Contrary to Theology and Conservative Economics, Altruism Just Plain Feels Good

According to a study at the University of Oregon at Eugene:

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/614/1





Can't Buy Me Altruism

By Adam Hinterthuer
ScienceNOW Daily News
14 June 2007

You don't need to donate to charity to feel all warm inside. Researchers have found that even when money is taken from some people involuntarily, they feel good about the transaction, as long as the funds go to a good cause. The findings may force economists to rethink just what guides our response to taxes and other financial decisions.

The behavior under the microscope is altruism, which refers to concern for the well-being of others. Sometimes this manifests as a "warm glow" associated with the act of giving. In that case, economists speculate, the act is not entirely selfless because the giver makes the donation in order to feel good. But economists have also proposed that not all warm glows are self-interested. Some people may have positive emotions wash over them just from witnessing good deeds. This is called "pure altruism," and it may be motivating society's biggest givers.

Now a group of neuroscientists and economists at the University of Oregon, Eugene, has teamed up to get inside the heads of charitable citizens. The researchers recruited 19 female students and placed them in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines to monitor the caudate nucleus and the nucleus accumbens, ancient regions of the brain, which produce feelings of pleasure and fulfillment. Each student participated in an economic game centered on charitable giving. They first received $100 in cold hard cash and were told any money left at the end of the study was theirs to keep. They then learned about a local food bank that would benefit from any donations from their account.

The volunteers then watched a screen as a computer program decided what to do with their money. Sometimes students could choose whether to give to the food bank. Other times, the computer "taxed" their account, donating money automatically to the food bank. And, once in a while, money would magically appear, either in their account or in the food bank's coffers.

Most subjects experienced the "warm glow" effect after voluntarily giving money, but some were also wired for pure altruism. In this latter group, the pleasure zones of volunteers' brains lit up when the food bank received money, even if the volunteers were being taxed. More surprisingly, when these subjects saw the computer randomly place money into the account of the food bank, they had a stronger positive reaction than when their own funds suddenly increased. And this big mental reward paid dividends to the food bank. Students exhibiting pure altruist behavior ponied up twice as much money as their "warm glow"-only counterparts, the team reports tomorrow in Science. The findings should surprise economists, says co-author Ulrich Mayr, as they indicate that some people care more about money going to the public good than to themselves.

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I wonder if those same places light up in thugs like Ken Lay for the same reason.

Not everything driven by man is driven purely for selfish profit.

in the same way that they currently attribute altruism to him.

Promoted by modernists who feel the need to justify every action.

In the words of Neo, I try and do good because I choose to.

Not because it is convenient at the time or gives me a "warm glow" inside.

The ideology promoted by these reviewers is "do what thou wilt."

If it feels good, do it.

REAL altruism, REAL heroism, when someone is willing to give up their life for you can only be justified by force of will. At best, you can say it can be justified by emotion. Emotion /= pleasure zones. In the words of my religion, (sand many, many non-utilitarian Western philosophers) anyone who does good because it feels good is a hypocrite to begin with.

For that matter, as the Buddha pointed out, pleasure and pain are an illusion anyhow, as anyone with a cursory familiarity with how our brain works would know.

Therefore, to be altruistic or make ANY financial transaction on the basis of "gut instinct" is mindless consumerism -- the mentality of middle-class Germans who "altruistically" sheltered Jews and robbed them for all they were worth, then left them in Berlin garrets to die. "Hey -- we all gotta eat."

I thought you were kidding at first, because your reading totally ignores that the "warm glow" the researchers observed was clearly caused by what we call "doing good"--not by doing what thou wilt. What the study implies is that *feeling* good is a genetically inherited reward for *doing* good. This doesn't mean that we don't choose to do good. It only means that doing good comes with a "pre-programmed" reward--which in turn means that that correlation is probably naturally selected in humans, as it is in other social animals.

Then again, I'm just another evil Modernist. :eyes: