When can we call behavior Altruistic?
November 9th, 2009
I was roaming the econo-blogosphere the other day and happened across one of the “lists o’ links” that Tyler Cowen dumps on occasion. One link in particular caught my eye, “How to increase altruism in toddlers“. Being very interested in altruism (not so much being altruistic as much as trying to understand it..) I went to the link and read about a study they did on toddlers. The gist of which I’ll quote here:
Sixty 18-month-old infants were shown eight photos of household objects, such as teapots, books or shoes. Crucially, infants were divided into four groups, with each group shown one of four versions of these photos. One “affiliated” version featured in the background two dolls standing together side by side; another version featured a doll in the background on its own; the third version featured two dolls facing away from each other; and the final version merely had toy bricks in the background.
After they’d been shown these photos, another experimenter walked over to the infants and dropped a bunch of pens on route. Amazingly, the infants who’d seen the photos with the companionable dolls in the background were three times as likely as the other infants to help the experimenter by spontaneously picking up one or more sticks and handing it to the experimenter.
…
“Our data suggest that surprisingly subtle changes to our social environment may promote prosocial behaviour in our children.”
The bold is my doing, it’s the most important part. So, after reading this I said to myself ‘ok, so being shown pictures of dolls made these subjects more likely to help someone pick up pens after dropping them..’ but.. the name of the article is “How to increase altruism in toddlers”. Maybe the name came from the editors of the blog (very likely) but maybe it’s from the people who conducted the study…
This prompted me to ask myself, How do we know it was altruistic behavior? Sure I agree it is ‘prosocial’, but altruistic… I don’t know. This brings up the question – when is ‘prosocial’ behavior altrusitic? It seems to me that a great deal of ‘prosocial’ behavior is done for self-interested reasons.
Just because someone does something which doesn’t pay them, or give them tangible profit (like a piece of candy, or award), doesn’t mean it’s altruistic behavior. Here’s the definition of altruism from some popular sites:
Merriam-Webster says Altruism is:
unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others
Wikipedia says Altruism is:
Altruism is selfless concern for the welfare of others.
Dictionary.com says Altruism is:
the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others
So, I think it’s safe to say that Altruism is behavior which is not self-interested. My problem here is, how can we tell when behavior is self-less? Just because no money, prize or gift changes hands doesn’t mean their aren’t other self-interested motives for behaving a certain way. It seems to me that Altruism is entirely subjective, and unless someone is a mind-reader – then we are unable to ever deem for certain that a behavior was altruistic.
Take this toddler study for example:
Couldn’t the toddlers have helped the adult pick the pens up for many (some would say infinite) self-interested reasons:
- Maybe the toddler thought the adult would think more highly of them (psychic profit)
- Maybe the toddler thought they would somehow ‘do good’ on the study/test they were undergoing
- Maybe the toddler thought the goal of the study could be affected by what they did, thereby they tried to ‘win’
- Maybe they became more aware of social mores/norms after seeing the picture, and in wanting to personally fit-in and be thought of as a ‘good person’ by their parents/on-lookers they decided to help the adult (social profit? psychic profit from knowing you have a positive reputation and for ‘fitting in’ to society?)
My interpretation of this study: seeing the certain pictures of dolls made toddlers more likely to be aware of the intangible gain from ‘prosocial’ behavior, which made them more likely to help the adult pick up pens just after seeing these pictures. I think seeing the picture of the dolls holding hands, or w/e, subconsciously made these toddlers aware of the intangible gains of ‘prosocial’ behavior -> thus making them helping the adult actually self-interested behavior.
To answer my posts title: When can we call behavior Altruistic? Once we can read minds. Unless we know the motivations behind a given behavior then we cannot know whether or not the intentions were self-interested or self-less.
Categories: Altruism
