 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
Empathy
Some psychologists have suggested that feelings of empathy are what prompt us to help others. According to the empathy hypothesis of altruism <REF>(Batson, 1995), individuals are more likely to extend help to a person in need if they can imagine themselves in a similar situation. The more that we know about a victim, and the more similar to us they appear to be, the more likely we are to empathize with their predicament. If we have been fired in the past, we can more easily empathize with someone who has been downsized; if we have been the victim of a crime, we're more likely to help out another victim. When we are able to feel the distress of another person as if it were our own, we are motivated to try and end that distress <REF>(Davis, 1996). In one laboratory study of empathy, experimenters told college students that they would be required to watch another student, a young woman named Elaine, receive painful electrical shocks. When Elaine (actually a confederate playing the part of a student) complained that she was deathly afraid of electricity, the experimenters asked the subjects if they would trade places with her and receive the shocks in her stead. The researchers found that participants were more likely to volunteer to take Elaine's place and spare her the shocks if they believed that she was very similar to them, and if they could easily imagine themselves being in her position <REF>(Batson and others, 1981). Instinct
Could it be that altruism is natural, that we possess an innate instinct to help other members of our species if they are in distress? At first glance, the idea that altruistic behavior could be instinctive seems to be far-fetched. After all, by definition, an instinct is a behavior pattern that has been preserved in our genes because it has enabled our ancestors to survive, reproduce, and pass on more copies of those genes. Generally, we find that instincts are selfish, intended to help the individual organism to survive - often at the expense of others. How could prosocial behaviors that are costly or dangerous, without any direct benefit to us, provide any sort of survival advantage? How could they spread in the population? Biologists and evolutionary psychologists have, however, proposed an ingenious mechanism to get around these objections: the theory of kin selection <REF>(Hamilton, 1972). If the people we choose to help are related to us (our "kin"),
then we will be giving an advantage to |
||||||||||||
|
those
who share at least some of our genes. If more of our relatives
tend to survive and reproduce as a result our assistance, over
time it may have the effect of perpetuating many of our genetic
traits, including, perhaps, the trait of altruism. It has been
argued that kin selection might help explain why individuals are
relatively more likely to help family members than strangers.
However, the principle of kin selection would have more difficulty
in accounting for the many instances where people choose to risk
their lives for complete strangers (individuals unlikely to share
any of their genes).