EMPHATIC CONCERN AND ALTRUISM IN HUMANS

15.00 – 16.00
PROF. C. DANIEL BATSON
social psychologist (The University of Kansas)

We humans spend a remarkable amount of time, money, and energy to benefit others, including family, friends, and strangers. Do we ever care about others for their sakes and not simply for our own? Is our ultimate goal always and exclusively self-benefit, or are we capable of caring about another person’s welfare as an ultimate goal? The orthodox answer is clearly stated by La Rouchefoucauld: “The most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which the dear love of our own selves always proposes to be the gainer some way or other.” The empathy-altruism hypothesis claims that empathic concern produces altruistic motivation. Altruistic motivation does seem to be within the human repertoire. What produces empathic concern? Can we give a plausible account of the evolution of empathy-induced altruism? What are the practical and theoretical implications if empathy-induced altruism exists? Generalized parental nurturance now seems the most likely evolutionary basis of empathic concern - even for strangers. Human parental nurturance is need-oriented, emotion-based, and goal-directed. If parental nurturance is the prototype for empathy-induced altruism, then the intensity of tender, empathic feeling for strangers should vary with perceived similarity to progeny, not perceived similarity to self. Is this true?