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For instance, many Americans disagree with capital punishment as being a valid response to criminal behavior. Yet many Americans firmly stand behind capital punishment as a means to maintain the social order. In this sense, capital punishment is like the Doomsday Machine in Dr. Strangelove. As Pinker (n.d.) shows, the philosophy behind revenge punishment may serve no one, and yet it is uniquely compelling on an emotional level. When emotions are stripped from the equation, parties are freer to make decisions based on reason. Yet reason is too often absent from human decision-making. Given the predilection for humans toward emotional responses, altruism has evolved to serve biological, sociological, and psychological functions.
Fehr & Gachter (2002) suggest that altruistic punishment is remarkable because it is practiced upon those who are not biologically related. Generally, altruism is more easily understood when applied to persons of the same kinship group. Yet treating people from the kinship group may not constitute true altruism, because of the biological tendency to protect those within the social circle (Booman, 1980). True altruism would only manifest when people do noble acts for those they have never and possibly will never meet. A wealthy person who donates $1 million to a village in Africa,...
The motivations are not biological in this case, or at least, biology does not provide the proximate cause for the behavior. A deeper analysis of the behavior from an evolutionary biology perspective might, however, reveal that such behaviors do contribute to the betterment of the human race and promote peace on earth and because of these benefits, absolute altruism can be programmed into human DNA. Until genetic science improves its understanding of altruistic behavior, though, the cluster of altruistic behaviors are more easily traceable to psychological motivations and needs.
Altruism serves distinct psychological, biosocial, and evolutionary biological functions. Each case must be considered differently, of course, but generally altruistic behaviors do promote common welfare and could therefore serve biological functions. Just as a mother is biologically prone to protecting her child, an ordinary human being might be biologically motivated to intervene and help another, or in other cases, use revenge or punishment on others to promote group harmony. Altruistic punishment is an odd manifestation of altruism, but reveals some of the complex intersections between the different domains of altruism.…
References
Booman, S. (1980). The Genetics of Altruism. New York: Academic Press.
Fehr, E. & Gachter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature 415.
Pinker (n.d.). The doomsday machine.
In one study, subjects were given what they erroneously believed to be a mood 'fixing' drug -- "empathic subjects were more helpful than their nonempathic counterparts only when it seemed possible that their personal moods could be raised as a consequence of helping. High-empathy subjects who learned that their saddened mood states could not be altered by the helping act (because of the temporary action of a "mood-fixing drug")
Organizational Behavior Employees in public sector organization are known to be -- and in many instances expected to be -- more flexible and more committed when it comes to putting in extra hours and extra effort to complete important assignments for the organization and the community. That concept is believed to be true because public sector organizations are more focused on the betterment of the community rather than on profit, power,
The perceived costs of acting might have outweighed the benefits. There are other factors as well that influence whether we are likely offer assistance in an emergency. Research has found that attractive people are more likely to receive assistance than less attractive people in the same plight (Rodrigues & Levine, 1999). Additionally, we are more likely to offer assistance to those who are most like ourselves in various demographic criteria.
Social Psychology Prosocial behavior, as the name suggests, is behavior that is ultimately beneficial to others. Any act that is carried out with an end to helping someone else instead of oneself is prosocial behavior. If the behavior involves no gain to the individual, and in fact, may involve a personal cost, this behavior is considered altruistic. There is some debate over whether true altruism exists, or if even seemingly unselfish
While it was not found that there are significant differences in one's gender and his/her altruistic behavior, it is important to note that the respondents' responses demonstrated that it is not empathy that is the main criterion that one uses in determining one's propensity to become altruistic towards others, but rather, more about feeling "at one with the other" (that is, the other person) (Cialdini et. al., 1997:483). The feeling
In this regard, Demorest concludes that, "Together these and other theorists have provided accounts of what it means to be a person that all fit within the psychodynamic paradigm, a perspective that holds a vision of people as at their core driven by dynamic forces in their unconscious minds" (2005, p. 3). Freud's influence on psychoanalytic thought, though, required some time to take hold and many of his methods were