Altruism and Selfishness

BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2002) 25, 239–296 Printed in the United States of America Altruism and selfishness Howard Rachlin Psychology Department, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2500 [email protected] Abstract: Many situations in human life present choices between (a) narrowly preferred particular alternatives and (b) narrowly less preferred (or aversive) particular alternatives that nevertheless form part of highly preferred abstract behavioral patterns. Such alternatives characterize problems of self-control. For example, at any given moment, a person may accept alcoholic drinks yet also prefer being sober to being drunk over the next few days. Other situations present choices between (a) alternatives beneficial to an individual and (b) alternatives that are less beneficial (or harmful) to the individual that would nevertheless be beneficial if chosen by many individu- als. Such alternatives characterize problems of social cooperation; choices of the latter alternative are generally considered to be altruistic. Altruism, like self-control, is a valuable temporally-extended pattern of behavior. Like self-control, altruism may be learned and maintained over an individual’s lifetime. It needs no special inherited mechanism. Individual acts of altruism, each of which may be of no benefit (or of possible harm) to the actor, may nevertheless be beneficial when repeated over time. However, because each selfish decision is individually preferred to each altruistic decision, people can benefit from altruistic behavior only when they are committed to an altruistic pattern of acts and refuse to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. Keywords: addiction; altruism; commitment; cooperation; defection; egoism; impulsiveness; patterning; prisoner’s dilemma; recipro- cation; reinforcement; selfishness; self-control 1. Introduction 1998). Cognitive psychology attempts to infer the mechanism’s principles of action (its software) from behavioral ob- 1.1. Biological compatibility servation and manipulation, while physiological psychology Altruism and selfishness, like free will and determinism, attempts to investigate the mechanism itself (its hardware). seem to be polar opposites. Yet, as with free will and deter- From the biological viewpoint, altruistic acts differ from minism (Dennett 1984), the apparent incompatibility may selfish acts by virtue of differing internal mediating mech- be challenged by various forms of compatibility. From a bi- anisms; altruism becomes a motive like any other. In this ological viewpoint selfishness translates into survival value. view, a person leaves a tip in a restaurant to which he will Evolutionary biologists have been able to reconcile altruism never return because of a desire for fairness or justice, a de- with selfishness by showing how a biological structure me- sire generated by the restaurant situation and the altruistic diating altruistic behavior could have evolved. (The next mechanism within him, which is satisfied by the act of leav- section will briefly summarize one such demonstration.) ing the tip. Similarly, he eats and drinks at the restaurant This structure is assumed to be more complex than ordinary because of desires generated by internal mechanisms of mechanisms that mediate selfish behavior but in essence is hunger and thirst. For the biologist, Person A’s altruistic be- no different from them. The gazelle that moves toward the havior (behavior that benefits others at a cost to A) would lion (putting itself in danger but showing other gazelles be fully explained if Person A were shown to possess the where the lion is) may thus be seen as acting according to requisite internal altruistic mechanism. Once the mecha- the same principles as the gazelle that takes a drink of wa- nism were understood, no further explanation would be re- ter when it is thirsty. The desire to move toward the lion quired. stands beside the desire to drink. The problem with this conception, from a behavioral Evolutionary biologists do not conceive of behavior itself viewpoint, is not that it postulates an internal mechanism as as being passed from generation to generation; rather, some mechanism, in this case an internal mechanism – a structure of nervous connections in the brain – is hypothesized to be the evolving entity. Altruism as it appears in behavior Howard Rachlin obtained a PhD at Harvard Uni- is conceived as the action of that mechanism developed versity in 1965. He is currently a Distinguished Profes- over the lifetime of the organism. Tooby and Cosmides sor of Psychology at the State University of New York at (1996, p. 125) compare the structure of the altruism mech- Stony Brook. He has written six books including Behav- anism to that of the eye: “We think that such adaptations ior and Mind (1994) and The Science of Self-Control (2000). He has published three previous target articles will frequently require complex computations and suspect in BBS: “Maximization theory in behavioral psychol- that at least some adaptations for altruism may turn out to ogy,” with John Kagel, Ray Battalio, and Leonard Green rival the complexity of the eye.” (1981), “Pain and behavior” (1985), and “Self-control: This biological compatibility makes contact with modern beyond commitment” (1995). cognitive and physiological psychology (Sober & Wilson © 2002 Cambridge University Press 0140-525X/02 $12.50 239 Rachlin: Altruism and selfishness such. (After all, no behavior is possible without internal reinforcers, after being discounted, may have significant neural structure.) The problem is that in focusing on an in- present value, even for nonhumans (Mazur 1987). If the herited internal mechanism, the role of learning over an or- present value of a delayed reward is higher than the cost of ganism’s lifetime tends to get ignored. To develop normally, the act, it is hard to see how the act can be altruistic. It is eyes have to interact with the environment. But we inherit certainly not altruistic of the bank to lend me money just good eyesight or bad eyesight. If our altruism mechanisms because I will pay them back later rather than now. If the are like our visual mechanisms we are doomed to be more woman who risked her life to run into the burning building or less selfish depending on our genetic inheritance. This is to save someone else’s child were counting on some later re- a sort of genetic version of Calvinism. Experience might ward or sequence of rewards to counterbalance her risk (say aid in the development of altruistic mechanisms. Environ- ten million dollars, to be paid over the next ten years, of- mental constraints imposed by social institutions – family, fered by the child’s parents), her action would be no more religion, government – might act on selfish motives (like altruistic than that of the bank when it lends me money. glasses on eyesight) to make them conform to social good. This narrow behavioral view of altruism has been criti- But altruistic behavior as such, according to biological the- cized by social psychologists (e.g., Edney 1980) but the crit- ory, would depend (as eyesight depends) much more on icism focuses mostly on the behaviorism rather than on the genes than on experience. narrowness of the view. These critics have merely replaced, The present article, does not deny the existence of such as an explanatory device, the present action of delayed re- mechanisms. A large part of human altruism and a still larger wards with the present action of internal mechanisms. I ar- part of nonhuman altruism may well be explained in terms gue here that it is a mistake to look for the cause of a specific of inherited mechanisms based on genetic overlap. How- altruistic act either in the environment or in the interior of ever, the mechanisms underlying these behaviors would the organism. Rather, the cause of the altruistic act is to be have evolved individually. The mechanism responsible for found in the high value (the reinforcing value, the survival the ant’s self-sacrifice in defense of a communal nest would value, the function) of the act as part of a pattern of acts, or differ from that responsible for a mother bear’s care for her as a habit (provided habit is seen as a pattern of overt be- cubs. There remains some fraction of altruistic action, espe- havior extended in time rather than, as sometimes seen in cially among humans, that cannot be attributed to genetic psychology, as an internal state). According to the present overlap. For the remainder of this article I will symbolize view, a woman runs into a burning building to save someone such actions by the example of a woman who runs into a else’s child (without the promise of money) not because she burning building to save someone else’s child. I mean this ex- is compelled to do so by some internal mechanism, nor be- ample to stand for altruistic actions not easily attributed to cause she has stopped to calculate all costs and benefits of genetic factors. Biological compatibility attributes such an this particular act; if she did stop to calculate she would ar- act not to a specific mechanism for running into burning rive at a negative answer and not do the act. Rather, this act buildings, but to a general mechanism for altruism itself. The forms part of a pattern of acts in her life, a pattern that is present article will argue that it is unnecessary to postulate valuable in itself, apart from the particular acts that compose the existence of such a general mechanism. I claim, first, that it. The pattern, as a pattern of overt behavior, is worth so altruism may be learned over an individual’s lifetime and, much to her that she would risk dying rather than break it. second, that it is learned in the same way that self-control is Biological compatibility says that a particular altruistic learned – by forming particular acts into coherent patterns act is itself of high value by virtue of an inherited general al- of acts.

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