Altruism

“Die Kinderkrippe” (The Nursery), 1890, by Albert Anker.

Altruism (from Old French altrui, “of others” and from Italian altro) can be understood as:

• Trend to seek the good of people in a disinterested manner, even against self-interest.
• Help or serve constructively to experience a positive experience of empathy, behavior related to philanthropy.
• Personal sacrifice or self-denial for the benefit of others.

According to the Royal Spanish Academy, altruism comes from the French altruisme and designates "diligence in procuring the good of others even at the expense of one's own".

The term refers to human behavior and is defined as disinterested concern or attention for other people, as opposed to selfishness. There are usually different points of view about the meaning and scope of altruism or caring for others selflessly, without any benefit.

Social Psychology

In line with the studies of Daniel Batson, Elena Gaviria affirms that "there is a considerable amount of empirical evidence that suggests that, at least, we have the capacity to behave motivated by feelings that are not purely egotistical. Whether or not we manifest that ability probably depends on many factors, but we do, and that's something. Altruism itself is not observable, as it requires inferences about intentions and motives, so studies of social psychology have been empirically devoted to the observation of helping behavior. Thus, the elements involved are the donor of help or benefactor and the situational factors involved in offering or denying it, and only later are the motivational determinants of behavior analyzed. According to the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Psychology (1995), included among the pro-social behaviors considered beneficial for other people and for the social system: help (any action that results in a benefit to another person), altruism (behavior that involves more benefits to the receiver than to the one who performs it) and cooperation (behavior that supposes a common benefit and in which all those who carry it out are benefactors and recipients). The first two are more of an interpersonal nature, the last one of a more group nature.

Regarding help, experiments have determined that, contrary to what might be assumed, helping behavior is usually inhibited the more spectators are present (the so-called bystander effect), pluralistic ignorance. In John Darley and B. Latané's model, helping includes five consecutive steps that, if resolved in the affirmative, lead to the helping behavior:

• Does the individual realize that something abnormal happens? The situation doesn't have to be ambiguous.
• Do you interpret it as an emergency? There's fear of ridicule.
• Do you assume the responsibility to intervene? The individual must feel involved or feel direct contact with the situation, in the face of the spread of responsibility in the presence of many observers, and it may also not be sensitized to the characteristics of the person who needs help (person, animal or thing attractive or aversive).
• Do you consider yourself capable of providing help? The hypothetical altruist is considered ignorant or incapable or does not know how to act, or is afraid of responsibility, especially in complex situations, or may have predicted a more probable type of response.
• The individual makes the decision to intervene.

Help can be direct or indirect and the costs can be high for both helping and not helping. Among the reasons for this behavior are positive reinforcement of learning it in the past, as well as emotional and neurological factors involved in empathy and retribution, and social and personal norms. On the other hand, altruism can be counterproductive according to the judgment of the receiver: it is necessary to distinguish between the help that someone asks for and the one that is offered without having been requested; In the latter case, it is common for the helper to do an unsolicited favor to feel good if the person being helped is a person with high self-esteem and autonomy. From the recipient's point of view, the request for help is the result of a process with three phases that only if answered in the affirmative lead to the request for help, and in which there is a process of calculation between benefits and costs:

• The problem I have would be solved if someone helped me?
• Do I ask for help or not?
• Who am I asking for help?

According to A. Nadler, whether a person decides to ask for help or not depends on three factors:

• Its personal characteristics (age, gender, personality traits).
• The nature of the problem and the kind of help you need.
• The characteristics of those who can offer help.

Referring to the first, from the point of view of self-esteem it is more expensive to ask for help for men than for women and for people with higher self-esteem than for those with lower self-esteem. Regarding the second, when the problem is directly related to personal and social image, it is less likely that help will be sought (it is less frequent to turn to a psychologist or psychiatrist for mental health than to a doctor for physical health). In addition, knowing that it will not be possible to return the favor to the other person when we believe that it is expected discourages the person from asking for help. As for the third thing, people tend to prefer someone who is not too threatening to their self-esteem as a donor to someone who is more competent: they should resemble the potential benefactor. People often turn to relatives, friends, or their peers for help (Alcoholics Anonymous, for example), because interpersonal relationships between strangers demand reciprocity, while between acquaintances it is about communal relationships.

Philosophical and psychological considerations

The philosopher Auguste Comte coined the word altruisme in French in 1851 and it was later adopted into the Spanish language. Many consider his ethical system somewhat extreme, since according to it the only morally correct acts are those that attempt to promote the happiness of others. ^{[citation needed ]}

It is the behavior that benefits others, that is voluntary and whose author does not ask for external benefits. Although the proper purpose of altruism can present several difficulties, the reason for this is because moral agents present a whole series of cognitive prejudices that make altruistic and activist tasks more difficult. Some of these prejudices are reflected in a bias that leads to prioritizing some individuals over others. This causes less importance to be assigned to certain causes that are actually more significant than others considered less relevant, that is, they present a certain degree of subjectivity. Some of these prejudices can be sexist, racist, xenophobic, chauvinistic attitudes, among others. In addition, selfish tendencies lead people to disengage from causes that could have a greater impact on the world.^{[citation needed]}

On the other hand, other prejudices cause irrational patterns to be adopted in decision-making. This is because many of the inclinations and intentions when acting have been selected throughout natural history for evolutionary reasons. This is because they presented advantages in the transmission of genetic material. But, in reality, they do not offer any advantage when deliberating on how to act. Rather the complete opposite. But it is necessary to emphasize that these intentions do not necessarily determine what is sought and how it is to be sought. But it is true that they can modify inclinations and condition behavior in many cases. Throughout evolutionary history, the capacities and dispositions that ended up being established are not those that stimulate the performance of certain functions in the best way, but those that caused the genetic material to be transmitted efficiently. This causes that when it is necessary to be part of a cause in an active way, resources are not usually used in the best way due to the different prejudices or cognitive biases that have developed with evolution. Some examples of these cognitive biases:

• An incompetence when comparing different quantities correctly when these are very large.
• Confuse what you want to happen with what is foreseeable to happen.
• Believing that your own experiences adequately represent the whole of what happens.
• It takes more work to change the way things are seen even when new evidence is presented that the original positions or inclinations should change.
• The tendency not to include in considerations those options in which there is uncertainty.^{[chuckles]required]}

Altruism in ethology and evolutionary biology

Biological altruism in ethology and, consequently, in evolutionary biology, is the pattern of animal behavior in which an individual puts his life at risk to protect and benefit other members of the group. Almost all of these theories explain how an individual can even sacrifice its own survival to protect that of others, although they always add the fact that among the members of that group there must be some member who shares part of the same genes. This would be a way to ensure the continuity of your genetic information. Despite this, this theory is insufficient to explain the altruistic behaviors that develop towards unrelated individuals, that is, with whom genetic information is not shared.

To explain unrelated altruism, it has been postulated that, in these cases, the altruistic behavior is carried out when the individual expects in some way to be rewarded by the other or by some other member of the group; or finally that some of the altruistic behaviors may be the result of the individual's need to feel accepted by the group or a person, by feeling part of it, with which they also indirectly obtain a benefit. This meaning was proposed by scientists exploring the reasons why unselfish behavior might have evolved. It applies not only to people (psychological altruism), but also to animals and even plants.

There is, however, an interpretation of the notion of altruism contrary to the one previously exposed. In his work The Selfish Gene (1976), Richard Dawkins accuses these theses of deviating from orthodox Darwinism and proposes, instead, a conception that understands evolution considering the good of the individual, and not that of the individual. the species, as a capital factor. Dawkins argues that what is usually understood by altruism, that is: the behavior of an organism when it behaves in such a way that it contributes to increasing the well-being of another similar being at the expense of its own well-being is it would be an apparent individual altruism and, therefore, the opposite behavior would be an apparent individual egoism. Thus, his strong thesis is that there is a fundamental law called selfishness of genes that explains both altruism and individual selfishness from the genetic point of view. In short, Dawkins maintains that the orthodox interpretation of Darwinian natural selection is one that conceives it as gene selection (gene egoism), and not as group selection (altruism among individuals).

Emergence of altruism in humans

In the 19th century, some philosophers such as John Stuart Mill argued that human beings are not naturally altruistic, but that they need to be educated to become so. Pitirim A. Sorokin recognized limitations in it. Recent research has shown that altruism appears in humans at the age of eighteen months, just as it does in chimpanzees, suggesting that humans have a natural tendency to help others.

There are a number of situations that encourage us humans to help each other and they are the following: when we are rewarded, when we are in a good mood, when someone else helps by making an attribution of altruism, and when norms dictate help. At the brain level, mutual aid situations modeled by the prisoner's dilemma game induce rapid changes in brain rhythms that predict whether you will quickly reciprocate with the same person.