Do altruistic behaviors stem from true altruism or are they a manifestation of selfishness?

This article explores various hypotheses that argue that human altruistic behavior is not motivated by genuine altruism, but is actually a manifestation of our selfish nature to pursue our own interests.

 

Altruism refers to the psychological trait of wanting to help others, regardless of the reward, in order to promote their well-being. Donating blood, volunteering, and giving money are examples of altruistic behaviors. Altruistic behaviors are common in our society and are often encouraged. However, there are times when helping others is not understood. According to our self-interest calculus, it’s natural to act in our own self-interest. Nevertheless, why do we see altruistic behavior in people? Consider the following fable
Once upon a time, there was a village on an island far away from the mainland. All of the people living here couldn’t bend their arms, so they couldn’t feed themselves. Someone had to feed them if they didn’t want to starve. There were two kinds of people in this island village: those who could help others and those who could only take care of themselves. If they saw a hungry person, they would put food in that person’s mouth. The selfish people would only accept food from others and never feed others.
What would you do in this situation? “Feed each other” is probably the ideal answer. However, feeding another person without bending your arms is a laborious activity that benefits the other person but not you. Furthermore, there’s no guarantee that if you feed someone else, they’ll feed you back. Perhaps the most personally beneficial behavior is to accept food from others and not lift a finger to feed yourself. But if you’re constantly being fed, it’s a different story. The people who are feeding you will remember you as a taker and won’t want to feed you again. In this case, the people who didn’t help others will starve to death, and they will be forced to feed others in order to survive.
In this way, according to the individual’s self-interest calculation, it is more rational to help others for their future benefit than to take from them without helping them. According to this perspective, altruistic behavior does not stem from altruism to help others regardless of the reward, but rather from selfishness to pursue one’s own interests. In other words, human selfishness has created altruism. In addition to the stories of people who don’t bend their arms, there are many theories that prove this. We’ll talk about them below.
First, there are examples of altruistic behavior in humans, including the “selfish gene”. Altruistic behavior within a kinship group that shares the same genes can be explained by an individual’s selfish nature. Take the example of parents who are devoted to their children. They dedicate a quarter of their life to their child’s success. This is explained by our genetic nature to reproduce our own genes as much as possible. This is because children are the replicators and transmitters of their parents’ genes. If children survive and continue to have children, they will directly or indirectly contribute to the reproduction of their parents’ genes, so being altruistic to their children helps them pass on their own genes. Similarly, this concept can be extended to brothers, sisters, and relatives, which may explain the development of altruistic behavior in early human societies that were kin-based. The British evolutionary biologist Hamilton called this phenomenon “kin selection,” and it can also explain the highly decentralized and altruistic societies found in bees, ants, and others.
The second is the recurrence-reciprocity hypothesis. This hypothesis explains the altruistic behavior in the story of the people who refused to bend their arms. Altruistic behavior can be explained by humans doing favors for long-term benefits that will come back to them in the future in repeated interactions. For example, feeding someone else so that they don’t starve later. This idea that altruistic behavior occurs when an individual does a favor for another person and that person is more likely to do a favor for them in the future is called the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis. The idea is that altruistic behaviors that seem to be for the benefit of others are actually selfish investments to benefit oneself in the future. The repetition-reciprocity hypothesis requires two conditions: a long duration of the relationship and repeated transactions. In the “village of unbending arms,” people would have remained neighbors unless they moved to another village, and every time they ate, they would have exchanged food for food. This is what we mean by “long-lasting relationships” and “repeated transactions”. It’s likely that these conditions were met in the history of humans living in small groups, creating a social environment in which altruistic behavior could evolve.
If you’re up to this point, you may be asking, “How do we explain altruistic behavior that occurs in the absence of kinship or repeated relationships? The answer to this question is that altruistic behavior in our society is more often performed by strangers, but it can also be explained by human selfishness. To explain this, economist Harbert Gintis defines the concept of “strong reciprocity” and suggests that the answer lies in the social environment, which is rooted in our selfish nature. Strong reciprocity refers to the tendency to act for the benefit of others, even if it is to one’s own detriment. This strong reciprocity can be explained by the social environment, which is derived from human selfishness.
The first example of a social environment that is driven by self-interest is the “herd mentality hypothesis”. In societies where people live in clusters, there is a phenomenon called “herding behavior”. Altruistic people tend to associate with altruistic people. This is because it maximizes their own self-interest. If altruistic people are constantly surrounded by selfish people, they will eventually starve to death. Therefore, altruistic people will associate with altruistic people, creating a good environment for cooperative behavior to be maintained and evolve. In the end, the act of “getting along” is about gaining without losing. This can be seen as an outgrowth of our “selfish” nature. Therefore, we can explain that altruistic behavior comes from social environments that are driven by our selfish nature.
The second example is the “group selection hypothesis”. The group selection hypothesis can be seen in a similar vein to the kin selection hypothesis. Whereas the kin selection hypothesis explains altruistic behavior within kinship, the group selection hypothesis explains altruistic behavior between members of a group. Altruistic behavior is defined as “behavior that involves sacrifice or cost to the individual but benefits other members of the group. The more altruistic individuals a society has, the more likely it is that the group will be successful, and the more likely it is to survive harsh environments or intergroup competition. From an individual’s perspective, altruism may be a “sacrificial” act that involves taking a loss for the sake of others, but from a group’s perspective, it can be seen as a “selfish” act to survive competition between groups. This is in line with the kinship selection hypothesis, which states that people perform altruistic acts to members of their kinship group in order to spread their genes.
The above hypotheses suggest that altruistic behavior may have its origins in selfishness. Of course, there are some altruistic behaviors that cannot be fully explained by human selfishness, such as the psychological satisfaction of performing altruistic acts. However, at the very least, it is clear that altruistic behavior cannot be attributed purely to the desire to help others regardless of the reward. The selfish nature of human beings should not be left out of the discussion of altruism. Therefore, we can change the definition of altruism to “altruism is the quality of human selfishness manifested in the act of helping others. By redefining altruism, I hope this article will encourage readers to think about what altruistic behavior really is and who it is for.