What is Altruism?

A quick google search for altruism and you would find it defined as, “the unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.” In other words, altruism is the idea that someone can do something for another even though they get nothing in return.

People Considered Altruists by Many

  • Mother Teresa who ministering to lepers, the homeless and the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta.
  • Mahatma Gandhi who popularized the nonviolence resistance movement.
  • Warren Buffett, who has pledged that 99% of his wealth will go to philanthropy

Now I’m sure we all can agree that these are amazing people that have made or are making the world a better place but are they altruistic?

What Makes Someone an Altruist?

To answer this, we first need to look at the necessary conditions for altruism to exist:

  • Someone must perform some action or deed for another.
  • They received noextrinsic motivation to perform the act:
    • No external reward for acting such as money, fame, recognition, etc.
    • No external punishment for not acting such as jail time, death, etc.
  • They received nointrinsic motivation to perform the act:
    • No internal reward such as fulfillment, joy, a sense of purpose, or any positive emotion.
    • No internal punishment for not acting such as guilt, sadness, pity, or any other negative emotion.

By definition, without these conditions being met, pure altruism cannot occur. Finding instances of good deeds without extrinsic motivations is easy, people do this all of the time, but intrinsic motivation is where it gets tricky. In order for there to be no intrinsic motivation, one would have to have zero emotional drive–completely indifferent to anything and everything.

What Does Zero Intrinsic Motivation Look Like?

Such conditions can be observed when researchers block the function of dopamine in rats. What results is that they lose their ability to be rewarded from their actions and as a result have no internal or external drive to do much of anything and will thus lay down until they starve (Szczypka, 1999).

Does True Altruism Exist?

Now I don’t want to come off as a cynic but if you extend this line of thinking to its logical conclusion: some people may have the potential to be purely altruistic, but we may never know because no one is under the conditions in which pure altruism can be demonstrated. If you do end up being unlucky enough to be the first under such circumstances, on the bright side, that would be your chance to prove my theory wrong by helping an old lady cross the street or something.

What About the Amazing People Mentioned Earlier?

No matter how compassionate and kindhearted these people are they still had some internal motivation for performing those deeds. For instance, Mother Teresa was driven by an internal desire to help those in need and Bill Gates probably feels a sense of fulfillment to see how his donations have helped so many. Of course, these are scenarios in which good deeds are done for benevolent reasons, but the truth is good deeds can even result from selfish motives. Take, for instance, the benefit that price gougers provide disaster areas despite their questionable motives. You can read more about that here.

Important Takeaway

This takes me to my main point: Altruism is an illusion, and that is not a bad thing. The same emotions and intrinsic motivations that make altruism impossible are the same things that motivate people to do good deeds all over the world.

If helping one another because we feel an inclination to do so isn’t altruism, then who needs altruism anyway.

References: 

Szczypka, M. S., Rainey, M. A., Kim, D. S., Alaynick, W. A., Marck, B. T., Matsumoto, A. M., & Palmiter, R. D. (1999). Feeding behavior in dopamine-deficient mice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 96(21), 12138-43.

–Christophe Garon

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