're looking at altruism as a pro social
behavior and not motivation. So altruism is a specific action,
it's not something like a theoretical or hypothetical construct. Right,
So pro social behavior as a behavior, not motivation, pro

(38:19):
social or altruism as pro social behavior seeks internal rewards. Okay,
So if you're looking at it as seeking internal reward,
then that's one way to look at it, and the
other one is altruism as pro social behavior to reduce
aversive arousal. So in that context being I'm going to
engage his behavior to avoid things I don't like and.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Maybe specifically things like avoid feeling guilty.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, exactly. So that's kind of what Batson proposes in
nineteen eighty seven, and so from then on, I mean,
there's a lot of research on pro social behavior, but
it doesn't really tackle that idea of altruism as specifically cool.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
I mean that one sounds to me. So that seems
like the first time that anyone really has described the
idea of that intention or motivation piece in terms of
how important that is in determining whether you would call
something altruistic or not. In two thousand and five, Bernstein
Bernstein say Bernstein, the Bernstein bears.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
Oh, yes, that's that's I don't want to that's that
puts me right into the Mandela effect, and I can't
do that right now.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Bernstein in two thousand and five discusses how altruism and
social benefits have genetic links, where altruistic behavior directly serves
kin as a result of associative pairing and non can
or non family, and altruistic behaviors toward those non family
are described as a division of labor rather than it
being altruistic, which is to say that it's sort of,

(39:43):
I guess, sort of sharing responsibility in a way.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
In this particular bit too. This is because this is
another chapter. What they do talk about is this idea
that while it's good, it's not necessarily altruistic, it's benevolent,
and the idea that you're still helping people and there's
still a reward. It's like you're you're doing no harm. Essentially,
you're doing no harm and doing good. And that's what
they're looking at here. I mean, when you look at
like specifically like ethics books and stuff, they talk about

(40:07):
this idea of beneficians and non Malfesians, and that's kind
of where this is going. It's benefesians doing good.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
There's this other one too. Ferguson, Farrell and Lawrence in
two thousand and eight, and this is specifically with respect
to blood donations and why I kind of wanted to
talk about this with myself and found that participants in
blood donations responded more readily and were more likely to
donate blood when the marketing campaigns and discussions around donating
were described as as you pointed out, that benevolent, and

(40:33):
they were less likely to donate when the message around
donating was considered altruistic. And I think for myself, I
always think about it in terms like what's motivating for
me is thinking about they actually get to use this
to help somebody else, and so somebody else really benefits
from having whatever I donate platelets. And one thing I

(40:55):
did want to point out I was going to mention
earlier is it takes like upward of seventy or eighty
minutes to donate platelets, and by the time it's done,
I am just completely wiped out. I'm just gonna pass
out and take an app for a while. So I
always leave and I do feel good about it. I'm like, hey,
I really hope that it'll helps somebody, and then I

(41:18):
go take a nap. But anyway, I always do feel
really good about it and the actual experience itself, although
I think they do a really good job trying to
make it as comfortable as possible. Is just something that's
difficult to make very comfortable because you're sucking platelets out
of your body.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
I remember reading something years ago that talked about how
human medicine is barbaric. Like if you think about it,
like surgery is incredibly barbaric. You're cutting people open, you're
taking blood and all that, and it's like this, really,
it's this really intense thing.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
That's why you got to just open the chakras and
let the chie in so that it can do its
work by sticking needles in your skin.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Oh me, on, my chakras aren't aligned. But I mean,
if you think about that, like going back to this
whole idea of beneficians and non Malfesians and altruism all
this stuff, right, you said, it feels good, but there
is not a lot of benefit directly to you as
the organism to lose blood and lose platelets like that.
There's not a lot of health benefit to that.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Not that I'm aware of. No.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Blood letting was a thing that happened for a while
and people were like, I don't know, It's just it's
one of those things that there's not a lot of
benefit to you directly, but it is helping people, and
that's that's that piece where it's like, that's the difference
with benevolence versus altruism.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Got it?

Speaker 2 (42:32):
So, Racquelin and Losi twenty eleven actually provided a pretty
complex accounting of the mechanisms by which altruistic behavior occurs
within a video game setting, involving delayed discounting. So we're
not going to get into delay discounting too much right now,
because that is an entire topic in itself.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
I can really quickly summarize this as the value of
an outcome decreases over time, like the further out it
is from when you're to reach it, which is to
say that the longer you have to wait to get something,
the less valuable the thing you're waiting for becomes.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
There you go. I couldn't have said it better myself.
So essentially, in this article, what they do is they
propose that there are three specific contingencies by which this
type of behavior occurs. So, first, behavior is motivated to
avoid being considered a freeloader in a social setting, so
they don't you don't want to be that person that's
getting like that's being considered like kind of like you're
tacked on, you're lazy, you're just kind of along for

(43:26):
the ride and you're getting all the benefits. So there
is like a social context there, which goes back to
some of those social leanings we talked about before. Another
contingency they talk about is players consider the contingencies beyond
the current scenarios. So they're engaging in behavior that's gonna
benefit in that moment, but they're also looking at what's
happening way after. And that's part of the latest counting
pieces is they're looking at like kind of they're not

(43:47):
maximizing their reward right now because there's a potential for
a larger reward after they leave that setting. And then
the final example they include here is that the behavior
balances cost themselves and to others. And so what reference
here specifically something called social discounting. And what's happening is
they're finding some discrepancy between the good that's happening to
themselves or the good they can produce versus the good

(44:08):
it's happening to somebody else, and the good that they
can produce, and they try to counterbalance all that within
that context. Now, what they also say in this is like,
those are three very specific contingencies and specific scenarios related
to the organism in that context, but all three of
them contribute and they actually compliment one another. All three
of those different scenarios compliment one another as part of

(44:28):
the constellation of what they describe as altruistic behavior. So
that's how they kind of break that out. And that's
a very complex way of looking at altruistic behavior instead
of getting down to like the immediate contingencies.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
I really like the phrase constellation of altruistic behavior. I
feel like that'd be a good album name or maybe
something to go on a T shirt or a button
or something.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
I'm all about it. Let's do it, so look out
listeners for cool buttons coming sweet.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
I want to make like a fake constellation and then
have it say something like a constellation of vulture behavior.
But I don't know what the constellation should be of. Hmm,
it should be something funny.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
I mean, a platelet probably wouldn't look.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
It's just a disc, it's just a circle.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
To say, a blood cell will just look like a
doughnut exactly. So I think that brings us to our conclusions.
We can kind of wrap it up here because there's
not a lot to say beyond that. I think my
question here at the end of all this and my
conclusion would be, like, knowing all this and kind of
talking about this, is any of this helpful and understanding
or even just kind of is any of this is

(45:31):
helpful with altruistic behavior?

Speaker 1 (45:32):
I think it is helpful to understand what people have
said and thought about this topic over time, and I
think it's useful to also continue to have discussions around
what we mean when we use this term, because people
use this term, and when we want to promote this
idea of that pro social behavior, we want to promote

(45:55):
the idea of doing things for the good of the
larger sort of human context. Then yeah, I mean, why
not try and discuss that and really have an understanding
about what that means. So I don't think that we
added anything necessarily to the definition or that we have
answered the question of whether or not people are altruistic

(46:16):
or why they do altruistic things, but we have at
least been able to bring more discussion to this idea.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, and I mean, I think at the end of
the day, there's not there's just no there's no real
clear agreement. I think there's a lot of debate around
this topic in particular. Still, I think it's one of
those questions where it's almost become philosophical or ethical or
moral even in that realm, Like when you're kind of
conceptualizing all this, right, the idea is, well, what does
this really mean? And to me, it's like it's great

(46:45):
to kind of dig into that and what does it
really mean? But I think that the other side is, like,
as great as that part of it is, I don't
think that there's as much utility in having that discussion
when it comes down to the idea that like we're
just still it doesn't really matter or where the intention
is coming from. To me, it's like, if we're doing good,
we're doing good. If there's a benefit in helping people

(47:06):
and it's helpful, I think that to me is the
more important outcome. And that's kind of where this entire
discussion was driven For me, is like it's cool to
understand it. It's cool to understand where it's coming from
and how it's formed and what those motivations are, But
the more important thing is like there is a benefit
and it's helpful and people are doing good.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
I completely agree. I think it's worth avoiding talking about
altruism almost in the sense that it's bad. If we
talk at this idea of egoism, it almost makes it
sound like it's bad to say that when you're doing
altruistic things, you're just being selfish. That doesn't really help anybody,
because what that doesn't motivate anyone to want to do
those good things? Right, And so if just saying every

(47:47):
good thing you do is selfish is bad, well then
why would you do those selfless good things that are
supposed to be selfless? And so, yeah, I completely agree
that doing good things is good. Like whether or not
you benefit from them, it's still good. And on that
spectacular point that we probably just made ads all right,

(48:13):
let's get back to it, Like, just imagine it this way.
Do you have student loans from going to grad school?

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Yes? I do.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Let's imagine someone is like, I'm going to go pay
off Shane's student loans, all of them one hundred percent
paid off, so that I get a really big tax
break this year. Are you going to be upset? With
that person because they got a tax break. No, yeah,
you just got cleared of your student loans. Like, we're
not going to complain about this. So like the fact

(48:41):
that someone benefited from it does not make it a
bad thing to have done. Now, if they benefited from
it in a way that caused someone else to suffer, well,
in that case, we don't necessarily want to push that.
But just because you gained something from it is not
necessarily a problem. And I actually think that's why there's
been this shift in the terminology from instead of calling
some thing altruistic since we really weren't able to define

(49:02):
that as a species, to using a different term that's
maybe more parsimonious as you described, such as pro social
and or pro social behavior, and another one that I
think also really works inside of this, which is benevolence.
You know, this is maybe being magnanimous is another term
that makes more sense. And I like pro social the
most personally, because I think that that doesn't indicate in

(49:25):
any way that it has to lack reciprocation. It just
indicates that you are doing good things or things that
are supposed to be good for other people, and that
in and of itself is a perfectly laudable, appropriate thing
to do.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Yeah, I like it. One of the biggest takeaways too,
is like, depending on the definition, altruism either exists or
it doesn't. Right, And you can't say the same thing
about pro social behavior. Pro social behavior exists, it's defined well,
it's clear, like you can see the action related to it.
But like altruism, depending on how you define it, it
either exists or it doesn't. Like it's either there or

(49:58):
it's not. But I think at the end of the day,
just do good, you know. And I think that's kind
of what it comes down to for me, is like
whether you're doing it for selfish reasons or not, do
good as long as you're not hurting anybody.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Darn definitions.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Ah, So I will kind of where I want to
wrap up the conclusion is with this quote from Kurt Vonnegut.
I want to make sure I get it right. Okay, Okay,
go for it. This is directly from him. So he says,
I am a humanist, which means in part that I
have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or
punishments after I am dead or I think that's a
good place to end. So thank you Kurt vonnigaet for that.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
All right, let's get to the new parts of what
we have to say about altruism, all truism, all truism.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Yeah, let's talk about it. So obviously, when you listen
to the original episode, the hosts were bright and shiny
and hopeful, and it was right before the pandemic hit. Yeah,
and as you imagine, since the pandemic, since COVID. I
think one of the things, like this is not an
episode about COVID, but this is a part of this
conversation has to include the change in research patterns from

(51:03):
the time that COVID happened until today, and you're going
to see that in some of the literature that we're
going to share. So what we've seen in the body
of literature specifically to at least behavior analysis and when
it comes to well being, is that one, there were
increases in telehealth research across the board because people were
doing so much more telehealth because they were home. We
started looking at research around the impacts of COVID nineteen

(51:25):
on first responders and helping professions, and I think that's
really valuable in the context of understanding altruism and altruistic
types of behaviors and pro social behavior. We have to
look at people who are willing to give and sacrifice
and what that looks like in the toll that has
been taken on them. And also just generally speaking, the
effects of COVID on mental health. And so we saw
these big bursts of these articles that came out right

(51:47):
after the world shut down and we started going through
the initial stages of the pandemic.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
And there's probably something to be said in another conversation
about the effects that's had on some kids who were
at some very important developmental stages and went through a
very long period of time without socialization. And we met
some of these kids and they're kind of weird. We
call them COVID kids because they're weird. Yeah, because they
weren't around people.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
It's just a huge gap, and they were learning opportunities,
right and like so like they missed a year, I
mean a year a year and early intervention in early
learning is huge, it is.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Yeah, that's a huge amount of lost time. So anyway,
I don't mean that actually disparagingly, that's all of all
the kids are wonderful, but it's just something we noticed
I'm like, man, this seems like these I'm seeing more
and more of this among some of the kids for
whom they just missed those opportunities during that time.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Right.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
But anyway, we bring this up because this trend of
shifts and research and priorities and thoughts around these things
is visible even in the altruism research. So let's take
a quick look at what has been done since we
last discussed this and since we last met. So that
episode was probably recorded in January of twenty twenty, came
out at the beginning of February. That was before there

(52:58):
was really the idea that we were even that close
to a pandemic of any kind. There's a study that
was published in twenty twenty, which means it was done before,
or it could have been done during twenty twenty, but
it came out in twenty twenty by I'm going to
say cow maybe Chow h and friends. And this study
evaluated the use of financial incentives to alter pro social

(53:19):
contributions to an online review community, specifically Amazon reviews, and
found that financial incentives actually reduced the quality of the reviews,
where reviews that were incentivized were shorter and less specific
and it does kind of I think, actually make a
lot of sense to me to think that if you're
not leaving a review because you have something to say,

(53:41):
but because someone's asking you to say something andah, in
a sense broadly coercing you to say something, that that
thing that you have to say is going to be
less genuine, less authentic, and less meaningful.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah, and that's pretty much what they found was like
people who were more willing to share reviews in the
app sense of like a particular reward, we're more likely
to have authentic, accurate reviews and more comprehensive reviews than
those who were incentivized. Like, what they found is like
the sentence structure actually dropped to like a single sentence. Wow,
They're like this is good, and so like it became

(54:15):
more of a volume game than it became like an
actual quality review thing. So super interesting stuff as far
as like just understanding how incentives can actually demotivate people
to do a higher level of things.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Boy, and that's going to take some unpacking, I think
to help understand, because I think that people are going
to walk away from that with that understanding, with the
wrong understanding. Yes, so we might need to come back
around to this, but this is actually one of the
reasons that journals don't pay reviewers is that if you're
someone who's willing to take the time and sit down
and do a review, that's different than someone whose job

(54:46):
it is to sit down and do a review and
like how much you're and what you're going to bring
to the table. It gets into a lot of complexities
about language and values and things of that nature. But yeah,
the idea that you're financially incentivizing someone to state their
pinion about something can actually backfire in a big way,
depending on a lot of factors. So again, don't take
the wrong lesson here. Reinforcing behaviors has an important place,

(55:10):
and obviously like when you're correctly externally creating contingencies that
are like monetary in that way. But anyway, a thing
that they found that's worth noting.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, iwa Moto and friends in
twenty twenty, and this was late twenty twenty. They had
found I believe that they had done this in December
of twenty twenty. Okay, this was or at least it
was published, so like it was in this timeframe. So
they suggested that mindfulness meditation may improve pro social behavior
in some ways. So what they did was they looked
at a donation game where they included three hundred and

(55:41):
twenty six subjects and required mindfulness meditation prior to engagement
with the game for one of the groups. So one
group did not get mindful meditation and instruction, the other
group did. Those who engaged in meditation prior to the
game were two point sixty one times more likely to
donate in the game than the control group. And there
were a couple other things they found here too. They

(56:02):
actually controlled for sociodemographics, so like every group was like
made up of similar like a similar demographic makeup, so
like they were able to control for that a little bit,
and they found that there was a higher rate of
change for those who did not go to college and
those who were under twenty five. Interesting, both groups contributed
nothing in the control group, so like the folks who

(56:22):
did not go to college and the folks that were
under twenty five contributed nothing during the control group, but
they found a much higher rate once they received this meditation.
So that was kind of an interesting finding.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Yeah, yeah, that is interesting. Another one Sparrow and Friends
in twenty twenty one found that as we age were
more likely to engage in what could be defined as
altruistic behavior. This is loosely defined here is socially desirable
responding that benefits others. There are some factors that play
a role, though, including physical ability, cognitive state, social access,

(56:54):
et cetera. Further, altruistic behaviors may rapidly decline in advanced old,
which is definitely something I see. I think we see
among the voting population. Yeah, who go aggressively the other direction. Yeah,
it's really bizarre and wear red hats. Yeah yeah, yeah,
so there's that.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
Now. Parent in twenty twenty three used restaurant tipping as
data to evaluate gender differences and altruism related behaviors, and
they found some interesting things in this. Now, I again,
when we talk about some of these studies, I think
it's it's important to understand that what we're ultimately talking
about is pro social behavior and like giving behavior, not
necessarily like people are kind of like lumping these in

(57:35):
as what could be described or defined as altruistic behaviors.
But it's a little like we kind of talked about
the beginning of the episode or even this might have
been off air where it's like it depends on how
you define it and what you want to include and
what your inclusion criterion is, right, So like that makes
it a little bit challenging. But what parent found was one,
women are more likely to tip higher when the altruism
is cheaper, So they basically found that like they were

(57:58):
more likely to tip when it didn't cost as much
or the risk wasn't as great, okay. Where they also
found that men are more likely to tip higher when
the altruism is expensive, so like there's maybe a greater
risk or they're more likely to step in in to
provide a higher rate of whatever giving they're engaged with.
And then it actually found three that women are more
sensitive and responsive to the price of altruism, so they

(58:19):
were kind of like more likely to respond individually to
pro social circumstances. I guess is what they're saying. What
I found out of this this study was nothing. I
found this useless.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
That's that's a very weird way to try and parse
those things out. That feels like a very social psychology
way to ask that question.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just went, I went, how is
this useful? Yeah, Like, what is this telling us and
arguably like gender binary studies like this just go I
kind of go.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
Like, yeah, they don't.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
It doesn't really do anything for me.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Yeah, it's probably one of those statistically significant where it
was like this one was three point two one five
and this one is three point two one five one
more likely with the biggest pool of participants, that's statistically significant.
I'm like, right, yeah, but is it significant though? Like
is it? What is it?

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Try again? Yeah, Cameraon and Friends in twenty twenty four
found that across nine studies and three thousand, six hundred
and nineteen participants, let's round that up to a cool
thirty seven hundred thirty six hundred. They'll rundown. That's technically
how rounding works. The occurrence of psychological distress, burnout, anxiety, depression,
and PTSD were present among large group of aid workers,

(59:34):
the people who do a lot of this work that
is to help others and oftentimes at risk to themselves
and great personal effort and energy expended and maybe lost
sleep and stress and those sort of things.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
Yeah and so, And the reason this study came up
in the altruism research is because they were looking at
helping professions. So they were looking at people who get
into fields because they want to help and they want
to give, and they were finding that, especially after COVID,
there was a huge burst in psychological distress among folks
that work in this type of profession. So, you know,
they were basically saying that, like there was a for

(01:00:09):
those folks who choose to work in spaces that have
altruistic motives, they are at risk of a higher rate
of mental health concerns because of something like this. That's
kind of what they were ending up on.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
So makes a lot of sense. Yeah, people who listen
to ads are at a higher risk of mental health distress. Okay,
we're back. We just sort of wrapping up putting a
bow on this. I think together what we could sort
of glean from this information is that altruistic behavior is

(01:00:44):
more likely pro social behavior that can be subjected and
influenced by many factors, financial influence, personal values, apparently meditation,
and that high rate altruistic behavior can produce negative effects
if it's not managed and supported appropriately. I do think
that they're all of this does sort of again bring
up the question of like what is altruism and in

(01:01:05):
depending on how you just choose to define it then,
like it may or may not even be a thing.
Like if altruism is you do something for the benefit
of others and it has absolutely benefit to yourself, I
just don't think you can manufacture a scenario where that
is plausibly true. But if you want to say altruism
is you just do something that had the primary motivation
is to help others, whether or not you get a
benefit out of it, then fine, Like we could call

(01:01:27):
those altruistic behaviors, And there's probably a meaningful reason to
categorize such behaviors because it does sort of speak to
someone's motivation to generally try and put good out in
the world, Like they're likely to do something that helps
other people even when they don't have a direct benefit
to themselves. Is actually kind of a reasonable predictor of
what their behavior might be in certain circumstances. So I
could see that being a reasonable way to classify that. Yeah, awesome,

(01:01:50):
Well I think that's what we have to say about
altruism revisited part do kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
Yeah, I mean we just kind of land on the
same thing, which is like it there's lots of and
I just feel like, just try to be good to people,
and I think you'll be okay. It doesn't matter if
you call it altruism or not.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
Yeah, But with that, we're going to go and wrap
this one up. If you'd like to tell us your
thoughts on anything we said here in the previous episode
or the updated information we've provided, you can reach out
to us at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com. That's our
email email us there. You can also reach us on
the social media platform and we do look forward to
hearing from you. If you'd like to support us, you
can leave us a rating, a review rating a five

(01:02:26):
stars or ten or however many that it goes to
a review that says nice things, and you can also
like and then subscribe to make sure you catch all
future episodes. Financially, you can support us by going to Patreon.
If you go there, you get ad Freak episodes, early episodes,
bonus content, and at the end of our full length
discussions such as this one, I'll read the names of
the people who have taken the leap to help support us,
because it is so kind and generous of them to

(01:02:48):
do this. So a giant shout out and thank you
to Mike, m Megan Mike t Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley,
Kiara and Charlie for continuing to help us BEG podcast
all this time, for so many years in many of
these cases.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Yeah, absolutely, thank.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
You to my team of people, without whom I cannot
make this writing and fact checking from Shane to myself.
Thank you for putting together this nostalgia Shane.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Yeah, I'm happy to write some notes and hang out
and talk about things.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
Very altruistic of you, you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
Know, I have my moments. I'm a giving man.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
Indeed generous, generous. Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson.
And speaking of generous, our god, Emperor, Lord of All
producer Justin, who.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Was always gives never taste, Yes, who.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
Is absolutely the best and most wonderful. So thank you
to my team of people. I think with that we're
ready to give some recommendations.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Yeah, let's do it recommendations.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
I'm recommending a movie. It came out in the last
year or so I remember when exactly. This is a
sequel to a horror movie, so be warned. If you're
not into horror movies, this is probably not for you.
But there was this horror movie that came out called
Ready or Not, And the idea of that one was
that this woman marries into this family and as a

(01:04:08):
part of the ritual, they have to choose a game
to play on their wedding night that the whole family plays,
and normally it's just a game unless they pull the
hide and Seek card, in which case it now becomes
a murder game where they're actually trying to kill each other. Sure,
long story short, the girl survives and the rest of
the family does not. This innocent girl, who like just
sort of married in this family didn't know their crazy past.

(01:04:30):
This movie picks up literally at the exact same scene
that the previous one ended and goes on to an
even crazier story and it is just bonkers and it's
so much fun. And it didn't get the highest ratings.
But I was like, I honestly don't know why. I
think because it's a female led sequel, because like all
star cast in this, like they had so many people

(01:04:52):
in here. Elijah Wood is a main actor. Kevin Durand
is in it. Briefly, we've got the returning actor whose
name is Samara Weaving, and then a new actor joining
the cast as her sister who is Catherine Newton. It's
also got Sarah Michelle Geller Sean hat to See, which
people will know from the pit recently, if I mean,
he's been on tons of things, is a super prolific actor.

(01:05:12):
But those some of the new stuff, Nestor Carbonell, lots
of like star studded cast, and it's just it's so
much fun. It's a ridiculous, over the top, fun horror movie.
And I thought the writing on it was fantastic and
it was just really entertaining. So if you're into that
sort of thing, go check it out, ready or not
to here I.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Come so fun, it looks like it's a lot of fun,
so I was like looking forward to checking it out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Yeah, streaming on Hulu, which means I think Disney Plus now.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Yes, yes, yes, all right, speaking of Disney Plus and Hulu,
I'm also going to recommend a thing to watch. It
is a show. It is the fifth season of this show,
and it is The Bear. But I am also recommending
the episode Gary that goes along with it. It's a companion
episode that is just beautiful. So if you've not watched
The Bear, it is a very accurate depiction of what

(01:05:57):
it's like to work in a restaurant. Yeah, as somebody
who's worked in a really high octane restaurant. Yeah, it's
pretty accurate. But it's got so much heart and it's
so beautiful. I feel like it is an absolutely beautifully
shot show and absolutely so far, I have not finished
up season five, but it takes place in a single day,

(01:06:17):
which I mean for the most part, which I think
is a really cool choice and a lot of fun
and also just really stressful, like the entire show.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
Is, Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
And then Gary is really cool because it's Richie and Mikey, who,
by the way, Richie has become I think my favorite
character on the entire show. Richie and Tina I think
are the best.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
And so it's Richie and Mikey and they go to Gary,
Indiana for a what Michie Richie calls a mission, which
is just amazing and incredible and funny and sad and
all the things that go along with it. And it's
an hour long and it is just so great, such
a great, great addition to this this entire show. So yeah,
so go watch it. Go watch the Bear if you
haven't watched any of them. Start with the first one

(01:06:59):
because it's really good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Yeah, I second that I finished this season and strong
recommend for sure. That actually may have been my recommend
if I hadn't just also watched Whether or Not to
Here I Come. So Yeah, the bear love it all right.
I think that's what we have to stay up about this. Thanks,
thank you all for listening. Thank you for recording with
me today, Shane.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
Anytime, thank you. This is Abraham, This is Shane.

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
We're out.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Yep. You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
and we hope you have an awesome day

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