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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)