In the Light of Evolution Volume VII: The Human Mental Machinery (2014) / Chapter Skim
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10 Concepts and Implications of Altruism Bias and Pathological Altruism--Barbara A. Oakley
10 Concepts and Implications of Altruism Bias and Pathological Altruism--Barbara A. Oakley
Pages 169-190
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From page 169... ...
Guardian systems and their overarching importance in the evolution of cooperation are also discussed. Concepts of pathological altruism, altruism bias, and guardian systems may help open many new, potentially useful lines of inquiry and provide a frame work to begin moving toward a more mature, scientifically informed understanding of altruism and cooperative behavior.
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From page 170... ...
Pathological altruism can be conceived as behavior in which attempts to promote the welfare of another, or others, results instead in harm that an external observer would conclude was reasonably foreseeable. More precisely, this chapter defines pathological altruism as an observable behavior or personal tendency in which the explicit or implicit subjective motivation is intentionally to promote the welfare of another, but instead of overall beneficial outcomes, the altruism instead has unreasonable (from the relative perspective of an outside observer)
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From page 171... ...
Were your actions pathologically altruistic? In the conceptions of pathological altruism outlined here, no.
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From page 172... ...
Well-meaning intentions can lead either to altruism or to pathological altruism. Self-servingly malevolent intentions, on the other hand, often have little or nothing to do with altruism, even though such malevolence can easily be cloaked with pretensions of altruism.
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From page 173... ...
The thesis of pathological altruism emphasizes the value of true altruism, self-sacrifice, and other forms of prosociality in human life. At the same time, it acknowledges the potential harm from cognitive blindness that arises whenever groups treat a concept as sacred (Haidt, 2012)
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From page 174... ...
Second, pathological altruism or its antecedents can arise when the lowered energy state of the first system allows the system to grow to such a size that it increases the potential for disintegration or destruction from noncooperative mechanisms affiliated with the entity. An example can be found in nuclear fission, where longer-range electrostatic repulsion between protons overcomes the attractive, albeit short-range, nuclear force between nucleons.
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From page 175... ...
On a cellular level, we see that guardian immune systems have evolved from the rudimentary enzyme systems of unicellular organisms, which protect against bacteriophage infections, to the extraordinarily sophisticated immunological defense mechanisms seen in vertebrates. Similarly, social systems of cooperative behavior must devise effective immunological guardian functions against efforts to siphon away the energetic advantages of cooperative behavior.
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From page 176... ...
Direct reciprocity, for example, perforce plays a role in indirect reciprocity. In a similar fashion, guardian functions overlap with the other five evolutionary cooperative mechanisms.
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From page 177... ...
(In other words, social attempts to blindly encourage altruism become themselves a perfect example of pathological altruism.) Without insight into the undesirable effects arising from empathy and altruistic intentions, children and adults with an existing hypersensitivity toward others find it more difficult to detect and react appropriately to manipulation or to situations in which natural feelings of empathy could lead to undesirable outcomes.
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From page 178... ...
Some would say that, once egoism is involved, the result is no longer altruism, so there is no such thing as pathological altruism. However, such an interpretation would also mean there is no altruism, because egoistic reward circuitry appears to be an important determinant of altruistic behavior.
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From page 179... ...
has pointed out "Distinguished professors, gifted poets, and influential journalists summoned their talents to convince all who would listen that modern tyrants were liberators and that their unconscionable crimes were noble, when seen in the proper perspective. Whoever takes it upon himself to write an honest intellectual history of twentieth-century Europe will need a strong stomach." In fact, combating extreme confirmation bias has been called one of psychology's most pressing research priorities (Lilienfeld et al., 2009)
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From page 180... ...
. In these pathologically altruistic enterprises, confirmation bias, discounting, motivated reasoning, and egocentric certitude that our approach is the best -- in short, the usual biases that underlie pathologies of altruism -- appear to play important roles.
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From page 181... ...
Viewing altruistic behavior as a source of both potentially positive and potentially negative influences may provide a framework for understanding better a variety of complex challenges. For example, one of the most important national issues of our time, as outlined in the National Academy Press publication Choosing the Nation's Fiscal Future, is the looming federal deficit (National Research Council and National Academy of Public Administration, 2010)
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From page 182... ...
"It's the thought that counts," as the saying goes when discounting negative consequences of altruism. A supportive bias for claimed altruistic efforts appears to have contributed not only to a plethora of economic woes but also to a continuing record of difficulties in the social sciences, where programs, theories, and therapies with altruistic intent -- particularly those that coincide with preconceived "obviously beneficial" notions of helping -- do not appear to receive the same careful scientific scrutiny as less obviously wellintentioned programs (Cole, 2001; Wright and Cummings, 2005; Wilson, 2011)
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From page 183... ...
has noted: "It seems manifest that the greater the social content of a discipline, especially human, the greater will be the biases due to self-deception and the greater the retardation of the field compared with less social disciplines." One of the most valuable characteristics of science is that, despite the obvious imperfection of biases in ostensibly objective scientists, it provides a potential mechanism for overcoming those biases. At the same time, altruism bias may be one of the most pernicious, hard-to-eradicate biases in science, because it involves even-handed examination of what groups of seemingly objective rational scientists subliminally have come to regard as sacred.
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From page 184... ...
. However, altruism can be framed in a third way, as a positive-tonegative continuum where negative altruism is altruism with antithetical consequences, that is, pathological altruism.
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From page 185... ...
With altruism bias, it appears that people assign varying values to outcomes based on their underlying moral assessment. An example of such altruism bias was seen in subjects who were given a posthypnotic suggestion to feel a flash of disgust (an intimate part of moral judgment)
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From page 186... ...
Can such a heuristic be seen as a characteristic signature in medical imaging? Do individuals vary in their ability to influence their underlying moral heuristics?
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From page 187... ...
Concepts of pathological altruism thus can serve a normative purpose, helping us create better policies. Knowledge of how altruism bias distorts objective scientific inquiry can and should be considered a confounding factor when developing formal models.
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From page 188... ...
. Potential Steps to Address Altruism Bias in Academic Disciplines and the Scientific Enterprise There are active steps that could be taken to prevent the potential for altruism bias within the scientific enterprise.
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From page 189... ...
. The study of pathological altruism, in other words, is not a minor, inconsequential offshoot of the study of altruism but instead is a topic of overwhelming scientific and public importance.
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