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Transcript
30———Altruistic Punishment responsibility for the welfare of others. They also tend to be more empathic and caring about others than are more egoistically oriented helpers. In one interesting line of research, Mario Mikulincer, Phillip Shaver, and their colleagues have shown that people with a secure attachment style—that is, people who feel secure and trusting in their relationships with their closest caregivers (parents, romantic partners, and others)—tend to have more altruistic motives in a variety of helping contexts, including volunteerism (e.g., charity work). Insecure attachment styles, on the other hand, either discourage helping or foster more egoistic motives for helping. Among the contextual factors that influence altruism, characteristics of the relationship between helper and recipient are very important. Empathy is strongly related to altruistic helping, in two ways: Empathy involves taking the perspective of the other, and empathy fosters compassionate caring. Both are more likely in close, personal relationships, and because people typically care about the welfare of their close friends, both tend to increase the likelihood of altruistically motivated helping. Identifying with the other person is another contextual factor thought to increase the likelihood of altruism. This sense of connection with the other appears to be particularly important for explaining altruistic helping to kin and in group contexts. The former refers to the well-documented fact that the probability of an altruistic act is greater to the extent that the recipient shares the helper’s genes; for example, people are more likely to help their children than their nieces and nephews but are more likely to help the latter than their distant relatives or strangers. As for the latter, altruistic helping is more common with members of one’s ingroups (the social groups to which one feels that he or she belongs) than with outsiders to those groups. Many examples of personal sacrifice during wartime can be understood as ingroup altruism. Other studies have shown that when the potential helper’s sense of empathy is aroused, altruistically based helping tends to increase. This can be done, for example, by asking research participants to imagine how the other person feels in this situation, as opposed to staying objective and detached. This kind of research is particularly useful for researchers seeking ways to increase altruistic helping in the modern world. It suggests that awareness of the needs of others, combined with some desire to assist them, may be effective. Harry T. Reis See also Empathy; Empathy–Altruism Hypothesis; Helping Behavior; Prosocial Behavior Further Readings Batson, C. D. (1991). The altruism question: Toward a social-psychological answer. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. ALTRUISTIC PUNISHMENT Definition An act is altruistic if it is costly for the acting individual and beneficial for someone else. Thus, punishment is altruistic if it is costly for the punisher and if the punished person’s behavior changes such that others benefit. This definition does not require an altruistic motivation. Example Think of queuing as an instructive example. Telling a queue jumper to stand in line is probably (psychologically) costly for the person confronting the queue jumper. If the queue jumper gets back into line, all people who were put at a disadvantage by the queue jumper benefit. Evidence Scientific evidence for altruistic punishment comes from laboratory “public goods” experiments. In a typical public goods experiment, participants are randomly allocated to groups of four players. Each player is endowed with money units and has to decide how many to keep for him- or herself and how many to invest into a “the public good.” The experimenter doubles the sum invested into the public good and distributes the doubled sum equally among the four group members. Thus, every group member receives a quarter of the doubled sum, irrespective of his or her contribution. This experiment describes a cooperation problem: If everyone invests into the public good, the group is better off collectively; yet free riding makes everyone better off individually. The experiments are conducted anonymously, and participants get paid according to their decisions. The public goods game is conducted several times but with new group members in each repetition. To Ambivalence———31 contribute under such circumstances is altruistic: Contributing is costly, and all other group members benefit. The typical result is that people initially invest into the public good, but altruistic cooperation eventually collapses. Now consider the following treatment: After participants make their contribution, they learn how much others contributed. Participants then have the possibility to punish the other group members. Punishment is costly: The punishing individual has to pay one money unit, and the punished individual loses three money units. A money-maximizing individual will never punish, because punishment is costly and there are no further interactions with the punished individual. Yet, numerous experiments have shown that many people nevertheless punish and free riding becomes rare. Thus, punishment is altruistic because people incur costs to punish irrespective of no future interactions with the punished individual and because the future partners of the punished free rider benefit from the free rider’s cooperation. Theoretical Relevance Evolutionary and economic theories can explain cooperation by selfish individuals if the benefits of cooperating exceed the costs. Kinship, repeated interactions with the same individuals and reputation formation are channels through which benefits might exceed costs. From the viewpoint of these theories, altruistic punishment is a puzzle, because none of these channels was possible in the experiments and because the costs of punishing outweigh the benefits for the punishing individual. Simon Gächter See also Altruism; Empathy–Altruism Hypothesis; Reciprocal Altruism Further Readings Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425, 785–791. Fehr, E., & Gächter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415, 137–140. other times sad. From this perspective, feelings— generally referred to as affect, which includes such phenomena as attitudes, emotions, and moods—work in much the same way as temperature. Just as temperature falls along a simple dimension ranging from hot to cold, so, too, does affect fall along a simple dimension ranging from positive to negative. A closer look, however, reveals that affect may be more complex than it first appears. Consider your attitude toward ice cream. You may like ice cream because it tastes good but also dislike ice cream because that great taste comes at the expense of vast amounts of fat, sugar, and calories. If so, you would have what social psychologists call an ambivalent attitude toward ice cream. That is, you feel good and bad about it, rather than simply good or bad. Many people are ambivalent not only about unhealthy foods but about broccoli and other healthy foods as well. Similarly, many people are ambivalent about such unhealthy behaviors as smoking, as well as such healthy behaviors as exercising. As people who describe themselves as having love/hate relationships know, other people can also be a common source of ambivalence. For instance, many people are ambivalent about U.S. presidents Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. Perhaps people feel ambivalent about politicians because they feel ambivalent about the social issues that politicians debate. In addition to disagreeing with each over such troubling issues as legalized abortion, capital punishment, and civil rights, people often disagree with themselves. Such instances of ambivalence suggest that the analogy between temperature and affect can be taken only so far. It is impossible for liquids to freeze and boil at the same time, but it appears that people can feel both good and bad about the same object. According to John Cacioppo and Gary Berntson’s evaluative space model, one implication is that it is better to think of positive and negative affect as separate dimensions rather than opposite ends of a single dimension ranging from positive to negative. From this perspective, people can feel any pattern of positive and negative affect at the same time, including high levels of both. Attitudinal Ambivalence AMBIVALENCE Definition People like some things yet dislike others, love some people but hate others, and sometimes feel happy and Contemporary interest in ambivalence stems from social psychologists’ enduring efforts to understand the nature of attitudes, which refer to people’s opinions of people, ideas, and things. Social psychologists have long measured attitudes by asking people to indicate how they feel about attitude objects (e.g., ice cream)