Halloween evening. Scary people everywhere. A lone, innocent, scared female walking down the street, smoke billowing behind her as she walks. She looks around, panicky. Suddenly she finds herself surrounded by people in masks, costumes; laughing and pushing each other. She sees a ray of light - a male, walking alone, no costume. He walks near her, she grabs his arm and asks him to stay still as she hides behind him. The people in the costumes continue walking and when the coast is clear, she thanks her savior for stopping to help her. They walk a bit until they say their goodbyes and part ways. Was he doing this out of the goodness of his heart, or was there some sort of ulterior motive that he wasn't able to get out of it? Was he, gasp, a real knight in shining armor?
People can have the age old discussion about selfless good deeds. I remember the one Friends episode, the one that people probably remember just as I do, where Joey states "It made you feel good, so that makes it selfish. Look, there's no unselfish good deeds, sorry." Is he true? There is also a quote by W. Somerset Maugham from Of Human Bondage where he says "It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand your admiration.” So, before we start this whole rigamaroll about selfless good deeds, lets get a definition of altruism down on paper. According to PsychologyandSociety, altruism is helping behavior that is motivated by a selfless concern for the welfare of another person.
Okay, so first things first, who is helpful, who is not, and what determines the same? Just like in any social situations, we act in ways that society would deem acceptable. Most people, when seeing a person in need, will stop and help them, regardless of whether they are doing it out of the pure goodness of their heart, or if they need to fulfill their one good deed for the day. Notably, people's motives and behaviors are related to the importance that they place on various aspects of their identity so that two otherwise identical individuals may respond quite differently to the same event if their identities differ (Leary, M.R.; Toner, K; Gan, M. (2011). Self, Identity and Reactions to Distal Threats: The Case of Environmental Behavior. Psychological Studies, 56(1), 159-166). The young man in the above-noted situation could have acted in many different ways - looked at the woman like she was crazy, shook her off his arm and kept walking; did the whole movie scenerio and kissed her soundly on the lips while the scary costume people walked by, laughed at her when she told him her phobia, and many other scenerios could have happened, and that all depended on his disposition and demenour at the time. What has been found, and makes a crap load of sense, is that human beings are both prosocial and self-serving, often exhibiting both behaviors in a short period of time (Zak et al. (2009) Testosterone Administration Decreases Generosity in the Ultimatum Game. PLoS ONE 4(12)). However, if a person is prosocial and self-serving, then they aren't truely altruistic. Does that matter though? If they help a person out, shouldn't that be good enough? However, it was found by Simpson and Willer (2008) that potential helpers respond strategically to the presence or absence of certain benefits, cooperating at higher levels when reputational benefits and possibilities of indirect reciprocity exist versus when they do not (Altruism and Indirect Reciprocity: The Interaction of Person and Situation in Prosocial Behavior. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71(1), 37-52). So maybe the young man helped as he thought there would be something in it for him, such as a thank you kiss, hug, or the exchange of numbers, or, to the somewhat extreme, some 'I'm so grateful and thankful' sex.
Which leads to another dimension of this discussion - men and their helpful nature. Just from our experiences, men derive some sort of sexual connotation from almost anything. 'Oh, she just flipped her hair; she wants me!!' 'She just did the vertical dance with me, she must have to do the horizontal mambo now'. The simplist of things can portray into a sexual feeling for men (and some women I guess we should say as well). It was found that males do tend to impute sexual interest to females when it is not intended (Abbey, A. (1982). Sex Differences in Attributions for Friendly Behavior: Do Males Mispercieve Females' Friendliness? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(5), 830-838). Maybe the clutching of his arm made him think that if he helped her, he would get some sort of sexual compensation. There is also the mentality of the damsel in distress, in dire need of a hero to rescue her from harm's way that could be in play. The knight in shining armor, ride up on his noble steed, etc etc; the good old idea of benevloent sexism. When there is a perceived threat, men show an increased desire to protect and cherish women, and women show an increased desire to be protected and cherished. (Phelan, J.E., Sanchez, D.T. & Broccoli, T.L. (2010) The Danger in Sexism: The Links Among Fear of Crime, Benevolent Sexism and Well-Being. Sex Roles, 62, 35-47). So maybe that could have also been at play - the young man saw a frightful woman, tears glistening in her eyes, a helpless look on her face and he though that this was his chance to be that knight in shining armour and feel strong and needed.
On the other hand, does that thought play out in any situation, or does it depend on the woman? Let's say that there was a model-variety woman who needed help and a homeless looking woman who needed help - which woman would the man help should he have the chance? And same for women - does the man's looks factor into her needing help? A study was done by Li et al (2008) wherein they studied kindness over attractiveness and when it depened on which one had more bearings on the situation. They found that under low stress, men favored attractive women over kind women, and under high stress, men favored kind women. As for women, it did not matter as to the situation, they favored kind affilitates over attractive ones
(The Stress-Affiliation Paradigm Revisited: Do People Prefer the Kindness of Strangers or Their Attractiveness? Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 382-391). What the study does not delve into is what constitutes as high stress and low stress seeing as everyone feels stress differently. What is probably most important is the part of the women - regardless of their situation, they look for kindness over attraction. Attraction would probably just be a wonderful addition if it was there. The kindness in men could probably also be explained by Zak et al's study in that men with naturally high testosterone levels would be expected to be more selfish, which would probably lead to them thinking that if they did something nice for a woman, compensation would be given. Now, granted this could be some very over reaching correlations in that high testosterone men are more attractive than low testosterone men, but maybe we aren't that far out of the ballpark. But then there is also the benevolent sexism mentality that can creep in - if a woman is afraid and needs protection, would you rather ask a beanpole, twig of a man to help you out or a man who hits the gym all the time and is boisterous and big to help out. But, nonetheless, and I will reiterate, that for women, kindness trumps attractiveness in a stressful situation.
Are we out to lunch to think that there are ulterior motives when people help other people? Or more specifically, men helping women? Some men can just help to help but that is only when they have gotten to know the woman. If it is woman they don't know, there is a potential for having an ulterior motive. Past situations may also have a hand in helping people. If one gets compensation for helping one, then they may try to help people in the future because of that compensation. A simple thank you kiss or a hug can skew the situation in the man's brain as men mistakenly interpret women's friendliness as an indication of sexual interest (Abbey). It could totally depend on the situation. There is a difference between helping a random woman out on the street by just standing there with her or paying someone you barely know $1,000 for rent. It doesn't take too much of time or effort to stand there with a person, but to fork out $1,000, that is a totally different bag of worms. Romer, Gruder and Lizzadro (1986) studied the same concept and found that situations are important in determining individual tendencies to help (A Person-Situated Approach to Altruistic Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(5), 1001-1012).
The fact that kindness/attractiveness and the situation determines when one will be helpful seems very sad. Maybe life would be so much better if everyone exhibits altruistic behavior, regardless of looks or situations; however, that could be uber naive of us. But are we also too cynical that when someone does do a good deed, we feel that there may be an ulterior motive behind it? Someone could take a situation that at first glance seems too good to be true, and then they start to over think it. 'Why was that person so helpful?' 'What was in it for them, other than feeling good about themself?' People view behaviors that at first blush seem selfless to be more selfish (Critcher C.R. & Dunning. D. (2011). No Good Deed Goes Unquestioned: Cynical Reconstruals Maintain Belief in the Power of Self-Interest. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 1204-1213) and it is sad that this happens as it must mean that things in the past have been selfish when they should have been selfless or just plain helping nature; however, there is no one to blame but ourselves as it is our own attributional thoughts that change our way of thinking when it comes to kindness.
So where does this leave us? Well, for starters, in case you were pondering and pondering about the first little excerpt, this is a true story. It happened to one of the writers. And she fell victim to thinking that the helpful young man was just really nice and kind but then changed her thinking to perhaps he wanted something more out of her mere thank you and hug. But maybe not. We shouldn't automatically think that there are ulterior motives as that will make us such cynical people and not trust anyone. There are the people out there that will help people out of the goodness of their hearts, and those people should be revered for what they do. Kindness can mean so much to people even when it is in the simplist of things, like standing with a frightened woman. The answer to the question 'can something be truly altruistic' probably wasn't answered at all in the above word vomit, but will it ever be answered? Maybe there can never be an act that is truely alturistic because one will either hope that some other will benefit, hope for a thanks or some recognition and that the act won't go completely unnoticed. On the other hand, what if it is for the greater good, the welfare of the people, and although you get a thanks for it, it still was for the people and not the individual, does that classify as altruistic? Can one get absolutely nothing from the deed in order to be altruisitc? That is a question that will probably be never answered as everyone has their own take on the subject. Maybe what we should do is when somebody does a kind act for us, we thank them for helping us and not assume there was an ulterior motive. Maybe then we will enjoy helping others and the world will be a less cynical place to live in.
To end this random word vomitted blog, a quote: it is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen: that is the common right of humanity. - Seneca
No comments:
Post a Comment