Reading focus
Syllabus: Why Do People Help and Cooperate?
Separate the consequences of an act from the goal the helper is proposed to value.
Why you’re reading it. Establish a vocabulary for evaluating the helping experiments and the later use of altruism in cooperation research.
A question to consider. A donor feels pleased after giving anonymously. What does that observation establish about why they gave, and what remains open?
Why this reading
A helpful action can benefit its recipient while also bringing relief, approval, or satisfaction to its performer. Batson and Shaw explain why those consequences do not, by themselves, reveal what the person was trying to achieve. Their account makes competing explanations of helping open to evidence.
Before you read
An ultimate goal is valued for its own sake; an instrumental goal is a means to something else. The authors use altruism for an ultimate concern with another person's welfare, and egoism for an ultimate concern with one's own. These are claims about motivation, not judgments of character. More than one motive may contribute to an action.
Read for
- Follow the distinction between a goal and a foreseeable side effect: feeling good after helping need not have been the aim.
- Compare the predictions of empathic concern, relief from personal distress, avoidance of punishment, and pursuit of reward.
- Examine what would count against each explanation and whether its definition allows any possible contrary evidence.
Consider afterwards
- Would helping privately, at a cost, prove that the helper's ultimate goal was another person's welfare? Explain the remaining alternatives.
- What observation could distinguish two motives that both predict helping in an ordinary situation?
Editorial context
This is a theoretical review that argues for more than one kind of prosocial motivation. Its interpretation of the experiments is a reasoned position, not a direct observation of ultimate goals. The authors consider challenges to the empathy–altruism account and leave room for further alternatives. Their psychological definition of altruism should be distinguished from definitions based on material or reproductive costs.