Selflessness Through Selfishness.

Whether you're a director of a non-profit, founder of a charity, fundraiser for a political campaign, or just an individual passionate about change, you want people to care about your cause. Moreover, you want people to channel that care into prosocial behavior, particularly in the form of donations of money, time, and resources. But why do people act prosocially? What motivates us to do good for one another?

I want you guys to meet my friend, Gary. Gary's not the most productive member of society; he spends most of his day eating and desperately trying to pick up chicks. Then again, Gary is a gazelle (more specifically, a Thomson's gazelle), so I suppose we can cut him some slack.

Aside from Gary's lack of constructive hobbies, he's actually a pretty good dude. In fact, a few years back, scientists even reported seeing Gary put his own life in danger to save his family and friends.

Allow me to set the scene for you: it was a warm afternoon in the Serengeti. Gary and his herd were grazing the grasslands when one pack member noticed some movement in the brush up ahead. The entire herd instinctively went perfectly still, aside from the flitting of anxious ears attempting to detect any additional signs of danger. Just then, as their attention was focused on the suspicious activity in the brush, they heard the unmistakable sound of galloping paws behind them: it was an ambush.

In an instant, Gary's entire herd bolted. The gazelles moved swiftly, with a type of urgency and desperation that can only be summoned by the hunted. Gary's herd was fast, but their predators gave relentless pursuit, working in unison to drive the gazelles toward the most treacherous parts of the landscape. When the fate of the gazelles seemed all but sealed, scientists saw Gary do something peculiar; something uncharacteristically selfless. In mid-sprint, he jumped high into the air with all four legs held stiff and straight, momentarily capturing the predators' collective attention.

The behavior Gary displayed (seen below) is known as stotting. Several gazelles died that day, but the scientists spoke with admiration of what Gary had done. Perhaps if not for his heroics, the massacre could have been far greater.

In the following years, scientists began to closely observe this peculiar stotting behavior. Why would gazelles like Gary do such a thing? Is the bond Thomson's gazelles share so unusually strong that they're willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of their brethren? And if so, how did this exceptionally selfless behavior evolve?

However, as scientists pored through the data, they began to uncover some surprising trends. It turns out that, contrary to their hypothesis, gazelles that stotted less were actually more likely to be targeted by predators. Additionally, gazelles who were chased but managed to escape were more likely than their unsuccessful (i.e. dead) peers to be chronic stotters (FitzGibbon & Fanshawe, 1988). It turns out that stotting - rather than being a means of distracting predators so others could escape - was actually a way gazelles signaled to predators how athletic they are. Essentially, it was a means of informing whomever happens to be chasing them that going after me would be a waste of your time when you could more easily track and kill my less fit mates.

So it turns out Gary wasn't as magnanimous as I had thought, but in my defense, prosocial behavior - or behavior that either benefits others directly or has positive social consequences more broadly - is complicated. As was the case with stotting, what may appear to be a prosocial deed is often just a selfish act masquerading as an unselfish one. As Richard Dawkins soberly (yet in no uncertain terms) concedes in his book The Selfish Gene, evolutionary forces rarely favor the unconditional deployment of kindness. This is because indiscriminately helpful groups are vulnerable to infiltration and exploitation by savvy, selfish agents. In this way, unconditional kindness could never prevail via natural selection because creatures that employed this strategy would be mercilessly and repeatedly victimized by their more malevolent neighbors, ultimately reducing their evolutionary fitness to the point that their genes - the ones causing them to be unreservedly kind - would vanish from the gene pool.

The Evolution Of Kindness

Clearly, however, we all have the capacity deploy kindness when appropriate. Despite the ubiquity of negativity on the national news, stories concerning acts of warmth and generosity can be easily found by those so inclined to look for them. The question, therefore, is not does prosocial behavior exist, but rather why prosocial behavior exists? What is the primary driver of such behavior? Is stimulating prosocial behavior more about awakening people's benevolence or more about strategically harnessing their selfishness?

The last question can be reframed in terms of motivation: is prosocial behavior more likely to be catalyzed by altruism or egoism? Altruism is a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another's welfare (Batson, 2011), while egoism is a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing one's own welfare. When most of us conceptualize prosocial deeds, we typically do so through the lens of altruism. In this way, we tend to romanticize prosociality, which has the potential to be both misleading and counterproductive.

Many - including myself - would argue that the majority of prosocial behavior (even much of what would be mislabeled as altruism) is actually the result of conscious or subconscious egoism. However, I would also argue that this revelation shouldn't be as disconcerting as the knee-jerk reaction many of you just had to that last sentence would suggest. In fact, for those of us trying to coax others into prosocial states, this is actually a good thing. Altruism is beautiful, but it's also fickle; it can be immensely challenging to craft appeals that stir genuine altruistic impulses in people. But egoism? Well, an egoistic state is very easily produced indeed. Due to this incongruence, I'll use this article to forward the argument that the most effective way to get others to act prosocially is via mechanisms that tap into covert selfishness.

Now, before I continue, just a quick note: this is not to say that prosocial behavior resulting from egoism is better than identical behavior resulting from altruism. Nor is it to say that altruism is not worth pursuing - it absolutely is. And quite frankly, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with something worthier of relentless pursuit. But this article is not about value judgments, it's about pragmatism. If individuals attempting to engender prosocial behavior for their cause want to maximize the efficacy of their campaigns, they must make peace with the reality that purely altruistic acts are comparatively rare, and thus allocating a disproportionate degree of their strategic plan to leveraging egoism is far more likely to produce a greater return on investment.

Without further adieu, let's talk about four egoistic reasons people behave prosocially.

Reason One: People Behave Prosocially To Alleviate Guilt (And Other Aversive Feelings).

Imagine you and your friend are each placed in separate rooms and forced to watch someone receive a series of painful shocks. Unless either of you is a particularly sadistic individual, this experience would be very unpleasant. Now let's say you are each presented with a set of options: you are offered the option of continuing to watch the person receive shocks or switch places with them; your friend is offered the option of continuing to watch the person receive shocks, switch places with them, or leave. Which option does each of you choose?

According to research (Batson, Duncan, Ackerman, Buckley, & Birch, 1981), you are far more likely than your friend to offer to switch places with the individual receiving shocks. This result is not necessarily indicative of your superior nobility or a greater propensity for self-sacrifice, but rather a product of you two having different best options to reduce your own emotional discomfort. With no option to easily escape, you are confronted with the choice of either watching a poor soul continue to be tortured or taking their place. Sure, maybe you take their place because you are genuinely interested in helping them (altruistic motivation), but chances are you've probably done so because it affords you the best opportunity to help yourself (as you now no longer have to endure the feeling of guilt; egoistic motivation). The underlying egoism of our prosocial behavior is made abundantly clear by the fact that when we're given the opportunity to trade places or escape - as your friend was - we're typically out the door before the experimenter can say "thank you for your participation."

In a prior article on the natural limits of empathy, I discussed how one of the challenges of cultivating sustained empathy is our hesitance (or unwillingness) to experience the negative emotions often inherent in empathic connection. Negative emotions are aversive, and as such, we do our best to avoid circumstances that would force us to experience them (hence the results above). A symptom of the reticence many of us have to engage empathically with someone in distress is what is called the bystander effect (Darley & Latane, 1968).

The bystander effect refers to the paradoxical relationship between group size and helping behavior: the larger the group, the less likely you are to receive immediate help. This is due to the diffusion of responsibility that results from being a member of a large group. When someone gets hurt and many people are around to witness it, we assure ourselves that "someone will do something," oblivious to the fact that most other people are finding relief in that same thought. In this way, our sense of responsibility is diluted. However, when we are the only individuals present when someone is injured, we are far quicker to react. Without anyone else to potentially help, our sense of responsibility cannot be shared with others, and so we are compelled to act. Thus, it is less the allure of altruism that spurs many of us into action and more the burden of responsibility.

A final example of people doing good to feel better is a phenomenon known as moral licensing. Humans tend to keep track of their moral deeds as an accountant would keep track of a balance sheet. Good deeds have a net-positive effect on the balance, while bad deeds have a net-negative effect on the balance. The break even point (i.e. when the sum of the bad and good deeds are equal) is referred to as a moral equilibrium. If prosocial behavior was primarily a product of altruism, the moral equilibrium shouldn't matter much; someone should want to do good because doing good is good (my readers have come to expect this type of eloquence). However, if prosocial behavior is primarily a product of egoism, how we feel about ourselves (and our moral equilibrium) should play a role - and it does.

Studies show that, contrary to what most would guess, being reminded of how good you are (or have recently been) counterintuitively causes people to act less prosocially (Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009). This is because when we feel like we've exceeded our quota of good deeds, such that we're now "in the black" (to continue the accounting metaphor), subsequent bad behavior does not affect us as negatively. We reason that we have accrued enough moral credits that being bad doesn't make us a bad person, it just brings us back to equilibrium. Conversely, if we believe our moral integrity is compromised (i.e. we've been bad), we're actually more likely to act prosocially as a means of reestablishing our moral equilibrium (and thus alleviating our sense of guilt).

(Note: We can see this type of equilibrium logic being employed outside of the realm of morality, as well. It's the same delusional brand of logic that allows us to rationalize eating an entire tub of ice cream as acceptable because "we took the stairs today instead of the elevator." Oh, and I also did yoga two weeks ago - I've earned this!)

Reason Two: People Behave Prosocially Because Others Have Done So To Them.

When asked to define the origins of prosocial behavior, most evolutionary psychologists will point toward reciprocity. Reciprocity is a conditional-cooperation strategy where one partner helps another with the knowledge that their favor will be returned at some point in the future. Reciprocity evolved because it gave cooperating pairs a survival advantage over non-cooperators (Axelrod, 1980).

"But I thought this type of kindness constitutes a behavior that is unlikely to evolve, doesn't it? Couldn't selfish people just come in and victimize others by taking now, promising to give in the future, and never fulfilling that obligation?"

To answer your first question, it is only unconditional, non-strategic kindness that is unlikely to evolve. To answer your second question, yes, but it's a shortsighted plan. You see, the individual who would do such a thing would enjoy a short-term advantage by benefitting from the kindness of another without returning the favor. However, if they were to make a habit of such victimization, they would develop a reputation as a poor cooperation partner, leaving them socially ostracized in the future. And in the unforgiving environments in which our ancestors evolved, surviving alone rarely meant surviving for long.

Though reciprocity was selected for millennia ago, it's still deeply ingrained in human nature (as well as the nature of many other animals; Wilkinson, 1990). Reciprocity is the prosocial equivalent of a knee-jerk reaction: you give me something, so I give you something. It is tantamount to a psychological obligation. But is operationalizing it really that simple?

Well, I might be oversimplifying a bit for effect, but not as much as you might think. It turns out reciprocity is a very effective technique for engendering prosocial reactions. For example, a study was conducted (Falk, 2004) where nearly 10,000 letters were sent out asking for donations to fund schools for street children in Bangladesh. The letters either contained no gift, a small gift (one complimentary postcard and envelope), or a large gift (four complimentary postcards with envelopes). Not only did the large gift condition produce the greatest donation behavior in terms of sheer volume of responses, but even when you factor in the cost of sending the large gift, the strategy still yields a 55% net gain when compared to the no gift condition.

In short, people feel inclined to give after they have first received.

Reason Three: People Behave Prosocially Because They Want To Be Socially Approved Of (Or Avoid Social Consequences).

We are, first and foremost, social creatures. Much of what we do is predicated on obtaining the social approval of our friends and the groups to which we belong (or want to belong). Doing good is no different. This compulsion, referred to as social norm adherence, can be operationalized through both implicit and explicit means.

The implicit adherence to social norms is the basis of broken windows theory. The theory posits that people gather cues from the environment in an effort to determine what types of behavior are socially acceptable. The easiest way to explain broken windows theory is with the following hypothetical:

On a rainy weekend, you decide to take a trip to visit two friends. Due to the rain, your shoes become a bit dirty as you walk up to each of their houses. The first friend lives in a lower socio-economic neighborhood. His house is small and rather dingy, and there is a good deal of litter strewn about his front lawn. The second friend lives in an higher socio-economic neighborhood. Her house is large and lavish, with a pristinely maintained lawn. At whose house are you more likely to wipe your feet before entering?

Hopefully you'd wipe your feet at both of their places (show some manners, you monster!), but chances are you're more likely to do so at the home of the second friend. Broken windows theory forwards the hypothesis that people's behavior in certain environments is dictated by their perception of how others have behaved in the same environment. In the hypothetical above, cues from the environment suggest people treat the first house with less care, and thus you will tend to follow suit and do the same. Broken windows theory has been empirically tested, and results have shown that people are more likely to act in prosocial manners (such as not littering and not stealing; Keizer, Lindenberg, & Steg, 2008) when environments appear clean and well-kept.

However, social norm adherence can also be operationalized by explicitly stating how others tend to behave. Goldstein, Cialdini, and Griskevicius (2008) showed that individuals can be coerced into making more environmentally-conscious decisions simply by providing information suggesting that others are already acting in this environmentally-friendly manner. Their study sought to coerce hotel guests into making a decision that is eco-friendly yet somewhat inconvenient: reusing towels in their hotel bathroom. They found that appeals relying strictly on informing people of their positive environmental impact (e.g. "you can help prevent up to X amount of water waste") were relatively impotent. However, when they coupled such appeals with a mention that the majority of guests already adhere to the policy (i.e. "you can help prevent up to X amount of water waste and many guests choose to abide by this policy"), participation dramatically rises.

People act prosocially to gain the acceptance of others, but they also do it to avoid their disapproval, derision, and discipline. Evidence overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that helping behavior spikes when the cloak of anonymity is lifted. When our actions can be publicly scrutinized, self-conscious emotions (such as shame, pride, and guilt; Tangney, 1999) are activated in an effort to maintain a good reputation in the eyes of our peers. Maintaining a sterling reputation is of the utmost importance within a highly-social ecosystem because reputation can indicate trustworthiness, expertise, and utility or deception, dim-wittedness, and burden. As such, it would behoove individuals to engage in public acts that enhance a positive reputation or temporarily project the image of a good cooperation partner.

And this is precisely what happens. Churchgoers donate more (Soetevent, 2005) and children become more generous (Leimgruber, Shaw, Santos, & Olson, 2012) when anonymity is removed. People increase their rates of cooperation and donate more to a collective pot when their donations are non-anonymous and they can be punished by others for their greed (Fehr & Gachter, 2002). And real people don't even need to be present to activate this prosocial behavior; just being subconsciously reminded that you might be being watched - via the presence of a set of eyes, a mirror, a security camera, etc. - can cause people to behave in less anti-social ways, an effect known as impression management. Even certain species of fish who make a living cleaning other fish will behave more civilly toward their current client when they're in the presence of another potential client (Bshary & Grutter, 2006).

In fact, our desire to be seen as good, caring people in the eyes of others is so powerful that it can even become competitive. A phenomenon known as competitive altruism (a misleading term that implies altruistic intent) can occur when individuals attempt to "outdo" one another in situations where donations are public knowledge. Barclay and Willer (2007) found that individuals compete to appear most generous when they have an opportunity to be chosen as a partner for a subsequent task. Moreover, the strategy works: the most generous players are chosen as cooperation partners far more often than average donors. Raihani and Smith (2015) found that men are more prone to engaging in competitive altruism than women, especially when the beneficiary of their donations appears to be an attractive female.

Reason Four: People Behave Prosocially Because It Feels Good.

The trump-card for many individuals who argue against the existence of pure altruism is inevitably some variation of "but if it makes you feel good, are you really just doing it to help them?"

As frustrating as this argument may be, there is some merit to the assertion that prosocial acts are inherently pleasing to the donor as well as the recipient. For instance, in his book Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect, Matthew Lieberman (2013) notes that perceptions of and experiences with fairness tend to activate the reward circuitry of our brains in a similar way to eating delicious food, leading him to assert that "fairness tastes like chocolate."

A similar finding has been coined "the warm glow of giving." Warm-glow giving, also known as "impure altruism" (Andreoni, 1989), hypothesizes that individuals are neither pure altruists nor pure egoists, but rather donate to charitable entities both because they believe it is the "right" thing to do (i.e. altruistic intent) and because it feels good to do so (i.e. warm-glow). Psychologists argue that warm-glow phenomenon provides individuals with an (often unconscious) incentive to give more generously than they typically would.

To isolate the phenomenon, Crumpler and Grossman (2008) created a paradigm where even a pure altruist would have no incentive to donate. Participants were given an opportunity to select a charity to which the experimenters would automatically donate $10. Then, they were given an additional $10 and told they could allocate it as they pleased (i.e. keep it all or give some to their chosen charity). However, there was one very blunt caveat: they were explicitly told that the maximum their charity would receive is $10 (which had already been donated during the first portion of the experiment), so if they chose to distribute any of the additional $10 to their charity, it would not make any financial impact whatsoever. In essence, participants who chose to do anything other than take the full $10 would just be making a symbolic donation because it made them feel good. Despite the fact that charities received no additional benefit from the extra money allocated, participants still chose to donate about 20% of their additional $10 on average, and a full 57% of participants made a symbolic donation. Sometimes the simple act of doing good - regardless of impact - makes us feel good.

Does It Matter?

Okay, now for the philosophical questions. Does it matter whether our prosocial behavior is rooted in altruism or egoism? Does it matter if our motives are selfless or selfish? If the end result is people helping people, does it matter?

My humble opinion is no and yes.

No, from a pragmatic standpoint, I don't think it matters much. A good deed is a good deed is a good deed. I don't believe a blanket for a cold child feels any less warm, nor does a meal for a hungry person taste any less nourishing if the money used to purchase it was raised by capitalizing on egoism. As humans, we're simply not wired for extensive altruism; it's not in our nature. So while attempting to stimulate it is no less noble, exclusively attempting to do so while turning your nose up at higher-probability opportunities to do good by harnessing selfishness is, ironically, selfish. If leveraging egoistic impulses can reconcile the incongruence between how we do (or tend to) act and how we should act in regards to helping others, I'm all for it.

However, from a principled standpoint, I believe it does matter. I mentioned earlier that to conceptualize prosocial deeds through an altruistic lens is to romanticize prosociality, and in this way I hope we can all remain hopeless (but not uninformed) romantics. Daniel Batson, the author of the empathy-altruism hypothesis, believes that "pure" altruism is possible, but it requires a genuine empathic concern for another. As my readers now know, we are not universal empathizers. Our empathic concerns are bound by proximity and deterred by the prospect of emotional discomfort. We have trouble taking the perspective of those who are not close to us (both literally and in terms of our relationship), and even when we find an opportunity to do so, we often choose not to because it can be unpleasant. But as my readers should also now know, just because something is does not necessitate it's how it ought to be. Our empathic limits are not meant to be blindly obeyed, they are meant to be tested; to be stretched, or even vehemently rejected. For if we spent more of our time imagining what it must be like to walk in another person's shoes, it may encourage us to reach a bit more willingly into our own pockets.

In the future, I hope we can do good for the "right" reasons. Altruism is a beautiful thing, and the world could use a lot more of it. But for now, I'll settle for us merely doing good.