1. The Comedy of Asses, Plautus, Harvard University Press, 1916.
2. Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, 1651, Chapter 13.
3. Freud, Sigmund, in a letter to Oskar Pfister, September 10, 1918. http://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/freud%27sillusion.htm.
4. Lord Tennyson, Alfred, “In Memoriam.” In The Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Wordsworth Editions, 1998.
5. See especially Tremblay, Richard, Early Learning Prevents Youth Violence, http://www.excellence-earlychildhood.ca/documents/Tremblay_AggressionReport_ANG.pdf, and the book by Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Penguin, 2012.
6. See especially the writings of the psychologist Batson, C. Daniel, The Altruism Question (1991) and Altruism in Humans (2011), Oxford University Press, as well as the works by the political commentator and philosopher Monroe, Kristen Renwick, The Heart of Altruism (1996), the sociologist Kohn, Alfie, The Brighter Side of Human Nature, Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life (1992), the psychologists Wallach, Michael and Lise, Psychology’s Sanction for Selfishness (1983), the ethologist Waal de, Frans, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society (2009), and the psychologist Lecomte, Jacques, La Bonté humaine: Altruisme, empathie, générosité (2012), as well as numerous philosophers, including Joseph Butler, David Hume, Charlie D. Broad, & Norman J. Brown.
7. See www.karuna-shechen.org.
8. Kasser, Tim, The High Price of Materialism, MIT Press, 2003.
9. Forbes, Stephen, statement during a debate on Fox News, October 18, 2009.
10. These numbers represent the situation in the United States.
11. Notably Dennis Snower, Ernst Fehr, Richard Layard, & Joseph Stiglitz, as well as members of the GNH (Gross National Happiness) movement promulgated by Bhutan and now taken seriously in Brazil, Japan, and other countries.
12. These three pillars correspond to the concept of “mutuality” developed by the economist Bruno Roche.
13. Stemming notably from the studies by David Sloan Wilson, Elliott Sober, E. O. Wilson, & Martin Nowak.
14. On this subject, see the excellent chapters by Lecomte, Jacques, in La Bonté humaine (2012), op. cit., on the deformations and exaggerations produced by a number of recent tragedies, as well as Chapter 9 of that book, “La banalité du bien” [“The banality of the good”].
15. Notably the studies by Robert Boyd & Peter J. Richerson. See Richerson & Boyd, Not By Genes Alone, 2005.
1. Oeuvres d’Auguste Comte: Système de politique positive ou Traité de sociologie [The Works of Auguste Comte: System of Positive Polity or Treatise on Sociology], Editions Anthropos, 2007, vol. 1, pp. 7–10.
2. Nagel, Thomas, The Possibility of Altruism, Princeton University Press, 1978, p. 79.
3. Ibid., p. 80.
4. Post, Stephen G., Unlimited Love: Altruism, Compassion, and Service, Templeton Foundation Press, 2003, p. vi.
5. Batson, C. D. (2001), op. cit., p. 20.
6. On this point Batson agrees with Emmanuel Kant, who wrote: “Always act so that you treat humanity… as an end and never simply as a means.” Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (no page given).
7. Monroe, Kristen Renwick, The Heart of Altruism: Perceptions of a Common Humanity, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 6.
8. Ibid.
9. The complete account of the characteristics of altruistic motivation, of which we have presented a simplified version, can be found in Batson, C. D. (2001), pp. 22–23.
10. In his book devoted to sympathy, the philosopher Max Scheler writes: “Love is a movement, passing from a lower value to a higher one, in which the higher value of the object or person suddenly flashes upon us; whereas hatred moves in the opposite direction.” Later on, Edith Stein would take up Scheler’s analyses and envision the question of empathy according to a purely phenomenological approach in the tradition of Husserl, of whom she was a close disciple. See Scheler, Max, The Nature of Sympathy, Transaction Publishers, 2008, p. 152, and Stein, Edith, On the Problem of Empathy: The Collected Works of Edith Stein, 3d rev. ed., ICS Publications, 1989. I am grateful to Michel Bitbol for drawing my attention to these two books.
11. Hutcheson, Frances, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense [1742] http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=885. Quoted by Terestchenko, Michel, Un si fragile vernis d’humanité: Banalité du mal, banalité du bien, Editions La Découverte, 2007, p. 60.
12. Hallie, Philip, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There, Harper Perennial, 1994. Quoted by Terestchenko, M., op. cit., p. 207.
13. Monroe, Kristen, op. cit., p. 3.
14. Deschamps, Jean-François, & Finkelstein, Rémi, Existe-t-il un veritable altruisme basé sur les valeurs personelles? Les Cahiers internationaux de psychologie sociale (1), 37–62.
15. Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 13.
1. Alexandre Jollien in conversation with the author, Gstaad, January 29, 2012.
2. The Dalai Lama, Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for a New Millennium, Little, Brown, 1999.
3. See Ricard, Matthieu, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill, Little, Brown, 2007.
4. Aristotle, Rhetoric, II, 4, trans. W. Rhys Roberts, online: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.2.ii.html. Quoted by Audi, Paul, in L’empire de la compassion, Les Belles Lettres, 2011, p. 37.
5. The Dalai Lama & Vreeland, Nicholas, An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life, Little, Brown, 2001, pp. 96–97.
6. Jean-François Revel, in conversation with the author.
7. Gunaratana, B. H., Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Path of the Buddha, Wisdom Publications, p. 74.
8. For Batson, empathic solicitude is an emotion directed to the other, engendered by the perception that the other is in need, an emotion in harmony with that perception. See Batson, C. D. (2011), p. 11.
9. Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1891, Chapter 4.
10. Sober, Elliott, & Wilson, David Sloan, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, Harvard University Press, 1999.
11. I am grateful to Daniel Batson for helping me identify these two points over the course of several conversations.
12. Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, op. cit., Chapter 5.
13. See Chapter 26, “Having Hatred or Compassion Toward Oneself.”
14. Trungpa, Chögyam, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Shambhala, 1973.
15. Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, Snow Lion Press, 1997. Online: http://www.fodian.net/world/be_bodsv.html (translation slightly modified).
16. Kohn, Alfie, The Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life, Basic Books, 1992, p. 156.
17. BBC World Service, Outlook, September 7, 2011.
18. Camus, Albert, The Plague, Vintage, 1991, p. 91.
19. Translated from the Tibetan by Matthieu Ricard from the Complete Works: The Collected Works (gsun ‘bum) of the Seventh Dalai Lama blo-bzan-bskal-bzang-rgya-mtsho, published by Dodrup Sangye, Gangtok, 1975–1983.
1. The English word empathy was used for the first time in the early twentieth century to translate Einfühlung, by the psychologist Edward Titchener.
2. Lipps, Theodor, Einfühlung, innere Nachahmung und Organempfindung. Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 1(2), pp. 185–204.
3. Paul Ekman, in conversation, November 2009.
4. Darwin, Charles, The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, 1872.
5. It is interesting to note that the Greek word sumpatheia also means “mutual interdependence.”
6. Darwin, Charles, op. cit.; Eisenberg, Nancy, & Strayer, Janet, Empathy and Its Development, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
7. Waal, Frans de, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society, Harmony Books, 2009, p. 88.
8. In our day, the abundance and repetition of similar images in the media have ended up eroding empathic reaction and have given rise to an apathetic resignation in public opinion. See Boltanski, Luc, La Souffrance à distance, Gallimard, Folio, 2007.
9. Wilder, D. A., Social Categorization: Implications for Creation and Reduction of Intergroup Bias. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 1986, pp. 291–355. Quoted in Kohn, Alfie, op. cit., p. 145.
10. Remarque, Erich Maria, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ballantine Books, 1987, p. 223.
11. Broad, Charlie Dunbar, Egoism as a theory of human motives. In Ethics and the History of Philosophy, Routledge, 1952, pp. 218–31.
12. See especially Kohut, Heinz, The Restoration of the Self, University of Chicago Press, 2009.
13. Batson, C. D. “These things called empathy: Eight related but distinct phenomena.” In Decety, J., The Social Neuroscience of Empathy, MIT Press, 2009.
14. Batson, C. D. (2011), op. cit. The many scientific references corresponding to these various definitions of empathy can be found in his book.
15. See Preston, S. D., Waal, F. B. M. de, et al. (2002), Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25 (1), pp. 1–20. The “Perception-action model” (PAM) was partly inspired by research into mirror neurons, which are present in some sections of the brain and are activated when one sees, for example, someone else making a gesture that interests us (see Chapter 5, sub-heading: “When two brains agree”). Mirror neurons can provide an elementary basis for imitation and intersubjective resonance, but the phenomenon of empathy is much more complex and involves numerous areas of the brain. Rizzolatti, G., & Sinigaglia, C., Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions, and Experience, Oxford University Press, 2008.
16. Thompson, R. A. (1987). “Empathy and emotional understanding: The early development of empathy.” In Empathy and Its Development, 119–145. In Eisenberg, N., & Strayer, J., Empathy and Its Development, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
17. Batson, C. D., Early, S., & Salvarani, G. Perspective taking: Imagining how another feels versus imagining how you would feel, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(7), 1997, pp. 751–758.
18. Mikulincer, M., Gillath, O., Halevy, V., Avihou, N., Avidan, S., & Eshkoli, N. Attachment theory and reactions to others’ needs: Evidence that activation of the sense of attachment security promotes empathic responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6), 2001, p. 1205.
19. Coke, J. S., Batson, C. D., & McDavis, K. Empathic mediation of helping: A two-stage model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36 (7), 1978, p. 752.
20. According to the various authors, this kind of empathy is called:
• “Empathic distress,” in Hoffman, M. L., “The development of empathy,” in J. P. Rushton and R. M. Sorrentino (eds.), Altruism and Helping Behavior: Social, Personality, and Developmental Perspectives, Erlbaum, 1981, pp. 41–63.
• “Distressed sympathy,” in McDougall, W., An Introduction to Social Psychology, Methuen, 1908.
• “Personal distress,” Batson, C. D., Prosocial motivation: Is it ever truly altruistic? Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 20, 1987, pp. 65–122.
• “Unpleasant feeling provoked by observation,” in Piliavin, J. A., Dovidio, J. F., Gaertner, S. L, & Clark, R. D., III, Emergency Intervention, Academic Press, 1981.
• Empathy, in Krebs, D., Empathy and Altruism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(6), 1975, p. 1134. Quoted by Batson, C. D. (2011), op. cit.
21. Revault d’Allonnes, M., L’Homme compassionnel, Seuil, 2008, p. 22. This confusion is understandable if one holds to the Latin etymology of compassion, a term derived from the words compatior, “to suffer with,” and compassio, “shared suffering.”
22. Batson, C. D., The Altruism Question: Toward a Social Psychological Answer, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991; Batson, C. D. (2011), op. cit.
23. Spinoza does not use the terms “pity” and “compassion,” but, according to Alexandre Jollien, in the language of the time, he explains that in pity, sadness comes first, and in compassion, love. In his Ethics, Book 3, Number 28, he says: “Commiseration is a sadness brought on by the idea of pain experienced by another whom we imagine to be similar to us.” And in Number 24, Spinoza writes: “Pity is love as it affects man in such a way that he rejoices at another’s happiness and is on the contrary saddened by another’s misfortune.” Conversation with A. Jollien, January 29, 2012.
24. Zweig, Stefan, epigraph to Beware of Pity, trans. Phyllis and Trevor Blewitt, NYRB Classics, 2006, p. xxv.
25. If pain is at stake, the sections of the brain involved will include the anterior insular cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). If disgust is at issue, it will also be the anterior insular cortex. If you experience a neutral tactile sensation, the secondary somatosensory cortex will be activated. If you experience pleasant emotions and agreeable sensations, the insula, the striatum, and the median orbitofrontal cortex can be involved. Cognitive apprehension rests on the medial prefrontal cortex, the temporal parietal junction (TPJ), and the superior temporal sulcus (STS), a network that is activated when one asks people to reflect on their thoughts and beliefs.
26. Which specialists call “theory of mind.”
27. See Vignemont, F. de, & Singer, T. The empathic brain: how, when and why? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(10), 2006, pp. 435–441. Aside from this article, this chapter is chiefly based on explanations given by Tania Singer, with whom I have collaborated for several years, during the course of conversations in January 2012.
28. Singer, T., Seymore, B., O’Doherty, J. P., Stephan, K. E., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others. Nature, 439(7075), 2006, pp. 466–469; Hein, G., Silani, G., Preuschoff, K., Batson, C. D., & Singer, T. Neural responses to ingroup and outgroup members’ suffering predict individual differences in costly helping. Neuron, 68(1), 2010, pp. 149–160; Hein, G., & Singer, T. I feel how you feel but not always: the empathic brain and its modulation. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 18(2), 2008, pp. 153–158.
29. Batson, C. D., Lishner, D. A., Cook, J., & Sawyer, S. Similarity and nurturance: Two possible sources of empathy for strangers. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 27(1), 2005, pp. 15–25.
30. For more details on these different points quoted above, see de Vignemont, F., & Singer, T. (2006), op. cit.
31. Singer, T., & Steinbeis, N. Differential roles of fairness and compassion-based motivations for cooperation, defection, and punishment. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167(1), 2009, pp. 41–50; Singer, T. The past, present and future of social neuroscience: A European perspective. Neuroimage, 61(2), 2012, pp. 437–449.
32. Klimecki, O., Ricard, M., & Singer, T. Empathy versus compassion—Lessons from 1st and 3rd person methods. In Singer, T., & Bolz, M. (eds.), Compassion: Bridging Practice and Science, a multimedia book [e-book], 2013.
33. Klimecki, O. M., Leiberg, S., Lamm, C., & Singer, T. Functional neural plasticity and associated changes in positive affect after compassion training. Cerebral Cortex, 2012.
34. In various pathologies—narcissism, psychopathy, and personality disorders—different components of the chain of affective reactions involved in social interactions do not function normally, and empathy is inhibited. See Chapter 27, “The Deficiencies of Empathy.”
1. For a summary of the 32 studies on empathy with regard to pain, see Lamm, C., Decety, J., & Singer, T. Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain. Neuroimage, 54(3), 2011, pp. 2492–2502.
2. The increase of a positive reaction through compassion is associated with an activation of a cerebral network that includes the areas of the median orbitofrontal cortex, the ventral striatum, the ventral tegmental section, the nuclei of the brainstem, the nucleus accumbens, the median insula, the pallidum and putamen, all areas of the brain that were previously associated with love (especially maternal love), feelings of belonging and gratification. In the case of empathy, the areas are the anterior insula and the median cingulate cortex. Klimecki, O. M., et al. (2012), op. cit.; Klimecki, O., Ricard, M., & Singer, T. (2013), op. cit.
3. Felton, J. S. Burnout as a clinical entity—its importance in health care workers. Occupational Medicine, 48(4), 1998, pp. 237–250.
4. For a neural distinction between compassion and empathy fatigue, see Klimecki, O., & Singer, T., “Empathic distress fatigue rather than compassion fatigue? Integrating findings from empathy research in psychology and social neuroscience.” In Oakley, B., Knafo, A., Madhavan, G., & Wilson, D. S., Pathological Altruism, Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 368–383.
5. Singer, T., & Bolz, M. (eds.) (2013), op. cit.; Klimecki, O., Ricard, M., & Singer, T. (2013), op. cit. The most recent publication is Klimecki, O., Leiberg, S., Ricard, M., & Singer, T. Differential Pattern of Functional Brain Plasticity after Compassion and Empathy Training. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2013.
6. This expression designates a study that observes over a course of months, or even years, the evolution of subjects.
7. Bornemann B., & Singer, T., “The resource study training protocol.” In Singer, T., & Bolz, M. (eds.), Compassion: Bridging Practice and Science, 2013, a multimedia book [e-book].
8. Klimecki, O. M., et al. (2012). Op. cit.
9. At the neural level, the researchers observed that training in empathic resonance increased activity in a network that is involved both in empathy for another’s pain and in one’s own experience of pain. This network includes the anterior insula and the anterior medial cingulate cortex (MCC). Singer, T., & Bolz, M. (eds.) (2013), op. cit.
10. More precisely, these regions include the orbitofrontal cortex, the ventral striatum, and the anterior cingulate cortex. As to the training, our participants received courses on the notion of metta, a word that means “altruistic love” in Pali. The instructions the participants received were mostly concentrated on the aspect of kindness and benevolent wishes (“May you be happy, in good health, etc.”). The training included one entire day spent with a teacher, followed by daily group practices, one hour every evening. The participants were also encouraged to practice at home.
11. Klimecki, O. M., et al. (2012), op. cit.
12. Lutz, A., Brefczynski-Lewis, J., Johnstone, T., & Davidson, R. J. Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: Effects of meditative expertise. PLoS One, 3 (3), 2008, e1897.
13. Christophe André, Feelings and Moods, Polity Press, 2012, p. 250.
1. Fredrickson, B. L. The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 2001, p. 218; Fredrickson, B. “Positive emotions.” In Snyder C. R., & Lopez, S. J., Handbook of Positive Psychology, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 122 and 125, for the ensuing quotation.
2. Ekman, Paul, Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life, Holt, 2007; Ekman, P., & Davidson, R. J., The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions, Oxford University Press, 1994.
3. Atwood, Margaret, Surfacing, Anchor, 1998, p. 107.
4. Fredrickson, B. Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, Hudson Street Press, 2013, p. 16. I am grateful to Barbara Fredrickson for sending me the proofs of her book before its publication.
5. Ibid., p. 5.
6. Ibid.
7. House, J. S., Landis, K. R., & Umberson, D. Social relationships and health. Science, 241(4865), 1988, pp. 540–545. See also Diener, E., & Seligman, M. E. P. Very happy people. Psychological Science, 13(1), 2002, pp. 81–84.
8. Hegi, K. E., & Bergner, R. M. What is love? An empirically-based essentialist account. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 27(5), 2010, pp. 620–636.
9. Fredrickson, B. (2013), op. cit., note 7, p. 186, as well as Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. A. Objectification theory. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21(2), 1997, pp. 173–206; Fredrickson, B. L., Hendler, L. M., Nilsen, S., O’Barr, J. F., & Roberts, T. A. Bringing back the body: A retrospective on the development of objectification theory. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35(4), 2011, 689–696.
10. At stake here are reactions to the content of the conversation and not simply to the sound of the other’s voice, or one’s own voice when one is speaking. In fact, the synchronization of cerebral activities stops if the other person is speaking a foreign language, Russian, for instance, which the one listening does not understand.
11. Stephens, G. J., Silbert, L. J., & Hasson, U. Speaker-listener neural coupling underlies successful communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(32), 2010, 14425–14430; Hasson, U. I can make your brain look like mine. Harvard Business Review, 88(12), 2010, 32–33. Quoted and explained by Fredrickson, B. (2013), op. cit., pp. 39–44.
12. See Chapter 4, “From Empathy to Compassion in a Neuroscience Laboratory.”
13. Singer, T., & Lamm, C. The social neuroscience of empathy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1156(1), 2009, pp. 81–96; Craig, A. D. How do you feel—now? The anterior insula and human awareness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 2009, pp. 59–70.
14. Hasson, U., Nir, Y., Levy, I., Fuhrmann, G., & Malach, R. Intersubject synchronization of cortical activity during natural vision. Science, 303(5664), 2004, pp. 1634–1640.
15. Fredrickson B. (2013), op. cit., p. 43.
16. Fredrickson, B., Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive, Crown Archetype, 2001.
17. For a summary of the discovery of these mirror neurons and of the researches into them, see Rizzolatti, G., & Sinigaglia, C., Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions, and Experience, Oxford University Press, 2008.
18. Cho, M. M., DeVries, A. C., Williams, J. R., & Carter, C. S. The effects of oxytocin and vasopressin on partner preferences in male and female prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster). Behavioral Neuroscience 113 (5), 1999, p. 1071.
19. Champagne, F. A., Weaver, I. C. G., Diorio, J., Dymob, S., Szyf, M., & Meaney, M. J. Maternal care associated with methylation of the estrogen receptor-alpha1b promoter and estrogen receptor-alpha expression in the medial preoptic area of female offspring. Endocrinology, 147(6), 2006, pp. 2909–2915.
20. Francis, D., Diorio, J., Liu, D., & Meaney, M. J. Nongenomic transmission across generations of maternal behavior and stress responses in the rat. Science, 286(5442), 1999, pp. 1155–1158.
21. Guastella, A. J., Mitchell, P. B., & Dadds, M. R. Oxytocin increases gaze to the eye region of human faces. Biological Psychiatry, 63(1), 2008, p. 3; Marsh, A. A., Yu, H. H., Pine, D. S., & Blaire, R. J. R. Oxytocin improves specific recognition of positive facial expressions. Psychopharmacology, 209(3), 2010, pp. 225–232; Domes, G., Heinrichs, M., Michel, A., Berger, C., & Herpertz, S. C. Oxytocin improves “mind-reading” in humans. Biological Psychiatry, 61(6), 2007, pp. 731–733.
22. Kosfeld, M., Heinrichs, M., Zak, P. J., Fischbacher, U., & Fehr, E. Oxytocin increases trust in humans. Nature, 435 (7042), 2005, pp. 673–676.
23. These researchers showed that oxytocin does not increase risk-taking in general (parachute jumping, for instance), but more specifically accepting the fact that one is running a risk when one decides to trust someone else, when our own interests are at stake.
24. Mikolajczak, M., Pinon, N., Lane, A., De Timary, P., & Luminet, O. Oxytocin not only increases trust when money is at stake, but also when confidential information is in the balance. Biological Psychology, 85(1), 2010, pp. 182–184.
25. Gamer, M., Zurowski, B., & Büchel, C. Different amygdala subregions mediate valence-related and attentional effects of oxytocin in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(20), 2010, pp. 9400–9405. See also: Kirsch, P., Esslinger, C., Chen, Q., Mier, D., Lis, S., Siddhanti, S., & Meyer-Lindenberg, A. Oxytocin modulates neural circuitry for social cognition and fear in humans. Journal of Neuroscience, 25(49), 2005, pp. 11489–11493; Petrovic, P., Kalisch, R., Singer, T., & Dolan, R. J. Oxytocin attenuates affective evaluations of conditioned faces and amygdala activity. Journal of Neuroscience, 28(26), 2008, pp. 6607–6615.
26. Uvnäs-Moberg, K., Arn, I., & Magnusson, D. The psychobiology of emotion: The role of the oxytocinergic system. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 12(2), 2005, pp. 281–295.
27. Campbell, A. Oxytocin and human social behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(3), 2010, pp. 281–295.
28. Lee, H. J., Macbeth, A. H., & Pagani, J. H. Oxytocin: The great facilitator of life. Progress in Neurobiology, 88(2), 2009, pp. 127–151.
29. Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Fischer, M., Dvash, J., Harari, H., Perach-Bloom, N., & Levkovitz, Y. Intranasal administration of oxytocin increases envy and schadenfreude (gloating). Biological Psychiatry, 66(9), 2009, pp. 864–870.
30. De Dreu, C. K. W., Greer, L. L., Van Kleef, G. A., Shalvi, S., & Handgraaf, M. J. J. Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(4), 2011, pp. 1262–1266.
31. Porges, S. W. Social engagement and attachment. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1008(1), 2003, pp. 31–47.
32. Bibevski, S., & Dunlap, M. E. Evidence for impaired vagus nerve activity in heart failure. Heart Failure Reviews, 16(2), 2011, pp. 129–135.
33. Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K., McGuire, L., Robles, T. F., & Glaser, R. Emotions, morbidity, and mortality: New perspectives from psychoneuroimmunology. Annual Review of Psychology, 53(1), 2002, pp. 83–107; Moskowitz, J. T., Epel, E.S., & Acree, M. Positive affect uniquely predicts lower risk of mortality in people with diabetes. Health Psychology, 27(1S), 2008, p. S73.
34. Fredrickson B. (2013), op. cit., p. 10.
35. Fredrickson, B. L., Cohn, M. A., Coffey, K. A., Pek, J., & Finkel, S. M. Open hearts build lives: positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 2008, p. 1045.
36. Kok, B. E., Coffey, K. A., Cohn, M. A., Catalino, L. I., Vacharkulksemsuk, T., Algoe, S. B., Brantley, M., & Fredrickson, B. L. Positive emotions drive an upward spiral that links social connections and health. Psychological Science, 24, 2012, p. 1123; Kok, B. E., & Fredrickson, B. L. Upward spirals of the heart: Autonomic flexibility, as indexed by vagal tone, reciprocally and prospectively predicts positive emotions and social connectedness. Biological Psychology, 85(3), 2010, pp. 432–436.
37. Fredrickson, B. (2013), op. cit., p. 16.
38. Ibid., p. 23.
1. Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva: A Translation of the Bodhicharyavatara, trans. the Padmakara Translation Group, Shambhala Publications, 1997, p. 129.
2. Butler, Joseph, from “Five Sermons,” in The Whole Works of Joseph Butler, Ulan Press, 2012, pp. 106–107.
3. See Chapter 25, “The Champions of Selfishness.”
4. Khyentse Rinpoche, Dilgo, The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-Seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva, Shambhala Press, 2007, p. 127.
5. Fromm, Erich, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics, Rinehart and Co., 1947, pp. 134–6.
6. Terestchenko, Michel (2007), op. cit., p. 17.
7. Plato, Gorgias, Complete Works, Volume 1, Gallimard, 1940.
1. Duc de La Rochefoucauld, François, Reflections; Or Sentences and Moral Maxims, trans. Bund and Friswell, Echo Library, 2007, Maxim 85, pp. 34–35.
2. Interviews given to the Monde des religions. Statements gathered by Frédéric Lenoir and Karine Papillaud, 2007.
3. Jacques Attali, interview on 20minutes.fr, November 19, 2006.
4. Kolm, S.-C., La bonne économie, PUF, 1984 p. 191.
5. André Comte-Sponville, conversations during an evening organized by Christophe and Pauline André.
6. Darwin, Charles, Descent of Man, op. cit., online: http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/chapter_04.html
7. Wilkinson, G. S. Reciprocal altruism in bats and other mammals. Ethology and Sociobiology, 9(2–4), 1988, pp. 85–100.
8. I am grateful to Danielle Follmi for providing me with this information.
9. Ref. http://www.scribd.com/doc/16567239/The-Inca-From-Village-to-Empire
10. Turnbull, Colin M., The Mountain People, Simon & Schuster, 1972, p. 146.
11. The various forms of gift exchange ritual in traditional societies have given rise to countless studies. See especially Mauss, M., Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques, PUF, 2007, as well as the preface by Florence Weber.
12. Paul Ekman, personal communication, 2009. In 1972, Ekman worked as an anthropologist in a Papuan tribe in New Guinea, where he studied the facial expression of emotions.
13. Kolm, Serge-Christophe (1984), op. cit., p. 11. I am grateful to S.-C. Kolm for having had the kindness to meet me and share his work with me. Serge-Christophe Kolm was Director of the CSERA (Center for Socio-Economic Research and Analysis), and professor at Harvard and Stanford.
14. Kolm, S.-C. (1984), op. cit., p. 56.
1. The Samaritans of New York, New York Times, September 5, 1988, p. 26.
2. Daily Mail, November 5, 2010, and CBC News, November 4, 2010.
3. Berkowitz, L., & Daniels, L. R. Responsibility and dependency. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66(5), 1963, p. 429.
4. Kohn, A. (1992), op. cit., p. 230.
5. Titmuss, R. M. The gift relationship: From human blood to social. Policy, London, 1970.
6. Eisenberg, N., & Neal, C. Children’s moral reasoning about their own spontaneous prosocial behavior. Developmental Psychology, 15(2), 1979, p. 228.
7. The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission was founded in 1904 by the American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to reward acts of heroism every year; it has distributed almost 10,000 medals since its foundation.
8. Monroe, K. R. (1996), op. cit., p. 61.
9. Milo, R. D., Egoism and Altruism, Wadsworth Publications, 1973 p. 98.
10. France 2, Envoyé special, aired on October 9, 2008.
1. It was the philosopher Hannah Arendt who spoke of the “banality of evil” in connection with Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi administrator of the concentration camps who, during his trial, tried to give himself the image of a commonplace functionary, a man like anyone else who was only fulfilling his duties and carrying out orders. Arendt, H., Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Penguin, 1963.
2. Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations.
3. According to Gaskin, K., Smith, J. D., & Paulwitz, I., Ein neues Bürgerschaftliches Europa: Eine Untersuchung zur Verbreitung und Rolle von Volunteering in zehn europäischen Ländern, Lambertus, 1996. In the countries they studied, people who volunteer represent 38% of the population in Holland, 36% in Sweden, 34% in Great Britain, 32% in Belgium, 28% in Denmark, 25% in France and Ireland, and 18% in Germany.
4. Martel, F., De la culture en Amérique, Gallimard, 2006, p. 358; Clary, E. G., & Snyder, M. A functional analysis of altruism and prosocial behavior: The case of volunteerism. In Prosocial Behavior, Sage Publications, 1991, pp. 119–148.
5. Laville, J.-L., Politique de l’association, Seuil, 2010. They work for 1,100,000 associations, with 21.6 million members.
6. Chatel, Véronique, Profession: bénévole, in L’Express, special issue, No. 9, May–June 2011, p. 54.
7. The fields of activity are diverse: culture and entertainment (28%), sports (20%), social, sanitary, and humanitarian action (17%), human rights defense (15% in unions, a consumer’s defense association, and the like), religion (8%), education (6%), political parties, heritage organizations (3%), environment (2.6%), defense of biodiversity, restoration of natural parks, etc. See Le travail bénévole: un essai de quantification et de valorization, [archive] INSEE. Economie et statistique, No. 373, 2004 [pdf].
8. http://www.kiva.org/, http://www.microworld.org/fr/, http://www.globalgiving.org/.
9. Lecomte, J. (2012), La Bonté humaine. Op. cit., Chapter 1.
10. Esterbrook, J. (August 31, 2005), New Orleans fights to stop looting, CBS news. Quoted in Lecomte (2012), op. cit., p. 22.
11. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (September 2, 2005). Quoted in “Governor Kathleen Blanco: Strong leadership in the midst of catastrophe,” PDF.
12. Anonymous (September 2, 2005). Troops told “shoot to kill” in New Orleans. ABC News online.
13. Lecomte, op. cit., p. 24.
14. Rosenblatt, S., & Rainey, J. Katrina takes a toll on truth, news accuracy, Los Angeles Times, 2005, p. 27.
15. Dwyer, J., & Drew, C. Fear exceeded crime’s reality in New Orleans. New York Times, 25 (2005): A1. See also Rodriguez, H., Trainor, J., & Quarantelli, E. L. Rising to the challenges of a catastrophe: The emergent and prosocial behavior following Hurricane Katrina. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 604(1), 2006, pp. 82–101, along with Tierney, K., Bevc, C., & Kuligowski, E. Metaphors matter: Disaster myths, media frames, and their consequences in Hurricane Katrina. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 604(1), 2006, pp. 57–81. Quoted in Lecomte, op. cit., p. 348.
16. Lecomte, op. cit., pp. 25–26.
17. Rodriguez et al. (2006), op. cit., p. 84.
18. Barsky, L., Trainor, J., & Torres, M. (2006). Disaster Realities in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: Revisiting the Looting Myth. Retrieved from http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/2367.
19. U.S. House of Representatives (2006), A failure of initiative: Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, pp. 248–249. Quoted in Lecomte, op. cit., p. 348.
20. Tierney, K., Bevc, C., & Kuligowski, E. (2006). Op. cit., pp. 68, 75.
21. Quarantelli, E. L. The nature and conditions of panic. American Journal of Sociology, 1954, pp. 267–275.
22. Der Heide, E. A. Common misconceptions about disasters: Panic, the “disaster syndrome,” and looting. The First, 72, 2004, 340–380. Quoted in Lecomte, (2012), op. cit., p. 349.
23. Clarke, L. (2002). Le mythe de la panique. Sciences humaines, 16–20. Clarke, L. (2002). Panic: Myth or reality? Contexts, 1(3), 21–26. See also Connell, R. (2001). “Collective behavior in the September 11, 2001 evacuation of the World Trade Center.” http://putnam.lib.udel.edu/8080/dspace/handle/19716/683
24. Drury, J., Cocking, C., & Reicher, S. The nature of collective resilience: Survivor reactions to the 2005 London bombings. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 27(1), 2009, pp. 66–95. Summarized in Lecomte, op. cit., pp. 36–37.
25. Quoted by Clarke (2002). op. cit., p. 24.
26. Quarantelli, E. L. Conventional beliefs and counterintuitive realities. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 75(3), 2008, pp. 873–904. Quoted in Lecomte, op. cit., p. 33.
1. According to various articles, mainly one by Buckley, Cara. Man Is Rescued By Stranger on Subway Tracks, New York Times, January 3, 2007. In another similar incident, the rescuer did not want to be identified. In March 2009, after a man fell onto the railroad tracks in Pennsylvania Station in New York, a citizen jumped onto the tracks to help him out. As people were crowding around the man to congratulate him, covered in soot and dirt from the tracks, he got into the next train entering the station and refused to speak with a journalist who was there. Wilson, Michael. An Unsung Hero of the Subway, in New York Times, March 16, 2009.
2. Oliner, Samuel and Pearl, Do Unto Others: Extraordinary Acts of Ordinary People, Basic Books, 2003, p. 21.
3. Monroe, Kristen, The Heart of Altruism, op. cit., pp. 140–1.
4. Ibid.
5. Franco, Blau, & Zimbardo, P. Heroism: A conceptual analysis and differentiation between heroic action and altruism. Review of General Psychology, 15(2), 2011, pp. 99–113.
6. Hughes-Hallett, L., Heroes, London: Harper Collins, 2004; Eagly, A., & Becker, S. Comparing the heroism of women and men. American Psychologist, 60, 2005, pp. 343–344.
7. Franco, Z., & Zimbardo, P. The banality of heroism. Greater Good, 3, 2006–2007, Fall–Winter, pp. 30–35; Glazer, M. P., & Glazer, P. M. On the trail of courageous behavior. Sociological Inquiry, 69, 1999, pp. 276–295; Shepela, S. T., Cook, J., Horlitz, E., Leal, R., Luciano, S., Lutfy, E.,… Warden, E. Courageous resistance. Theory and Psychology, 9, 1999, pp. 787–805.
8. Robin, M.-M., The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World’s Food Supply. New Press, 2010. Kindle, pp. 1432–1530.
9. Shepela, S. T., et al. (1999), op. cit.
10. Monroe, K. R. (1996), op. cit., pp. 66–67.
11. Zimbardo, P., The Lucifer Effect, Ebury Digital. Kindle Edition, 2011, p. 1134.
1. Monroe, K. R. (1996), op. cit., pp. ix–xv.
2. Opdyke, I. G., In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer, Anchor, 1999.
3. Opdyke, op. cit., p. 111.
4. 90% of the Jewish population of Poland, or 3,000,000 people, were executed during collective massacres or in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec, and Majdanek, all located in Poland.
5. Oliner, S. P. & P. M., The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe, Macmillan, 1988, p. 2.
6. Ibid., p. 166.
7. Ibid., p. 168.
8. Ibid., p. 131.
9. This summary of events is taken from Hallie, P. P., Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (Reprinted edition), Harper Perennial, 1994, p. 12, and Terestchenko, M., Un si fragile vernis d’humanité, 2007, op. cit., p. 213.
10. Ibid., p. 173.
11. Hallie, P. P., op. cit., pp. 267–268.
12. Terestchenko, M., op. cit.
13. Ibid., p. 140.
14. Ibid., p. 142.
15. Ibid., pp. 206–7.
16. Halter, M., La Force du bien, Robert Laffont, 1995, p. 95.
17. Oliner, S. P., & Oliner, P. M. (1988), op. cit., p. 228.
18. Ibid.
19. Mordecai Paldiel. Is goodness a mystery? Jerusalem Post, October 8, 1989.
1. Quoted by Harold Schulweis, in the preface to Oliner, S. P., & Oliner, P. M. (1988). Op. cit, p. ix–x.
2. Ghiselin, M. T., The Economy of Nature and the Evolution of Sex, University of California Press, 1974, p. 247.
3. La Rochefoucauld, F. de (1678/2010), Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (Kindle Locations 483–484). Kindle Edition.
4. Campbell, D. T. On the conflicts between biological and social evolution and between psychology and moral tradition. American Psychologist, 30(12), 1975, 1104. Quoted by Batson, C. D. (1991), op. cit., p. 42.
5. Batson, C. D. (2011), op. cit., p. 4.
6. Ibid., pp. 87–88.
7. Hatfield, E., Walster, G. W., & Piliavin, J. A. Equity theory and helping relationship. In Altruism, Sympathy and Helping: Psychological and Sociological Principles, 1978, pp. 115–139. Quoted by Batson, C. D. (1991), p. 39.
8. Batson, C. D. (2011), op. cit., p. 4.
9. Ibid., p. 89.
10. Nagel, T., Possibility of Altruism, Princeton University Press, 1979, p. 80.
11. Here, since the subject being observed is a woman, all the observers were women, so as to suppress the effects of politeness or “gallantry.” The possibility, for instance, that men might feel “obliged” to help a woman in difficulty would complicate the study by the addition of additional parameters. All these experiments were also undertaken with men and the results are identical in both cases.
12. These two experiments reported in Batson, C. D., et al. (1981). Op. cit. and two experiments in Batson, C. D., O’Quin, K., Fultz, J., Vanderplas, M., & Isen, A. M. (1983), Influence of self-reported distress and empathy on egoistic versus altruistic motivation to help. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(3), 706.
14. We will return to this point of view at greater length in Chapter 25, “The Champions of Selfishness.”
15. Batson, C. D., & Weeks, J. L. (1996), Mood effects of unsuccessful helping: Another test of the empathy-altruism hypothesis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(2), 148–157.
16. Concerning these objections, see Hoffman, M. L. (1991). Is empathy altruistic? Psychological Inquiry, 2(2), 131–133; Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1999), Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Harvard University Press; Wallach, L., & Wallach, M. A. (1991). Why altruism, even though it exists, cannot be demonstrated by social psychological experiments. Psychological Inquiry, 2(2), 153–155.
17. The fact that they can certainly think about Katie’s fate later on, after the text, does not influence the result of the experiment.
18. For a more detailed description, see Batson, C. D. (2011). Op. cit., pp. 140–145, and Stocks, E. L., Lishner, D. A., & Decker, S. K. (2009), Altruism or psychological escape: Why does empathy promote prosocial behavior? European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 649–665.
19. The subjects with weak empathy, on the other hand, help only when they fear that their inaction will be criticized.
20. Batson, C. D., Dyck, J. L., Brandt, J. R., Batson, J. G., Powell, A. L., McMaster, M. R., & Griffitt, C. (1988), Five studies testing two new egoistic alternatives to the empathy-altruism hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55(1), 52. The experiment also shows that altruists do better on the test when Suzann’s fate depends on them, and are less attentive when they know that Suzanne isn’t risking anything. On the other hand, those who have little empathy have a lower score than the altruists when Suzanne is in danger, but curiously get a higher score when they know she isn’t risking anything. The explanation offered is that, in the second case, they are more interested in their own personal score, whereas altruists lost interest in the test since it isn’t useful to Suzanne.
21. See especially Cialdini, R. B. Altruism or egoism? That is (still) the question. Psychological Inquiry, 2(2), 1991, 124–126.
22. Interested readers can find these details in C. D. Batson’s articles and in the summary he made of them in his recent book, Altruism in Humans (2011), op. cit.
23. Batson, C. D. Why act for the public good? Four answers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(5), 1994, 603–610. The paper from which Batson’s conclusion is quoted was published in 1994. Between 1978 and 1996, over eighteen years, altogether thirty-one experiments were conducted, all lending support to the empathy-altruism hypothesis.
24. See especially Cialdini, R. B. (1991). Op. cit.
25. Batson, Daniel, Altruism in Humans, op. cit., p. 161
1. For a detailed account of the positions of these thinkers, see Batson, C. D., The Altruism Question: Toward a Social Psychological Answer, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991, Chapters 1 and 2.
2. David Hume, Works of David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, The Natural… Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Kindle Locations 3705–3706). MobileReference. Kindle Edition.
3. Ibid.
4. Quoted in Kohn, A., The Brighter Side of Human Nature, op. cit., p. 215.
5. Feinberg, J., & Shafer-Landau, R., Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy, Wadsworth, 1971, Chapter 19.
6. Maslow, A. H., The Psychology of Science, a Reconnaissance, Henry Regnery, 1966.
7. Kohn, A. (1992). Op. cit., p. 209.
8. Spencer, H. (1892). The Principles of Ethics, vol. 1. D. Appleton and Co., pp. 241, 279. Quoted in Kohn, A. (1992). Op. cit., p. 210.
9. As told to Kristen Monroe, Monroe, K. R. (1996). Op. cit., p. 142.
10. For a more detailed exposition, see Broad, C. D., Ethics and the History of Philosophy (new edition), 2010, pp. 218–231.
11. Schlick, M., Problems of Ethics, Nabu Press, 2011.
12. Feinberg, J. (1971). Op. cit.
13. Monroe, K. R. (1996). Op. cit., p. 201.
14. Batson, C. D. (2011). Op. cit., p. 64.
15. Haidt, J., The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Allen Lane, 2012.
16. Kagan, J., Unstable Ideas: Temperament, Cognition, and Self, Harvard University Press, 1989. Quoted by Kohn, A. (1992). Op. cit., p. 41.
17. Mandela, Nelson, Long Walk to Freedom, Little, Brown, 1994.
1. Darwin, C., The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. 1, John Murray, 1871, p. 90, http://darwin-online.org.uk/.
2. Ibid. p. 100.
3. E. Sober, in Davidson, R. J., & Harrington, A., Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 50.
4. I am grateful to Frans de Waal for clarifying this point for me.
5. See especially Trivers, R. L., Social Evolution, 1985, Benjamin-Cummings.
6. Memoirs of the Society of Naturalists of St. Petersburg. Quoted in Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, London: Freedom Press, 2009.
7. Nowak, M. A., & Highfield, R., SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed, Simon & Schuster, 2011, pp. 274–275. Bourke, A. F. G., Principles of Social Evolution, Oxford University Press, 2011. See also the excellent article summarizing these arguments by Candau, Joël. Pourquoi coopérer. Terrain (1), 2012, pp. 4–25.
8. We know, for instance, that over five hundred species of bacteria colonize the teeth and mucous membranes of humans, offering an obvious potential for cooperation as well as for competition. But it has been demonstrated that it is cooperation between these bacteria that allows them to survive in an environment where a single species is incapable of proliferating. See Kolenbrander, P. E. Mutualism versus independence: Strategies of mixed-species oral biofilms in vitro using saliva as the sole nutrient source. Infect. Immun., 69, 2001, 5794–5804. Concerning bacteria, see also Koschwanez, J. H., Foster, K. R., & Murray, A. W. Sucrose utilization in budding yeast as a model for the origin of undifferentiated multicellularity. PLoS Biology, 2011, 9(8).
9. See especially Aron, S., Passera, S. & L., Les Sociétés animales: évolution de la coopération et organisation sociale, De Boeck University, 2000, as well as Wilson, E. O., The Social Conquest of Earth (1st edition), Liveright, 2012.
10. Candau, J. (2012), op. cit., and Henrich, J., & Henrich, N., Why Humans Cooperate: A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation, Oxford University Press, 2007.
11. Darwin, The Origin of Species, Chapter 8, http://darwin-online.org.uk/.
12. Ibid., Chapter 6, http://darwin-online.org.uk/.
13. Darwin, C., The Descent of Man, op.cit., p. 82. http://darwin-online.org.uk/.
14. Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S., Unto Others, op. cit., pp. 201–205.
15. Dugatkin, L. A., Cooperation Among Animals, Oxford University Press, 1997.
16. Hamilton, W. D. (1963). The evolution of altruistic behavior. American Naturalist, 97(896), 354–356. Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7(1), 1–16.
17. Wilson, E. O., The Insect Societies, Harvard University Press, 1971.
18. Clutton-Brock, T. H., O’Riain, M., Brotherton, P., Gaynor, D., Kansky, R., Griffin, A., & Manser, M. Selfish sentinels in cooperative mammals. Science, 284(5420), 1999, p. 1640.
19. It has also been verified among alpheid shrimp, the naked mole-rat, certain wasps, bees, Coleoptera, and, based on recent discoveries, among certain Trematoda worms. The first of these confirmations came thirteen years after the publication of Hamilton’s first article, following research by Robert Trivers and Hope Hare: Trivers, R.L., & Hare, H. Haplodiploidy and the evolution of the social insects. Science, 191(4224), 1976, 249–263.
20. See the biography of George Price: Harman, O. S., The Price of Altruism, Norton, 2010.
21. Hamilton, W. D. (1970). Selfish and spiteful behaviour in an evolutionary model. Nature, 228, 1218–1219.
22. Price, G. R., & others. (1970). Selection and covariance. Nature, 227(5257), 520.
23. Hill, K. R. (2002). Altruistic cooperation during foraging by the Ache, and the evolved human predisposition to cooperate. Human Nature, 13(1), 105–128; Kelly, R. L., The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.
24. Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R., Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, University of Chicago Press, 2004. Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences. Psychological Bulletin, 128(5), 699.
25. Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 35–57; Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. D. (1981), The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211(4489), 1390; Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1988). An evolutionary model of social learning: The effects of spatial and temporal variation. Social Learning: Psychological and Biological Perspectives, 29–48.
26. Hill, K. R., Walker, R. S., Božičević, M., Eder, J., Headland, T., Hewlett, B., Hurtado, A. M., et al. (2011). Co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies show unique human social structure. Science, 331(6022), 1286. The researchers notably studied the Inuit of Labrador, the Ache of Paraguay, the Australian Wanindiljaugwa, and several other communities.
27. Dawkins, R., The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, (2d ed.), 1990.
28. Ibid., p. ix.
29. Ibid., p. 3.
30. Ibid., p. 139.
31. Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2009). The roots of human altruism. British Journal of Psychology, 100, 455–471.
32. Goodall, J., & Berman, P. L. Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, Grand Central Publishing, (1999), p. 121.
33. Waal, F. D. de, The Age of Empathy, p. 42.
34. McLean, B., & Elkind, P., The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, Penguin, 2003. Quoted in Waal, F. B. M. de (2009), p. 39. Clarke, T. (2005). Accounting for Enron: shareholder value and stakeholder interests. Corporate Governance: An International Review, 13(5), 598–612.
35. “The Very Human Heroes of Fukushima,” The Guardian, Thursday, March 24, 2011.
36. Wilson, E. O. (1971). Op. cit.
37. Wilson, E. O., The Social Conquest of Earth, Liveright, 2012.
38. Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., & Feldman, M. W. (1978). Darwinian selection and “altruism.” Theoretical Population Biology, 14(2), 268–280.
39. Nowak, M. A., & Highfield, R. (2011). Op. cit., p. 106.
40. See the detailed “Supplementary Information,” doi: 10.1038/nature09205, available at www.nature.com/nature, which accompanies the main article by Nowak, M. A., Tarnita, C. E., & Wilson, E. O. (2010). The evolution of eusociality. Nature, 466(7310), 1057–1062. George Price’s covariance equation is also included in this new analysis, which explains it as a mathematical tautology.
41. Hunt, J. H., The Evolution of Social Wasps, Oxford University Press, 2007; Gadagkar, R., & Gadagkar, R., The Social Biology of Ropalidia Marginata: Toward Understanding the Evolution of Eusociality, Harvard University Press, 2001.
42. Johns, P. M., Howard, K. J., Breisch, N. L., Rivera, A., & Thorne, B. L. (2009). Nonrelatives inherit colony resources in a primitive termite. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(41), 17452–17456. The ethologist Elli Leadbeater has also demonstrated that Polistes dominulus wasps built new nests every spring, and often do so in small groups of females that are not all related. She observed that the females who take part in building the nests had more offspring than solitary wasps. Leadbeater, E., Carruthers, J. M., Green, J. P., Rosser, N. S., & Field, J. (2011). Nest inheritance is the missing source of direct fitness in a primitively eusocial insect. Science, 333(6044), 874–876.
43. See the recent books by these two authors, Wilson, E. O., The Social Conquest of Earth, Liveright, 2012, and Nowak, M., & Highfield, R., SuperCooperators, The Free Press, 2011 which contain all the pertinent scientific references.
44. Nowak, M. A., Tarnita, C. E., & Wilson, E. O. (2010). Op. cit. For one of the reactions to this article, see Abbot, P., Abe, J., Alcock, J., Alizon, S., Alpedrinha, J. A. C., Andersson, M.,… Balshine, S. (2011). Inclusive fitness theory and eusociality. Nature, 471(7339), E1–E4. For the authors’ reply, see Nowak, M. A., Tarnita, C. E., & Wilson, E. O. (2011). Nowak et al. reply, Nature, 471(7339), E9–E10.
45. After the publication of the book by Williams, G. C., Adaptation and Natural Selection, Princeton University Press, 1966 which set forth an uncompromising criticism of group selection.
46. These writers offer offer a fascinating general view of the question of altruism in evolution in their book: Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S., Unto Others.
47. Hamilton, W. D. (1975), Innate social aptitudes of man: An approach from evolutionary genetics. Biosocial Anthropology, 133, 155.
48. That does not require the group to remain in the same place. If a foreign explorer sits down at their table, he does not form part of their group. On the other hand, a member of the group can decide not to take part in the expedition and can remain at home in order to oversee the logistics of their trip from a distance.
49. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H., A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution, Princeton University Press, 2011.
50. We should remember, as we read what follows, that to evolution specialists the word “altruism” designates “behavior that is beneficial to others.” It is only when these authors use the expression “psychological altruism” that they refer to the sense of the word “altruism” as Daniel Batson and the present author mean it in these pages.
51. Nowak, M. A., & Highfield, R. (2011). Op. cit., pp. 262–263.
1. Batson, C. D. (2011). Altruism in Humans, op. cit., p. 4.
2. Ibid.
3. Darwin, C. (1871). Op. cit., p. 308. In fact, parental care, regarded as one of the main sources of empathy, is itself based on more ancient instincts that preceded the ability to feel empathy, since we also observe it among animal species whose rudimentary nervous system does not allow complex cognitive or emotional faculties. Scorpion mothers, for instance, carry their young on their backs, even though that considerably slows down their movements, thereby exposing them to the danger of being captured by a predator. Shaffer, L. R., & Formanowicz, J. (1996), A cost of viviparity and parental care in scorpions: Reduced sprint speed and behavioural compensation. Animal Behaviour, 51(5), 1017–1024.
4. Bell, D. C. (2001). Evolution of parental caregiving. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(3), 216–229.
5. McDougall, W., An Introduction to Social Psychology, Methuen 1908. I owe these various clarifications to Daniel Batson. See also Batson, C. D (1991). Op. cit., Chapters 2 and 3.
6. Sober, E., in Davidson, R. J., & Harrington, A., Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 99, and Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1998). Op. cit.; Waal, F. B. M. de, Le Bon Singe: Les bases naturelles de la morale, Bayard, 1997; Churchland, P. S., Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality, Princeton University Press, 2011.
7. Paul Ekman, in conversation with the author.
8. Leopard vs. baboon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvp9cELWHhs.
9. Hrdy, S. B., Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, Belknap Press, 2009, pp. 67 and 109.
10. Ibid., p. 66.
11. Marlowe, F., “Who tends Hadza children?” in Hewlett, B., & Lamb, M., Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods, 2005, pp. 177–190. Quoted in Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Op. cit., p. 76.
12. Sagi, A., IJzendoorn, M. H., Aviezer, O., Donnell, F., Koren-Karie, N., Joels, T., & Harl, Y. (1995). Attachments in a multiple-caregiver and multiple-infant environment: The case of the Israeli kibbutzim. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 60 (2–3), 71–91. Quoted in Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Op. cit., p. 131.
13. Personal communication from Jane Goodall, whom I thank for clarifying this.
14. Sear, R., Mace, R., & McGregor, I. A. (2000). Maternal grandmothers improve nutritional status and survival of children in rural Gambia. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 267(1453), 1641. Quoted in Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Op. cit., pp. 107–108.
15. Pope, S. K., Whiteside, L., Brooks-Gunn, J., Kelleher, K. J., Rickert, V. I., Bradley, R. H., & Casey, P. H. (1993). Low-birth-weight infants born to adolescent mothers. JAMA, 269(11), 1396–1400. Quoted in Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Op. cit., pp. 107–108.
16. Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Op. cit., p. 144.
17. Watson, J., Psychological Care of Infant and Child, W. W. Norton, 1928, p. 82. Quoted in Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Op. cit., p. 82.
18. Fernandez-Duque, E. (2007). Cost and benefit of parental care in free ranging owl monkey (Aotus azarai). Abstract. Article presented at the 76th annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, March 28–31, Philadelphia; Wolovich, C. K., Perea-Rodriguez, J. P., & Fernandez-Duque, E. (2008). Food transfers to young and mates in wild owl monkeys (Aotus azarai). American Journal of Primatology, 70(3), 211–221. Quoted in Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Op. cit., pp. 88–89.
19. Boesch, C., Bole, C., Eckhardt, N., & Boesch, H. (2010). Altruism in forest chimpanzees: The case of adoption. PloS one, 5(1), e8901.
20. Busquet, G., À l’écoute de l’Inde; des mangroves du Bangladesh aux oasis du Karakoram, Transboréal, 2013, pp. 105ff.
21. Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Op. cit., p. 128.
22. Ibid., pp. 292–293.
23. See especially the exhaustive study on the effect of day care centers, NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1997, as well as McCartney, K., “Current research on child care effects,” in Tremblay, R. E., et al., Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development [online], Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development, 2004, 1–5. This study is ongoing, and one can follow its developments at www.nichd.nih.gov and www.excellence-earlychildhood.ca. Quoted in Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Op. cit., p. 125.
24. The French philosopher and historian Élisabeth Badinter, for example, thinks that the concept of the maternal instinct is “old-fashioned” and that any discourse inspired by naturalism is a step backward. Badinter, É., Le Conflit: La femme et la mère, Le Livre de Poche, 2011.
1. Some people even go so far as to deny its importance, like the anthropologist Laura Betzig, who states straightforwardly in a scholarly book, “Personally, I find culture useless.” Betzig, L. L., Human Nature: A Critical Reader, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 17. Quoted in Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2004). Op. cit., p. 19.
2. Ibid., p. 5.
3. Tomasello, M., Why We Cooperate, MIT Press, 2009, p. xiv.
4. Ibid., p. x.
5. Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2004). Op. cit., p. 6.
6. Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1976). A simple dual inheritance model of the conflict between social and biological evolution. Zygon®, 11(3), 254–262, along with their principal book, Not by Genes Alone (2004). Op. cit.
7. Lydens, L.A. “A Longitudinal Study of Crosscultural Adoption: Identity Development Among Asian Adoptees at Adolescence and Early Adulthood.” Northwestern University, 1988. Quoted in Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2004). Op. cit., p. 39–42.
8. Heard, J. N., & Norman, J., White into Red: A Study of the Assimilation of White Persons Captured by Indians. Scarecrow Press, 1973. Quoted in Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2004). Op. cit., pp. 41–42.
9. According to Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2004). Op. cit., pp. 139–145, the development of social learning, unique to humans, which is the foundation for the evolution of cultures, could have had as a catalyst unprecedented climatic fluctuations that dominated the second half of the Pleistocene era during the last 500,000 years. There is in fact a correlation between climatic variations and an increase in the volume of the brain in hominids and a number of mammals, which increases their ability to adopt new behavior and, in the case of hominids, to make new tools and acquire transmissible knowledge. Hominids began to make tools about 2.6 million years ago, but these tools changed very little for a long time. Then, 250,000 years ago, the number and especially variety of tools suddenly increased. Finally, 50,000 years ago, the humans of Africa spread throughout the world. See Hofreiter, M., Serre, D., Poinar, H. N., Kuch, M., Pääbo, S., et al. (2001), Ancient DNA. Nature Reviews Genetics, 2(5), 353–359. Cité in Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2004). Op. cit., p. 143.
1. Darwin, C., “On the Origin of Species,” in Works of Charles Darwin (1st, 2nd, and 6th editions). Kindle Edition locations 53721–53722 and 53732.
2. Darwin, C. (1877). The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, op. cit.
3. Darwin, C. (1871) The Descent of Man, op.cit. vol. 1, p. 35, http://darwin-online.org.uk/.
4. Jerome Kagan, eminent Harvard professor.
5. Tai National Park, in the Ivory Coast, cited in Waal, F. B. M. de (2010). Op. cit., p. 7.
6. Waal, F. B. M. de (1997). Le Bon Singe. Op. cit.
7. Watch on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgjyhKN_35g.
8. Waal, F. B. M. de (2010). Op. cit., p. 56.
9. Savage, E., Temerlin, J., & Lemmon, W. (1975). Contemporary Primatology 5th Int. Congr. Primat., Nagoya, 1974, pp. 287–291. Karger.
10. Waal, F. B. M. de (1997). Op. cit., p. 220.
11. Moss, C., Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family, William Morrow & Co., 1988, pp. 124–125.
12. Henderson, J. Y., Circus Doctor, P. Davies, 1952, p. 78. Quoted in Masson, J. M., & McCarthy, S., Quand les éléphants pleurent, Albin Michel, 1997.
13. See www.animalplace.org/mr-g-and-jellybean-united. Many thanks to Jane Goodall for sending me this information.
14. Waal, F. B. M. de (2010). Op. cit., p. 153.
15. Goodall, J., & Berman, P. L., Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, Grand Central Publishing, 1999, p. 139.
16. Jane Goodall, personal communication.
17. Waal, F. B. M. de (2010). Op. cit., pp. 130–131.
18. Köhler, W., & Winter, E., The Mentality of Apes, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1925. Quoted in Rollin, B. E., The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain and Science, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 223.
19. The video can be seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf08i5vqIvQ.
20. Lee, P. (1987). Allomothering among African elephants. Animal Behaviour, 35(1), 278–291.
21. Bates, L. A., Lee, P. C., Njiraini, N., Poole, J. H., Sayialel, K., Sayialel, S.,… Byrne, R. W. (2008). Do elephants show empathy? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15(10–11), 204–225.
22. Caldwell, M. C., & Caldwell, D. K., “Epimeletic (Care-Giving) Behavior in Cetacea.” In Whales, Porpoises and Dolphins. University of California Press, 1966, pp. 755–789.
23. Lilly, J. C. (1963), Distress call of the bottlenose dolphin: Stimuli and evoked behavioral responses. Science, 139(3550), 116; Lilly, J. C., Man and Dolphin, Gollancz, 1962.
24. Brown, D. H., & Norris, K. S. (1956). Observations of captive and wild cetaceans. Journal of Mammalogy, 37(3), 311–326; Siebenaler, J., & Caldwell, D. K. (1956), Cooperation among adult dolphins. Journal of Mammalogy, 37(1), 126–128.
25. The incident was photographed. See the Daily Mail, July 29, 2009. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1202941/Pictured-The-moment-Mila-brave-Beluga-whale-saved-stricken-divers-life-pushing-surface.html.
26. According to a report from the New Zealand Press Association, November 22, 2004.
27. Nishiwaki. M. (1962), Aerial photographs show sperm whales’ interesting habits. Nor. Hvalfangstid. 51:395–398. Davis, W. M., Nimrod of the Sea; or the American Whaleman, Harper, 1874.
28. Who Is the Walrus? New York Times, May 28, 2008.
29. Mohr, E., Das Verhalten der Pinnipedier, W. de Gruyter, 1956.
30. Helfer, R., The Beauty of the Beasts, Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1990, pp. 82–83.
31. Romero, T., Castellanos, M. A., & Waal, F. B. M. de (2010). Consolation as possible expression of sympathetic concern among chimpanzees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(27), 12110.
32. See Waal, F. B. M. de, De la réconciliation chez les primates, Flammarion, 1992.
33. Moss, C. (1988). Elephant Memories. Op. cit., pp. 272–273.
34. Ryan, M., & Thornycraft, P. Jumbos mourn black rhino killed by poachers, Sunday Independent, November 18, 2007, quoted in Bekoff, M., & Pierce, J., Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals, University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 105.
35. Goodall, J., The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior, Harvard University Press, 1986.
36. Boesch, C., Bole, C., Eckhardt, N., & Boesch, H. (2010). Altruism in forest chimpanzees: The case of adoption. PloS One, 5(1), e8901.
37. McGrew, W. C., Chimpanzee Material Culture: Implications for Human Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 1992; McGrew, W. C., The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology, Cambridge University Press, 2004. See also the article by Dominique Lestel in the journal Science et Avenir, special issue, Oct.–Nov. 2005.
38. Menzel, E. W. (1975). Purposive behavior as a basis for objective communication between chimpanzees. Science, 189(4203), 652; Menzel, E. W. (1978). Cognitive mapping in chimpanzees. Cognitive Processes in Animal Behavior, 375–422.
39. Premack, D., Woodruff, G., et al. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(4), 515–526.
40. Hare, B., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2001). Do chimpanzees know what conspecifics know? Animal Behaviour, 61(1), 139–151.
41. Bugnyar, T., & Heinrich, B. (2005). Ravens, Corvus corax, differentiate between knowledgeable and ignorant competitors. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 272(1573), 1641.
42. For wolves and dogs, see Virányi, Z., Gácsi, M., Kubinyi, E., Topál, J., Belényi, B., Ujfalussy, D., & Miklósi, Á. (2008). Comprehension of human pointing gestures in young human-reared wolves (Canis lupus) and dogs (Canis familiaris). Animal Cognition, 11(3), 373–387. For capuchin monkeys, see Kuroshima, H., Fujita, K., Adachi, I., Iwata, K., & Fuyuki, A. (July 3, 2003). A capuchin monkey (Cebus apella) recognizes when people do and do not know the location of food. Animal Cognition, 6(4), 283–291.
43. Waal, F. B. M. de (2010). Op. cit., pp. 150–151 and 346–347.
44. Yamamoto, S., Humle, T., & Tanaka, M. (2012). Chimpanzees’ flexible targeted helping based on an understanding of conspecifics’ goals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
45. Mischel, W., Ebbesen, E. B., & Raskoff Zeiss, A. (1972). Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 21(2), 204.
46. Rohan, A. de (2003). Deep thinkers: The more we study dolphins, the brighter they turn out to be. The Guardian (UK). Quoted in Balcombe, J., & Balcombe, J. P., Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, p. 33.
47. Described in Waal, F. B. M. de (2010). Op. cit., p. 132.
48. Gallup, G. G. (1970). Chimpanzees: Self-recognition. Science, 167(3914), 86.
49. Nimchinsky, E. A., Gilissen, E., Allman, J. M., Perl, D. P., Erwin, J. M., & Hof, P. R. (1999). A neuronal morphologic type unique to humans and great apes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96(9), 5268.
50. Hakeem, A. Y., Sherwood, C. C., Bonar, C. J., Butti, C., Hof, P. R., & Allman, J. M. (2009), Von Economo neurons in the elephant brain. The Anatomical Record: Advances in Integrative Anatomy and Evolutionary Biology, 292(2), 242–248.
51. Daniel Batson, in conversation.
52. Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees. Science, 311(5765), 1301.
53. Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Helping and cooperation at 14 months of age. Infancy, 11(3), 271–294.
54. Crawford, M. P. (1937). The cooperative solving of problems by young chimpanzees. Comparative Psychology Monographs, 14(2), 1–88. For the video clip, see http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/av/nissencrawford_cut.mov.
55. I am grateful to Malini Suchak and Frans de Waal for their clarifications of the interpretations of these experiments.
56. Plotnik, J. M., Lair, R., Suphachoksahakun, W., & Waal, F. B. M. de (2011). Elephants know when they need a helping trunk in a cooperative task. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(12), 5116.
57. Horner, V., Carter, J. D., Suchak, M., & Waal, F. B. M. de (2011). Spontaneous prosocial choice by chimpanzees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(33), 13847–13851.
58. Rollin, B. E., The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain and Science, Oxford University Press, 1989.
59. Frans de Waal in conversation with Martha Nussbaum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL5eONzGIR0.
60. Rollin, B. E. (1989). Op. cit., p. 32.
61. Darwin, C. (1871). The Descent of Man, op.cit., p. 35.
62. Frans de Waal coined the English word anthropodenial to designate the denial, commonly observed in the scientific community and the public at large, of any similarity between human and animal mental states and emotions.
63. Frans de Waal, The Age of Empathy, op. cit., p. 131.
64. Rollin, B. E. (1989). Op. cit., p. 23.
65. Frans de Waal, The Age of Empathy, op. cit., p. 90.
66. See his recent book, which retraces the history of his research. Davidson, R. J., & Begley, S., The Emotional Life of Your Brain, Hudson Street Press, 2012.
1. Tomasello, M. (2009). Why We Cooperate. Op. cit., p. 3.
2. Tremblay, R. E., Prévenir la violence dès la petite enfance, Odile Jacob, 2008. In English: McCord, J., & Tremblay, R. E. (Eds.), Preventing Antisocial Behavior: Interventions from Birth Through Adolescence, Guilford Press, 1992.
3. Sagi, A., & Hoffman, M. L. (1976). Empathic distress in the newborn. Developmental Psychology, 12(2), 175.
For an account of the various phases of development in children, from self-awareness and reaction to others’ distress to compassionate behavior, see Hoffman, M. L., Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
4. Martin, G. B., & Clark, R. D. (1982). Distress crying in neonates: Species and peer specificity. Developmental Psychology, 18(1), 3.
5. Sagi and Hoffman had deduced the presence of a “rudimentary empathic reaction of distress,” which allows the newborn to tune into the emotional state of another infant, without clearly distinguishing its own emotions from those of others. According to the neuroscientist Jean Decety, “these results demonstrate that the newborn possesses the two essential aspects of empathy: 1) the ability to share emotions with people with whom it can identify; and 2) the distinction between self and other.” (Decety, J., “L’empathie est-elle une simulation mentale de la subjectivité d’autrui.” In Berthoz, A., Jorland, G., et al. L’Empathie, Odile Jacob, 2004.) Other researchers, like the neuroscientist Tania Singer, are more cautious in their interpretations, since indubitable signs of distinction between self and other appear only after the age of fourteen months. Questioned about this, Tania Singer thinks the discrimination made between the different cries by the newborn stems simply from the fact that its constitution allows it at birth to distinguish a human voice from an ordinary sound and to grant various degrees of importance to different kinds of voices. The intensity of emotional contagion could be linked to the degree of similarity between the infant and the crying child. According to Singer, the reason newborns do not cry upon hearing a recording of their own cries can be attributed to the fact that our brain anticipates the effects of our own reactions (our tears, for instance) and automatically neutralizes them before these reactions occur. That is why we cannot tickle ourselves. Similarly, placing one of my hands over another as a sign of comfort will have the same calming effect only if someone takes my hand when I am suffering (Tania Singer, in conversation, February 2012).
6. Soltis, J. (2004). The signal functions of early infant crying. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 443–490; Zeifman, D. M. (2001). An ethological analysis of human infant crying: Answering Tinbergen’s four questions. Developmental Psychobiology, 39, 265–285. Quoted in Batson, R. D. (2011). Altruism in humans. Op. cit.
7. Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 450(7169), 557–559.
This experiment had already been successfully carried out in the same laboratory with older children, from twelve to sixteen months. Kuhlmeier, V., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2003). Attribution of dispositional states by 12-month-olds. Psychological Science, 14(5), 402–408. If this experiment is repeated with inanimate objects (instead of figurines presenting a human appearance), none of the objects are preferred over the other.
8. Quoted in Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and Moral Development. Op. cit., p. 100. The children sometimes call an adult for help, but relationships of alterity remain quite vague, and a fourteen-month-old might take the hand of a crying child to lead it not to the latter’s mother, who is present, but to its own mother.
9. Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Op. cit.; Lecomte, J. (2012). La Bonté humaine. Op. cit., pp. 232–235.
Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, who for over thirty years has studied the emergence of empathy among children, observed the way young children react in daily life when people close to them find themselves in difficulty. For example, she asked mothers to simulate the pain of bumping into something, or pretend to be sad or exhausted, or to seem to have trouble breathing. Almost always, the children behaved in a consoling way, kissing the mother and giving her other signs of affection, or acting in a considerate way, by bringing, for instance, a bottle to a younger brother or sister, or a blanket to someone shivering with cold. Zahn-Waxler, C., & Radke-Yarrow, M. (1982). The development of altruism: Alternative research strategies. Development of Prosocial Behavior, 109–137.
10. The children who pass the mirror test begin to show empathy to someone who is sobbing or seems to be upset (at eighteen months for girls, twenty-one months for boys). Bischof-Köhler, D. (1991), The development of empathy in infants. http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/2915/1/2915.pdf; Bretherton, I., Fritz, J., Zahn-Waxler, C., & Ridgeway, D. (1986). Learning to talk about emotions: A functionalist perspective. Child Development, 529–548.
11. Quoted in Kohn, A. (1998). The Brighter Side of Human Nature. Op. cit.
12. Voir Barber, N., Why Parents Matter: Parental Investment and Child Outcomes, Praeger Pub Text, 2000, p. 124.
13. Rheingold, H. L. (1982). Little children’s participation in the work of adults, a nascent prosocial behavior. Child Development, 114–125.
14. Report on BBC Radio by Helen Briggs, science correspondent.
15. Aside from the studies by Rheingold, H. L. (1982). Op. cit.
16. Piaget, J., Le Jugement moral chez l’enfant, F. Alcan, 1932.
17. Eisenberg, N., & Fabes, R. A. (1998). “Prosocial development.” In Eisenberg, N., & Damon, W., Handbook of Child Psychology, John Wiley & Sons, 3: 701–778, 1998.
18. Svetlova, M., Nichols, S. R., & Brownell, C. A. (2010). Toddlers’ prosocial behavior: From instrumental to empathic to altruistic helping. Child Development, 81(6), 1814–1827.
19. Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees. Science, 311(5765), 1301; Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2009). The roots of human altruism. British Journal of Psychology, 100(3), 455–471. Videos of these experiments can also be seen on the site http://email.eva.mpg.de/~warneken/video.
20. Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Op. cit. Tomasello, M. (2009). Op. cit.
21. Ibid.
22. See, for instance, the many studies published by Joan E. Grusec, especially Grusec, J. E., & Redler, E. (1980). Attribution, reinforcement, and altruism: A developmental analysis. Developmental Psychology, 16 (5), 525–534.
23. Tomasello, M. (2009). Op. cit.
24. Aknin, L. B., Hamlin, J. K., & Dunn, E. W. (2012). Giving leads to happiness in young children. PLoS One, 7(6), e39211.
25. In the first experiment, the experimenter takes a treat out of his pocket, gives it to the child, and asks the child either to keep it for himself, or to give it to someone else: the child shows more happiness in the second case. In the second experiment, the experimenter gives some treats to the child, who puts them in his bowl. A little later, he suggests to the child that he give a treat to someone else: it’s in this situation that the child shows the most happiness.
26. Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Op. cit.
27. Hay, D. F. (1994). Prosocial development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 35(1), 29–71.
28. Freud, S., The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 283. Trans. and ed. by James Strachey, Avon Discus, 1965.
29. Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., Guthrie, I. K., Murphy, B. C., & Shepard, S. A. (2005). Age changes in prosocial responding and moral reasoning in adolescence and early adulthood. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 15(3), 235–260.
30. Turiel, E., The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention, Cambridge University Press, 1983; Helwig, C. C., & Turiel, E., Children’s Social and Moral Reasoning. The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development, 2002, 567–583. Many books and articles have been written about this. For an excellent summary, see Baumard, N., Comment nous sommes devenus moraux: Une histoire naturelle du bien et du mal, Odile Jacob, 2010.
31. Greene, J., & Haidt, J. (2002). How (and where) does moral judgment work? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(12), 517–523.
32. Miller, J. G., & Bersoff, D. M. (1994). Cultural influences on the moral status of reciprocity and the discounting of endogenous motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(5), 592–602.
33. Kochanska, G. (2002), Mutually responsive orientation between mothers and their young children: A context for the early development of conscience. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(6), 191. See also Kochanska, G., & Murray, K. T. (2000). Mother–child mutually responsive orientation and conscience development: From toddler to early school age. Child Development, 71(2), 417–431. Cited by Lecomte, J. (2012). Op. cit., p. 239.
34. Barber, N., Why Parents Matter: Parental Investment and Child Outcomes, Praeger Publications, 2000, p. 124.
35. Quoted in Kohn, A. (1998). Op. cit.
36. Eisenberg, N., & Fabes, R. A. (1998). Prosocial development. Op. cit.
37. Keenan, K., Tremblay, R., Barr, R., & Peters, R. V., “The Development and Socialization of Aggression During the First Five Years of Life.” Tremblay, R. E., Barr, R. G., Peters, R. de V. (eds). Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development, 2002, 1–6.
38. Tremblay, R. E., Nagin, D. S., Séguin, J. R., Zoccolillo, M., Zelazo, P. D., Boivin, M.,… Japel, C. (2004). Physical aggression during early childhood: Trajectories and predictors. Pediatrics, 114(1), e43–e50.
39. Domitrovich, C. E., Greenberg, M. T., Tremblay, R., Barr, R., & Peters, R. V., “Preventive Interventions that Reduce Aggression in Young Children.” Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development. Montreal, Quebec: Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development, Recuperado El, 2003, p. 25.
40. Tomasello, M. (2009). Op. cit.
41. Hoffman, M. L., Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
42. Janssens, J. M., & Gerris, J. R. M., “Child Rearing, Empathy and Prosocial Development.” In J. M. Janssens & J. R. M. Gerris (eds.), Child Rearing: Influence on Prosocial and Moral Development, Swets & Zeitlinger, 1992, pp. 57–75. Krevans, J., & Gibbs, J. C. (1996). Parents’ use of inductive discipline: Relations to children’s empathy and prosocial behavior. Child Development, 67(6), 3263–3277.
43. Trickett, P. K., & Kuczynski, L. (1986). Children’s misbehaviors and parental discipline strategies in abusive and nonabusive families. Developmental Psychology, 22(1), 115.
44. Ricard, E., La Dame des mots, Éditions NiL, 2012.
45. Hoffman M. L. (2008). Empathy and Moral Development. Op. cit.; Krevans, J. & Gibbs, J. C. (1996). Op. cit.; Stewart, S. M., & McBride-Chang, C. (2000). Influences on children’s sharing in a multicultural setting. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 31(3), 333–348.
46. Lecomte, J. (2012). La Bonté humaine. Op. cit., p. 245. See also Crockenberg, S., & Litman, C. (1990). Autonomy as competence in 2-year-olds: Maternal correlates of child defiance, compliance, and self-assertion. Developmental Psychology, 26(6), 961.
47. Lecomte, J., Donner un sens à sa vie, Odile Jacob, 2007, Chapter 3.
48. Eisenberg-Berg, N., & Geisheker, E. (1979). Content of preachings and power of the model/preacher: The effect on children’s generosity. Developmental Psychology, 15(2), 168.
49. Lecomte, J. (2012). La Bonté humaine. Op. cit., p. 240.
50. Bekkers, R. (2007). Intergenerational transmission of volunteering. Acta Sociologica, 50(2), 99–114; Wilhelm, M. O., Brown, E., Rooney, P. M., & Steinberg, R. (2008). The intergenerational transmission of generosity. Journal of Public Economics, 92(10–11), 2146–2156; Rice, M. E., & Grusec, J. E. (1975). Saying and doing: Effects on observer performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(4), 584; Rushton, J. P., & Littlefield, C. (1979). The effects of age, amount of modelling, and a success experience on seven-to eleven-year-old children’s generosity. Journal of Moral Education, 9(1), 55–56; Rushton, J. P., & Teachman, G. (1978). The effects of positive reinforcement, attributions, and punishment on model induced altruism in children. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 4(2), 322–325.
51. Bryan, J. H., & Walbek, N. H. (1970). The impact of words and deeds concerning altruism upon children. Child Development, 747–757.
52. Howes, C., & Eldredge, R. (1985). Responses of abused, neglected, and nonmaltreated children to the behaviors of their peers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 6(2–3), 261–270; Main, M., & George, C. (1985). Responses of abused and disadvantaged toddlers to distress in agemates: A study in the day care setting. Developmental Psychology, 21(3), 407; Miller, P. A., & Eisenberg, N. (1988). The relation of empathy to aggressive and externalizing/antisocial behavior. Psychological Bulletin, 103(3), 324.
53. Waal, F. B. M. de, The Age of Empathy, op. cit. p. 13.
54. Beckett, C., Maughan, B., Rutter, M., Castle, J., Colvert, E., Groothues, C.,… Sonuga-Barke, E. J. (2006). Do the effects of early severe deprivation on cognition persist into early adolescence? Findings from the English and Romanian adoptees study. Child Development, 77(3), 696–711.
55. Nanni, V., Uher, R., & Danese, A. (2012). Childhood maltreatment predicts unfavorable course of illness and treatment outcome in depression: A meta-analysis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 169(2), 141–151.
56. Jacques Lecomte, in conversation. According to him, belief in intergenerational re-occurrence of abuse comes from the statistical angle of inversion of probabilities (most abusive parents were abused, and so it is wrongly deduced that most abused children become abusive). See Lecomte, J., Guérir de son enfance, Odile Jacob, 2010.
1. Bierhoff, H. W., Prosocial Behaviour, Psychology Press, 2002.
2. Ibid. Kindle, 216–227.
3. Bierhoff, H. (1983). Wie hilfreich ist der Mensch? [How helpful are humans?]. Bild der Weissenchaft, 20, 118–126.
4. Milgram, S. (1970). The experience of living in cities. Set, 167, 1461–1468. This study is somewhat old, but it was later confirmed; see Amato, P. R. (1983). Helping behavior in urban and rural environments: Field studies based on a taxonomic organization of helping episodes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(3), 571; Levine, R. V., Martinez, T. S., Brase, G., & Sorenson, K. (1994). Helping in 36 US cities. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(1), 69.
5. Piliavin, I. M., Piliavin, J. A., & Rodin, J. (1975). Costs, diffusion, and the stigmatized victim. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(3), 429–438; Piliavin, J. A., & Piliavin, I. M. (1972). Effect of blood on reactions to a victim. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 23(3), 353–361.
6. Latané, B., & Darley, J. M., The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn’t He Help?, 1970 Appleton-Century Crofts; Latané, B., & Nida, S. (1981). Ten years of research on group size and helping. Psychological Bulletin, 89(2), 308. For a more recent study, see Fischer, P., Krueger, J. I., Greitemeyer, T., Vogrincic, C., Kastenmüller, A., Frey, D.,… Kainbacher, M. (2011). The bystander-effect: A meta-analytic review on bystander intervention in dangerous and non-dangerous emergencies. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 517–537.
7. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlq30q_18-enfant-de-2-ans-renverse-et-ignore-par-les-passants_news
8. Quoted in Oliner, S. P., Do Unto Others: Extraordinary Acts of Ordinary People (illustrated edition), Basic Books, 2003, p. 93.
9. Schwartz, S. H., & Gottlieb, A. (1976). Bystander reactions to a violent theft: Crime in Jerusalem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34(6), 1188. For a more elaborate model than Latané’s, see Schwartz, S. H., & Howard, J. A. (1982). Helping and cooperation: A self-based motivational model. Cooperation and Helping Behavior: Theories and Research, 327–353. In an emergency situation, the people who have particular abilities—nurses, team leaders, those who received emergency training, etc.—are much more likely than others to get involved in helping. Cramer, R. E., McMaster, M. R., Bartell, P. A., & Dragna, M. (1988). Subject competence and minimization of the bystander effect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18(13), 1133–1148. As for those who think they’re too incompetent to intervene directly, they often take the initiative to call for help: Shotland, R. L., & Heinold, W. D. (1985). Bystander response to arterial bleeding: Helping skills, the decision-making process, and differentiating the helping response. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(2), 347.
10. Korte, C., & Kerr, N. (1975). Response to altruistic opportunities in urban and nonurban settings. Journal of Social Psychology, 95(2), 183–184.
11. Takooshian, H., Haber, S., & Lucido, D. (1977). Who wouldn’t help a lost child? You, maybe. Psychology Today, 10, 67.
12. US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstracts of the United States (Washington, DC: Author, 2002), quoted in Barber, N. (2004). Op. cit., p. 148.
13. Cameron, C. D., & Payne, B. K. (2012). The cost of callousness regulating compassion influences the moral self-concept. Psychological Science.
14. Abbé Pierre famously stormed into a national radio station on a very cold winter in 1954 to give blankets for the homeless, some of whom had died in the street (thousands of blankets were delivered to collecting points within hours).
15. Whiting, B. B., & Whiting, J. W., Children of Six Cultures: A Psychocultural Analysis, Harvard University Press, 1975. Moreover, the studies carried out by D. Rosenhan more particularly showed that parental influence played a determining role in readiness to help others. See Rosenhan, D. (1970). The natural socialization of altruistic autonomy. Altruism and Helping Behavior, 251–268.
16. Nadler, A., & Jeffrey, D. (1986). The role of threat to self-esteem and perceived control in recipient reaction to help: Theory development and empirical validation. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 81–122.
17. Feldman, R. E. (1968). Response to compatriot and foreigner who seek assistance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10(3), 202.
18. Triandis, H. C., Vassiliou, V., & Nassiakou, M. (1968). Three cross-cultural studies of subjective culture. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4p2), 1.
19. Eagly, A. H. (2009). The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of the social psychology of gender. American Psychologist, 64(8), 644. Lecomte, J. (2012). Op. cit., pp. 157–158.
20. Eagly, A. H., & Crowley, M. (1986). Gender and helping behavior: A meta-analytic review of the social psychological literature. Psychological Bulletin, 100(3), 283.
21. Piliavin, I. M., Rodin, J., & Piliavin, J. A. (1969). Good samaritanism: An underground phenomenon? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13(4), 289. A summary based on 99 studies confirms that men help more in emergency situations. See Eagly, A. H., & Crowley, M. (1986). Op. cit., as well as, for situations in daily life, Bierhoff, H. W., Klein, R., & Kramp, P. (1991). Evidence for the altruistic personality from data on accident research. Journal of Personality, 59(2), 263–280.
22. Eagly, A. H. (2009). The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of the social psychology of gender. American Psychologist, 64(8), 644. Lecomte, J. (2012). Op. cit., pp. 157–158.
23. Gaskin, K., Smith, J. D., & Paulwitz, I., Ein neues bürgerschaftliches Europa: Eine Untersuchung zur Verbreitung und Rolle von Volunteering in zehn europäischen Ländern, Lambertus, 1996.
24. Rosenhan, D. (1970). The natural socialization of altruistic autonomy. Altruism and Helping Behavior, 251–268; Isen, A. M., & Levin, P. F. (1972). Effect of feeling good on helping: Cookies and kindness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 21(3), 384.
25. Watson, D., Clark, L. A., McIntyre, C. W., & Hamaker, S. (1992). Affect, personality, and social activity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(6), 1011.
26. Strenta, A., & DeJong, W. (1981). The effect of a prosocial label on helping behavior. Social Psychology Quarterly, 142–147.
27. Schwartz, S. H. (1994). Are there universal aspects in the structure and contents of human values? Journal of Social Issues, 50(4), 19–45.
28. Deschamps, J. F., & Finkelstein, R. (2012). Existe-t-il un véritable altruism basé sur les valeurs personnelles? Les Cahiers internationaux de psychologie sociale (1), 37–62.
29. Hellhammer, K., Holz, N., & Lessing, J. (2007). Die Determinanten zivilcouragierten Verhaltens. Zeitschrift Psychologischer Forschung (Revue de recherche en psychologie), 13.
30. Jeffries, V. (1998). Virtue and the altruistic personality. Sociological Perspectives, 151–166.
31. Paluck, E. L. (2009). Reducing intergroup prejudice and conflict using the media: A field experiment in Rwanda. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(3), 574–587. Quoted in Batson, C. D. (2011). Op. cit., p. 179.
32. Galinsky, A. D., Maddux, W. W., Gilin, D., & White, J. B. (2008). Why It Pays to Get Inside the Head of Your Opponent the Differential Effects of Perspective Taking and Empathy in Negotiations. Psychological Science, 19(4), 378–384. For more details and all the references, see Batson, C. D. (2011). Op. cit., p. 171–172.
33. Diener, E., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Very happy people. Psychological Science, 13(1), 81–84.
34. Luks A., & Payne, P., The Healing Power of Doing Good: The Health and Spiritual Benefits of Helping Others, Ballantine, 1991. For a complete overview of the benefits of altruistic and volunteer activities, see Post, S. G., The Hidden Gifts of Helping: How the Power of Giving, Compassion, and Hope Can Get Us Through Hard Times, John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
35. Nicholson, H. J., Collins, C., & Holmer, H. (2004). Youth as people: The protective aspects of youth development in after-school settings. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 591(1), 55–71.
36. Brown, S. L., Brown, R. M., House, J. S., & Smith, D. M. (2008). Coping with spousal loss: Potential buffering effects of self-reported helping behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(6), 849–861.
37. Batson, C. D. (2011). Op. cit., p. 186, as well as Dovidio, J. F., Piliavin, J. A., Schroeder, D. A., & Penner, L., The Social Psychology of Prosocial Behavior, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 2006.
38. Oman, D., “Does Volunteering Foster Physical Health and Longevity?” In S. G. Post (ed.), Altruism and Health: Perspectives from Empirical Research, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 15–32.
39. Since then, the psychologists Elisabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin, & Michael Norton have amply demonstrated this phenomenon, first in North America, then in many other countries. See Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319(5870), 1687. Aknin, L. B., Barrington-Leigh, C. P., Dunn, E. W., Helliwell, J. F., Burns, J., Biswas-Diener, R.,… Norton, M. I. (2013). Prosocial spending and well-being: Cross-cultural evidence for a psychological universal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4), 635–652.
40. llen, K. (2003). Are pets a healthy pleasure? The influence of pets on blood pressure. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12(6), 236–239; Dizon, M., Butler, L. D., & Koopman, C., “Befriending Man’s Best Friends: Does Altruism Towards Animals Promote Psychological and Physical Health?” In S. G. Post (ed.), Altruism and Health: Perspectives from Empirical Research, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 277–291. Netting, F. E., Wilson, C. C., & New, J. C. (1987). The human-animal bond: Implications for practice. Social Work, 32(1), 60–64.
41. Halter, M., La Force du bien, Robert Laffont, 1995, p. 199.
1. These words of the Dalai Lama’s have sometimes been interpreted as an apology for selfishness. He is, of course, not advising people to be actually selfish (he is constantly stressing the danger of cherishing oneself excessively). What he means is that someone who really wants to benefit himself should understand that loving his neighbor and showing altruism is the best way not just to accomplish the benefit of others but also to ensure one’s own happiness. Pursuing a basically selfish happiness is, in fact, doomed to failure.
2. André Comte-Sponville, remarks made during a discussion arranged by the kind auspices of Christophe and Pauline André.
3. Begley, S., Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves, Ballantine Books, 2007, p. 7.
4. These phenomena were observed among ferrets made deaf at birth, whose auditory cortex dealt with perception of light rays, and among mice blind from birth, whose visual cortex dealt with the perception of sounds. In a way, one could say that the ferrets heard light and that the mice saw sounds. Begley, S. (2007). Op. cit., pp. 51–53, as well as Sur, M., Leamey, C. A., et al. (2001). Development and plasticity of cortical areas and networks. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2(4), 251–262; Sur, M., & Rubenstein, J. L. R. (2005). Patterning and plasticity of the cerebral cortex. Science’s STKE, 310(5749), 805.
5. Altman, J. (1962). Are new neurons formed in the brains of adult mammals? Science, 135(3509), 1127–1128.
6. Nottebohm, F. (1981). A brain for all seasons: Cyclical anatomical changes in song control nuclei of the canary brain. Science, 214(4527), 1368.
7. The hippocampus is an area of the brain that manages knowledge acquired from new experiences, then spreads this knowledge to other areas of the brain where it will be memorized and reused.
8. Kempermann, G., Kuhn, H. G., & Gage, F. H. (1997). More hippocampal neurons in adult mice living in an enriched environment. Nature, 386(6624), 493–495.
9. Eriksson, P. S., Perfilieva, E., Björk-Eriksson, T., Alborn, A. M., Nordborg, C., Peterson, D. A., & Gage, F. H. (1998). Neurogenesis in the adult human hippocampus. Nature Medicine, 4(11), 1313–1317.
10. Fred Gage, during the Mind and Life XII conference in 2004 (“Neuroplasticity: The Neuronal Substrates of Learning and Transformation”) in Dharamsala, India, with the Dalai Lama. See Begley, S. (2007), Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (op. cit.), p. 65.
11. Elbert, T., Pantev, C., Wienbruch, C., Rockstroh, B., & Taub, E. (1995). Increased cortical representation of the fingers of the left hand in string players. Science, 270(5234), 305–307.
12. Maguire, E. A., Spiers, H. J., Good, C. D., Hartley, T., Frackowiak, R. S. J., & Burgess, N. (2003). Navigation expertise and the human hippocampus: A structural brain imaging analysis. Hippocampus, 13(2), 250–259; Maguire, E. A., Woollett, K., & Spiers, H. J. (2006). London taxi drivers and bus drivers: A structural MRI and neuropsychological analysis. Hippocampus, 16(12), 1091–1101.
13. Carey, N., The Epigenetics Revolution, Icon Books, 2011.
14. Epigenetic modifications can occur because of several mechanisms. One of them is the “methylation” of genes. A methyl group fixated on one of the bases that comprise DNA blocks access to the gene in question. This gene can no longer be transcribed into a protein and remains inactive. One could say that the expression of this gene has been “repressed.” Researchers think that methylation acts by modifying the tridimensional structure of the DNA, causing a sort of “fold” at gene level, thus preventing access of the RNA that causes transcription of the gene into proteins which will then be active in the cell. I am grateful to Michael Meaney for these explanations.
Aside from methylation, which is stable, the acetylation of histones, a group of proteins associated with DNA, can cause epigenetic effects lasting a shorter amount of time, while certain types of RNA, which don’t encode any protein, can interact with genes and render them silent. See Francis, D., Diorio, J., Liu, D., & Meaney, M. J. (1999). Nongenomic transmission across generations of maternal behavior and stress responses in the rat. Science, 286(5442), 1155–1158; Champagne, F. A., Weaver, I. C. G., Diorio, J., Dymov, S., Szyf, M., & Meaney, M. J. (2006). Maternal care associated with methylation of the estrogen receptor-alpha1b promoter and estrogen receptor-alpha expression in the medial preoptic area of female offspring. Endocrinology, 147(6), 2909–2915. See also Carey, N. (2011), The Epigenetics Revolution. Op. cit.
15. Heim, C., Shugart, M., Craighead, W. E., & Nemeroff, C. B. (2010). Neurobiological and psychiatric consequences of child abuse and neglect. Developmental Psychobiology, 52(7), 671–690.
16. In the case of people who committed suicide, postmortem analysis revealed high levels of methylation of genes in the cerebral neurons when the subjects were abused in childhood, but relatively low levels of methylation among those who did not experience such abuse. That means that the fact of having been abused leads to lasting modifications in the expression of genes. McGowan, P. O., Sasaki, A., D’Alessio, A. C., Dymov, S., Labonté, B., Szyf, M.,… Meaney, M. J. (2009). Epigenetic regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor in human brain associates with childhood abuse. Nature Neuroscience, 12(3), 342–348. Quoted in Carey, N. (2011). Op. cit.
17. Kaliman, P., Álvarez-López, M. J., Cosín-Tomás, M., Rosenkranz, M. A., Lutz, A., & Davidson, R. J. (2013). Rapid changes in histone deacetylases and inflammatory gene expression in expert meditators. Psychoneuroendocrinology; doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2013.11.004. There was, of course, no question of removing neurons from the meditators, but one can also observe epigenetic changes in blood cells, and it turned out, studying the cells of deceased individuals, that these changes correspond to similar modifications of the neurons in the brain. Studies on the epigenetic effects of meditation on altruistic love are also under way in Barbara Fredrickson’s laboratory.
18. Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2004). Not by Genes Alone. Op. cit., p. 247.
1. The account of these meetings gave rise to a book: Goleman, D., and the Dalai Lama, Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama, Bantam Books, 2004.
2. Kaufman, M., Meditation gives brain a charge, study finds, Washington Post, January 3, 2005, p. A05.
3. See Ricard, M., Why Meditate? Hay House, 2010; The Art of Meditation, Atlantic, 2011.
4. Davidson, R. J., & Begley, S., The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live—and How You Can Change Them, Hudson Street Press, 2012, p. xii.
5. Among the many researchers involved in these studies, we’ll cite by way of example: Julie Brefczynski-Lewis, Linda Carlson, Richard Davidson, Gaelle Desbordes, Sona Dimidjian, Brooke Dodson-Lavelle, Paul Ekman, Brent Field, Barbara Fredrickson, Brita Hölzel, Amishi Jha, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Olga Klimecki, Bethany Kok, Sara Lazar, Antoine Lutz, Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, David Perlman, Chuck Raison, Cliff Saron, Tania Singer, Heleen Slagter, John Teasdale, Elen Weng, Mark Williams, Fadel Zeidan, to cite only those with whom I have had the opportunity to interact over the past few years.
6. Brefczynski-Lewis, J. A., Lutz, A., Schaefer, H. S., Levinson, D. B., & Davidson, R. J. (2007). Neural correlates of attentional expertise in long-term meditation practitioners. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(27), 11483–11488.
7. Lutz, A., Slagter, H. A., Rawlings, N. B., Francis, A. D., Greischar, L. L., & Davidson, R. J. (2009). Mental training enhances attentional stability: Neural and behavioral evidence. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(42), 13418–13427.
8. Gyatso, Tenzin (the XIVth Dalai Lama) & Jinpa, G. T., The World of Tibetan Buddhism: An Overview of Its Philosophy and Practice, Wisdom Publications, 1995. Wallace, B. A., The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind, Wisdom Publications, 2006; Ricard, M., The Art of Meditation.
9. This stems from the fact that the brain is always involved in dealing with consciously perceived stimulus and does not have enough attentive resources to deal with stimuli that follow. The term “attentional blink” is given to the inability to deal with the images that follow. The most surprising discovery was that experienced meditators, even if they were older (attentional blink increases with age because the mechanisms of attention become slower) had remarkably short attentional blinks. One 65-year-old meditator, in particular, didn’t have any at all, and perceived all the stimuli, even though they went by very quickly (unpublished results of research carried out at the laboratories of Anne Treisman and Jonathan Cohen at Princeton University). Heleen Slagter and Antoine Lutz have also shown that after three months of intensive training in meditation on full awareness, attentional blink was considerably reduced. Slagter, H. A., Lutz, A., Greischar, L. L., Francis, A. D., Nieuwenhuis, S., Davis, J. M., & Davidson, R. J. (2007). Mental training affects distribution of limited brain resources. PLoS Biology, 5(6), 138.
10. Gamma waves have rapid oscillation frequencies between 25 and 42 Hz.
11. The first of these articles: Lutz, A., Greischar, L. L., Rawlings, N. B., Ricard, M., & Davidson, R. J. (2004). Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101(46), 16369.
12. Lutz, A., Greischar, L. L., Perlman, D. M., & Davidson, R. J. (2009). BOLD signal in insula is differentially related to cardiac function during compassion meditation in experts vs. novices. Neuroimage, 47(3), 1038–1046.
13. Other studies suggest that lesions in the amygdala disturb the emotional aspect of empathy, without affecting its cognitive aspect. See Hurlemann, R., Walter, H., Rehme, A. K., et al. (2010). Human amygdala reactivity is diminished by the b-noradrenergic antagonist propanolol. Psychol. Med, 40, 1839–1848.
14. Lutz, A., Brefczynski-Lewis, J., Johnstone, T., & Davidson, R. J. (2008). Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: Effects of meditative expertise. PLoS One, 3(3), e1897; Klimecki, O. M., Leiberg, S., Ricard, M., & Singer, T. (2013). Differential pattern of functional brain plasticity after compassion and empathy training. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi:10.1093/scan/nst060.
15. Fredrickson, B. L., Cohn, M. A., Coffey, K. A., Pek, J., & Finkel, S. M. (2008). Open hearts build lives: Positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1045. The subjects studied have trained according to the Buddhist meditation on metta, the Pali word for altruistic love.
16. Pace, T. W. W., Negi, L. T., Adame, D. D., Cole, S. P., Sivilli, T. I., Brown, T. D., Issa, M. J., et al. (2009). Effect of compassion meditation on neuroendocrine, innate immune and behavioral responses to psychosocial stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 34(1), 87–98.
17. Hofmann, S. G., Grossman, P., & Hinton, D. E. (2011). Loving-kindness and compassion meditation. Potential for psychological interventions. Clinical Psychology Review, 31(7), 1126–1132.
18. Lazar, S. W., Kerr, C. E., Wasserman, R. H., Gray, J. R., Greve, D. N., Treadway, M. T.,… Fischl, B. (2005). Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. Neuroreport, 16(17), 1893. This growth in volume is caused by an increase of areas of gray matter that contain inter-neural connections and are linked to the process of learning. The number and size of synapses and dendritic ramifications increase phenomena also observed in other forms of training and learning. The term “neuropil” is given to the areas of gray matter situated between neuronal cell bodies, glial cell bodies, and blood vessels. Neuropil is constituted by a complex web of a multiplicity of neuronal cytoplasmic continuations (axons and dendrites) and glials, of varying caliber.
19. Especially in regions associated with sensory perception, emotional and cognitive regulation, and production of neurotransmitters that affect moods, the posterior cingulate cortex, the insula, the temporal parietal junction, the cerebellum, and the brainstem (which produces noradrenaline). See Hölzel, B., et al. (2011); Hölzel, B. K., Carmody, J., Evans, K. C., Hoge, E. A., Dusek, J. A., Morgan, L., Pitman, R. K., et al. (2010). Stress reduction correlates with structural changes in the amygdala. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5(1), 11–17; Hölzel, B. K., Carmody, J., Vangel, M., Congleton, C., Yerramsetti, S. M., Gard, T., & Lazar, S. W. (2011). Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 191(1), 36–43.
20. Goleman, D., and the Dalai Lama, Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama, pp. 14–15.
21. Weng, H. Y., Fox, A. S., Shackman, A. J., Stodola, D. E., Caldwell, J. Z. K., Olson, M. C., Rogers, G., & Davidson R. J. (in press). Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering. Psychological Science. NIHMSID: 440274. One can predict the degree of prosocial behavior by simply observing differences of brain activity in the amygdala.
22. Leiberg, S., Klimecki, O., & Singer, T. (2011). Short-term compassion training increases prosocial behavior in a newly developed prosocial game. PloS One, 6(3), e17798.
23. Condon, P., Desbordes, G., Miller, W., DeSteno, D., Hospital, M. G., & DeSteno, D. (n.d.). Meditation increases compassionate responses to suffering. Psychological Science. Retrieved from http://daviddesteno.com/page5/files/Condon.etal.2013.pdf.
24. Rudman, L. A., Ashmore, R. D., & Gary, M. L. (2001). “Unlearning” automatic biases: The malleability of implicit prejudice and stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(5), 856–868.
25. Dasgupta, N., & Greenwald, A. G. (2001). On the malleability of automatic attitudes: Combating automatic prejudice with images of admired and disliked individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(5), 800–814.
26. Hutcherson, C. A., Seppala, E. M., & Gross, J. J. (2008). Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. Emotion, 8(5), 720–724.
27. Kang, Y., Gray, J. R., & Dovidio, J. F. (2013). The nondiscriminating heart: Lovingkindness meditation training decreases implicit bias against stigmatized outgroups. Journal of Experimental Psychology; doi:10.1037/a0034150.
28. The activity of the amygdala and the anterior insulate cortex is markedly weaker among meditators than novices.
29. Lutz, A., McFarlin, D. R., Perlman, D. M., Salomons, T. V., & Davidson, R. J. (2012). Altered anterior insula activation during anticipation and experience of painful stimuli in expert meditators. NeuroImage; Perlman, D. M., Salomons, T. V., Davidson, R. J., & Lutz, A. (2010). Differential effects on pain intensity and unpleasantness of two meditation practices. Emotion, 10(1), 65.
30. Zeidan, F., Martucci, K. T., Kraft, R. A., Gordon, N. S., McHaffie, J. G., & Coghill, R. C. (2011). Brain mechanisms supporting the modulation of pain by mindfulness meditation. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(14), 5540–5548. The reduction of subjective intensity of pain was accompanied by increased activity in the areas of the brain associated with cognitive regulation of painful sensations (anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula), while the reduction of the unpleasant aspect of pain was associated with an activation of the prefrontal orbital cortex that is involved in putting sensations into perspective and reevaluating them. For a recent study, see Zeidan, F., Grant, J. A., Brown, C. A., McHaffie, J. G., & Coghill, R. C. (2012). Mindfulness meditation-related pain relief: Evidence for unique brain mechanisms in the regulation of pain. Neuroscience Letters. For an overview of all the studies, see Grant, J. A. (2013). Meditative analgesia: The current state of the field. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences; doi:10.1111/nyas.12282.
31. Fossel, M. (2000). Role of cell senescence in human aging. Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine, 3(1), 91–98; Chan, S. R., & Blackburn, E. H. (2004). Telomeres and telomerase. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359(1441), 109–122.
32. Blackburn, E. H. (1991). Structure and function of telomeres. Nature, 350(6319), 569–573.
33. Cawthon, R. M., Smith, K. R., O’Brien, E., Sivatchenko, A., & Kerber, R. A. (2003). Association between telomere length in blood and mortality in people aged 60 years or older. Lancet, 361(9355), 393–395; Epel, E. S. (2009). Telomeres in a life-span perspective a new “psychobiomarker”? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(1), 6–10.
34. Jacobs, T. L., Epel, E. S., Lin, J., Blackburn, E. H., Wolkowitz, O. M., Bridwell, D. A., Zanesco, A. P., et al. (2010). Intensive meditation training, immune cell telomerase activity, and psychological mediators. Psychoneuroendocrinology. See also Hoge, E. A., Chen, M. M., Metcalf, C. A., Fischer, L. E., Pollack, M. H., & DeVivo, I. (2013). Loving-kindness meditation practice associated with longer telomeres in women. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.
35. Goleman, D., and the Dalai Lama, Destructive Emotions, op. cit., pp. 26–27.
1. Davidson, R. J., & Lutz, A. (2008). Buddha’s brain: Neuroplasticity and meditation [in the spotlight]. Signal Processing Magazine, IEEE, 25(1), 176–174.
2. Etymologically, the Sanskrit and Tibetan words translated as “meditation” are, respectively, bhavana (“to cultivate”) and gom pa (“to become familiar with”).
3. Hume, D., An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, in Works of David Hume. MobileReference. Kindle Edition. (Kindle Locations 4210–4212).
4. “A Dialogue” in The Shorter Leibniz Texts, edited by Lloyd Strickland, Bloomsbury, 2006, p. 170.
5. McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., & Tsang, J.-A. (2002). The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(1), 112–127; Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2005). Attachment security, compassion, and altruism. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(1), 34–38; Lambert, N. M., & Fincham, F. D. (2011). Expressing gratitude to a partner leads to more relationship maintenance behavior. Emotion-APA, 11(1), 52; Grant, A. M., & Gino, F. (2010). A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(6), 946–955.
6. Shantideva (2006), The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicaryavatara), Padmakara Translation Group, Shambhala, stanzas 18–22, pp. 49–50. (Translation slightly modified.)
7. The Dalai Lama, during a lecture given in Porto, Portugal, November 2001.
1. Sociologists speak of endogroup and exogroup.
2. For more in-depth expositions, see Galin, D., “The Concepts of ‘Self’, ‘Person’, and ‘I’ in Western Psychology and in Buddhism,” in Wallace, B. A., Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground, Columbia University Press, 2003, pp. 107–142; Wallace, B. A., Science et Bouddhisme: À chacun sa réalité, 1998, Calmann-Lévy; Damasio, A. R., Le Sentiment même de soi: Corps, émotions, conscience, Odile Jacob, 2002.
3. Galin, D. (2003). Op. cit.
4. For an expanded explanation of this interaction, see Varela, F. J., The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, MIT Press, 1991.
5. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, IV, trans. Donald A. Cress, Hackett, 1993.
6. We will speak of Freudian theories in the chapter on the “Champions of Selfishness.” We have not included them in this chapter because of their lack of validity (that is hard to write without support, so better not speak of it, it seems to me) both from the introspective perspective of Buddhism and from the scientific perspective.
7. The actors used the mouth of the mask like a megaphone, to make their voice carry.
8. Paul Ekman, in conversation. See also Goleman, D., & the Dalai Lama, Destructive Emotions.
9. Dambrun, M., & Ricard, M. (2011). Self-centeredness and selflessness: A theory of self based psychological functioning and its consequences for happiness. Review of General Psychology, 15(2), 138.
10. Report heard on “Science in Action,” a science broadcast from the BBC World Service, in 2001.
11. LeVine, R. A., & Campbell, D. T., Ethnocentrism: Theories of Conflict, Ethnic Attitudes, and Group Behavior, Wiley, 1972.
12. Tajfel, H., Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology, Cambridge University Press, 1981.
13. The experimenters then proposed an evening of reconciliation, the secret aim of which was in fact to accentuate the disagreements. They put fruit and drinks on a table, half of which were intact and nicely presented, the other in poor condition (rotting fruit, etc.). They had one group arrive before the other. The members of that group unhesitatingly chose the good food, leaving the bruised fruit for the second group, which, once they arrived, protested vehemently and insulted the members of the first group. The next day, the wronged group avenged itself by dirtying the cafeteria tables, throwing food at the boys in the other group, and putting up posters with threatening messages.
14. Pettigrew, T. F. (1998). Intergroup contact theory. Annual Review of Psychology, 49(1), 65–85.
15. Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W. E., & Sherif, C. W., Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment, University of Oklahoma Book Exchange, 1961; Sherif, M., Reprinted as The Robbers Cave Experiment: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation, Wesleyan, 1961.
1. Hutcherson, C. A., Seppala, E. M., & Gross, J. J. (2008). Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. Emotion, 8(5), 720–724.
2. Cialdini, R. B., Brown, S. L., Lewis, B. P., Luce, C., & Neuberg, S. L. (1997). Reinterpreting the empathy-altruism relationship: When one into one equals oneness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 481–494; Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). Measuring trust. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(3), 811–846.
3. Fehr, E., & Rockenbach, B. (2003). Detrimental effects of sanctions on human altruism. Nature, 422(6928), 137–140.
4. Putnam, R. D., Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (1st edition), Touchstone Books / Simon & Schuster; McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Brashears, M. E. (2006). Social isolation in America: Changes in core discussion networks over two decades. American Sociological Review, 71(3), 353–375.
5. Rahn, W. M., & Transue, J. E. (1998). Social trust and value change: The decline of social capital in American youth, 1976–1995. Political Psychology, 19(3), 545–565.
6. Claeys, Gregory (1986). “Individualism,” “Socialism,” and “Social Science”: Further Notes on a Process of Conceptual Formation, 1800–1850. Journal of the History of Ideas, 47(1): 81–93; doi:10.2307/2709596. JSTOR 2709596.
7. Layard, R., & Dunn, J., A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age, Penguin, 2009, p. 6.
8. Twenge, J. M., Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before (1st edition), The Free Press, 2006, p. 20.
9. Bruckner, P., La Tentation de l’innocence, Le Livre de Poche, 1996.
10. See the analysis by Lipovetsky, G., L’Ère du vide: Essais sur l’individualisme contemporain, Gallimard, 1989.
11. Rousseau didn’t claim to describe what actually happened in prehistoric times but offered a theoretical fiction.
12. See Waal, F. B. M. de (2009), The Age of Empathy. Op. cit.
13. Barrès, M., Mes cahiers, Volume 6, 1907, p. 46.
14. Gasset, J. O., Man & People, W. W. Norton, 1963, p. 46.
15. Dumont, L., Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective, University of Chicago, 1992, p. 263.
16. Alicke, M. D., & Govorun, O., “The Better-Than-Average Effect,” in Alicke, M. D., Dunning, D. A., & Krueger, J. I. (eds.), The Self in Social Judgment, Psychology Press, 2005, pp. 85–106.
17. Preston, C. E., & Harris, S. (1965). Psychology of drivers in traffic accidents. Journal of Applied Psychology, 49(4), 284.
18. Pronin, E., Gilovich, T., & Ross, L. (2004). Objectivity in the eye of the beholder: Divergent perceptions of bias in self versus others. Psychological Review, 111(3), 781.
19. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR, 2000) of the American Psychiatric Association.
20. Campbell, W. K., Rudich, E. A., & Sedikides, C. (2002). Narcissism, self-esteem, and the positivity of self-views: Two portraits of self-love. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(3), 358–368; Gabriel, M. T., Critelli, J. W., & Ee, J. S. (1994). Narcissistic illusions in self-evaluations of intelligence and attractiveness. Journal of Personality, 62(1), 143–155.
21. Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K., The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, The Free Press, 2010, p. 25; Bosson, J. K., Lakey, C. E., Campbell, W. K., Zeigler-Hill, V., Jordan, C. H., & Kernis, M. H. (2008). Untangling the links between narcissism and self-esteem: A theoretical and empirical review. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(3), 1415–1439; Gabriel, M. T., Critelli, J. W., & Ee, J. S. (1994). Narcissistic illusions in self-evaluations of intelligence and attractiveness. Journal of Personality, 62(1), 143–155.
22. Participants were not aware of the different response times or of the significance of these differences: in scientific terms they speak of an implicit measure of self-esteem.
23. Campbell, W. K., Bosson, J. K., Goheen, T. W., Lakey, C. E., & Kernis, M. H. (2007). Do narcissists dislike themselves “deep down inside”? Psychological Science, 18(3), 227–229.
24. Jordan, C. H., Spencer, S. J., Zanna, M. P., Hoshino-Browne, E., & Correll, J. (2003). Secure and defensive high self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(5), 969–978.
25. Heatherton, T. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2000). Interpersonal evaluations following threats to self: Role of self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 725.
26. Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2010). Op. cit., p. 199.
27. See http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-il, which also gives numerous references.
28. Twenge, Jean M., and W. Keith Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. According to various studies, the most narcissistic countries are Serbia, Chile, Israel, and the United States, with the least narcissistic countries being South Korea, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, and Morocco.
29. Newsom, C. R., Archer, R. P., Trumbetta, S., & Gottesman, I. I. (2003). Changes in adolescent response patterns on the MMPI/MMPI-A across four decades. Journal of Personality Assessment, 81(1), 74–84. Quoted in Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2010). Op. cit., p. 35.
30. Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2001). Age and birth cohort differences in self-esteem: A cross-temporal meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 321, 344; Gentile, B., & Twenge, J. M. “Birth Cohort Changes in Self-Esteem,” 1988–2007. Unpublished manuscript. Based on Gentile, B., Master’s thesis, San Diego State University, 2008.
31. Grant, B. F., Chou, S. P., Goldstein, R. B., Huang, B., Stinson, F. S., Saha, T. D.,… Pickering, R. P. (2008). Prevalence, correlates, disability, and comorbidity of DSM-IV borderline personality disorder: Results from the Wave 2 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 69(4), 533.
32. Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2010). Op. cit., p. 34.
33. Ibid., p. 36.
34. Ibid., p. 32.
35. Gentile, B., Twenge, J. M., Freeman, E. C., & Campbell, W. K. (2012). The effect of social networking websites on positive self-views: An experimental investigation. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(5), 1929–1933. These results can depend on the style of the various social networks. The same study carried out on Facebook users showed that after thirty-five minutes of use, they showed an increase of self-esteem but not of narcissism.
36. Christophe André, during broadcast of the TV show Voix bouddhistes on France 2, February 10, 2013.
37. Ibid., p. 41.
38. Robins, R. W., & Beer, J. S. (2001). Positive illusions about the self: Short-term benefits and long-term costs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(2), 340–352.
39. Ibid., p. 14.
40. Mastromarino, D. (ed.)., The Girl’s Guide to Loving Yourself: A Book About Falling in Love with the One Person Who Matters Most… YOU!, Blue Mountain Arts, 2003.
41. According to the psychologist Bonne Zucker, interviewed in People. Field-Meyer, T., Kids out of control, People, December 20, 2004. Quoted in Twenge, J. M. (2006). Op. cit., p. 75.
42. According to government statistics of the National Assessment of Eductional Progress, quoted in Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2010). Op. cit., p. 49.
43. Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2010). Op. cit., p. 147.
44. Ibid., p. 81.
45. Nafstad, H. E., Blakar, R. M., Carlquist, E., Phelps, J. M., & Rand-Hendriksen, K. (2007). Ideology and power: The influence of current neo-liberalism in society. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 17(4), 313–327. Quoted by Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2010). Op. cit., p. 264.
46. Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2010). Op. cit., p. 4.
47. Baumeister, R. (2005), The lowdown on high self-esteem. Thinking you’re hot stuff isn’t the promised cure-all, Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2005. Quoted in Twenge, J. M. (2006). Op. cit., p. 66.
48. Twenge, J. M. (2006). Op. cit., p. 67.
49. James, W., Précis de psychologie, Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2003. Quoted in André, C. (2009). Op. cit., p. 88.
50. Ibid., p. 416. Quoting Tangney J. P., “Humility,” in Snyder, C. R., & Lopez, S. J., Handbook of Positive Psychology, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 411–419.
51. Turkle, S., Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Basic Books, 2011; Turkle, S., The flight from conversation, New York Times, April 24, 2012.
52. Bhagavad-Gita, Chapter 13, lines 8–12.
53. According to Nobutaka Inoue, Professor of Shinto Studies at the University of Kokugakuin in Tokyo. See Norrie, J., Explosion of cults in Japan fails to heed deadly past, The Age, November 2, 2007.
54. Bellah, R. N., et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (2nd edition), University of California Press, 1996. Quoted in Twenge, J. M., et al. (2010), p. 246.
55. Trungpa, C., Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Shambhala Publications, 2010.
56. Rand, A., Atlas Shrugged, Penguin, 1992, p. 970.
57. La Rochefoucauld, F. de, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (Kindle Locations 990–991). Maxim 457. Kindle Edition.
58. Ibid. (Kindle Locations 578–579). Maxim 147. Kindle Edition.
59. Bushman, B. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). Threatened egotism, narcissism, self-esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does self-love or self-hate lead to violence? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 219–229.
60. Exline, J. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). Case Western Reserve University. Unpublished data cited by J. P. Tangney, “Humility,” in Handbook of Positive Psychology (2002). Op. cit., pp. 411–419.
1. Machiavelli, N., “The Morals of the Prince.” Online: http://www.umphrey.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Machiavellei-The-Morals-of-the-Prince.pdf
2. Stirner, M., The Ego and His Own, trans. by S. T. Byington, A. C. Fifield, 1912, p. 339.
3. Nietzsche, F., The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, Random House, 2010, p. 94.
4. Nietzsche, F., Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Penguin, 1974 Section XVI.
5. Nietzsche, F. (1888/1927), Ecce Homo, p. 862.
6. In the United States, for example, Freud is only discussed when the history of ideas is being studied. According to Steven Kosslyn, former chair of psychology at Harvard, these days, in North America, there is probably not a single doctoral thesis in psychology under way that has the subject of psychoanalysis. (Steven Kosslyn, in conversation.)
7. Ayn Rand (1905–1982) is a pen name. She was born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum; she emigrated from Russia to the United States after the Russian Revolution, and became an American citizen.
8. According to a Gallup poll carried out in 2009, almost 25% of Americans are ultraconservative. This movement is notably supported by the Cato Institute and by the magazine Reason, in which some recent headlines are, for example: “She Is Back! Ayn Rand Bigger Than Ever,” December 2009, and “How to Slash the Government Before It Slashes You,” November 2010.
9. Greenspan, A., The Age of Turbulence, Penguin, 2007, p. 51.
10. See the column by Paul Krugman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economy: “Galt, Gold and God,” editorial in the New York Times, August 23, 2012; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/opinion/krugman-galt-gold-and-god.html.
11. Rand’s vision of the ideal hero, the egocentric superman, however, is regarded by philosophers as being closer to Nietzsche than to Aristotle. She scorned all other philosophers, especially Emmanuel Kant, whom she called a “monster,” thinking he was “the worst of all,” since he advocated an ethics based on duty and responsibility to the collective, the exact opposite of the individualist autonomy she championed.
12. Rand, A., Anthem, Public Domain Books, 2009. Kindle Edition, pp. 89–90.
13. Rand, A., Atlas Shrugged, op. cit., p. 1034.
14. Ayn Rand was interviewed by the famous journalist Mike Wallace. See http://youtu.be/1ooKsv_SX4Y.
15. Rand, A., The Fountainhead, Plume, 1994, p. 715.
16. Rand, A., The Virtue of Selfishness, Signet, 1964, pp. 49–52.
17. Ayn Rand in 1976, quoted by The Economist, October 20, 2012, p. 54.
18. See Ayn Rand, The Nature of Government, in Virtue of Selfishness. Rand’s ideas on “laissez-faire” politics were inspired by the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, whom she regarded as the greatest economist of the modern era.
19. Stiglitz, Joseph E., The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future, Norton, 2012, pp. 93–94. Kindle Edition.
20. Ibid., p. 175.
21. Ibid., as well as Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K., The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better for Everyone, Penguin, 2010.
22. Cohen, D., The Prosperity of Vice: A Worried View of Economics, trans. Susan Emanuel (translation slightly modified), MIT Press, 2012, p. 169.
23. Rand, A., The Virtue of Selfishness, 1964, p. 26.
24. Cavalli-Sforza, F. (1998/2011), La Science du bonheur, Odile Jacob.
25. See Chapter 19 of this book, as well as Diener, E., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Very happy people, Psychological Science, 13, 81–84; and Seligman, M. E. P., Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, The Free Press, 2002. See also Dambrun, M., & Ricard, M. (2011). Op.cit.
26. Rachels, J., The Elements of Moral Philosophy, McGraw-Hill, 4th edition, 2003, p. 89.
27. Freud, S., The Interpretation of Dreams, Trans. and ed. James Strachey, Avon Discus, 1965, p. 283.
28. Freud, S., Correspondance avec le pasteur Pfister, 1909–1939, Gallimard, 1991, p. 103. These sources were kindly provided to me by Jacques Van Rillaer.
29. Freud, S., The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Edition, 4, Hogarth, 1978, p. 267. Gesammelte Werke, II/III, p. 274.
30. The word “altruism” appears only seven times in the twenty or so volumes of his complete works. Freud, S. Gesammelte Werke, Fischer Verlag; Oeuvres complètes. PUF.
31. Freud, S., Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. J. Riviere, Hogarth Press, 1930, p. 134.
32. Freud, S., Sur la guerre et la mort, in Œuvres complètes, “Psychanalyse,” Vol. 13, PUF, 1915, pp. 1914–1915.
33. Later, the term “altruism” would be used only rarely by psychoanalysts, and does not appear in Haplanche, J., & Pontalis, J.-B., The Language of Psycho-Analysis, Norton, 1974.
34. Darwin, C., The Descent of Man, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 1881, p. 72.
35. Ibid., p. 69.
36. Hochmann, J., Une histoire de l’empathie: Connaissance d’autrui, souci du prochain, Odile Jacob, 2012, pp. 53–59.
37. Freud, S., Standard Edition, Vol. 8, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Hogarth, 1971. Quoted in Hochmann, J. (2012). Op. cit., p. 54. This laughter is also supposedly set off by the observation that the person has thus managed to conserve the energy we usually use to inhibit our impulses and conform to proper behavior.
38. Ibid., vol. XV, p. 112.
39. See the subchapter “Does an ‘Instinct for Violence’ Exist?” in Chapter 28, “At the Origin of Violence: Devaluing the Other.”
40. Jung, C., Civilization in Transition, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Pantheon, 1964.
41. Freud S., Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. Joan Riviere, Martino Fine Books, 2011, p. 89.
42. Freud, S., Gesammelte Werke, 10,1915, p. 231. In English: Freud, S., The Unconscious, trans. Graham Frankland, Penguin Books, 2005, p. 30.
43. Waal, F. B. M. de, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates, W. W. Norton, 2013, p. 39.
44. Haidt, J., The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Allen Lane, 2012. This does not exclude the fact that social norms later play an important role by shaping the personal morality of individuals in various ways.
45. Turiel, E., Killen, M., & Helwig, C. C., “Morality: Its Structure, Functions, and Vagaries.” In The Emergence of Morality in Young Children, University of Chicago Press, 1987, pp. 155–243; Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 450(7169), 557–559.
46. Freud, S., “ ‘Civilized’ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness.” In J. Strachey (ed.), The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (The Standard Edition), Hogarth, 1959, vol. 9, p. 191.
47. Freud, A. (1936). Das ich und die Abwehrmechanismen. In English: Freud, A., The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, International Universities Press, 1946.
48. Golse, Bernard, Altruism article in Mijolla, A. de, Golse, B., Mijolla-Mellor, S. de, & Perron, R., International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, 3 Vols., Macmillan, 2005; Ionescu, S., Jacquet, M.-M., & Lhote, C., Les Mécanismes de défense: Théorie et clinique, 2d edition, Armand Colin, 2012.
49. Canceil, O., Cottraux, J., Falissard, B., Flament, M., Miermont, J., Swendsen, J.,… Thurin, J.-M., Psychothérapie: Trois approches évaluées, Inserm, 2004.
50. Moscovici, S., La Psychanalyse, son image et son public. PUF, 1976, p. 143. Cited by Van Rillaer, J. (1980). Op. cit., p. 374.
51. Baruk, H. (1967). De Freud au néo-paganisme moderne. La Nef, 3, p. 143; Baruk, H., in La Psychiatrie française de Pinel à nos jours, PUF, 1968, p. 29. During an investigation conducted by the sociologist Dominique Frischer on about thirty Parisian analysands, one of them, “already selfish in the past, acknowledged that analysis developed this tendency, making him a perfect egocentric.” Frischer, D., Les Analysés parlent, Stock, 1976, p. 312. Quoted in Van Rillaer, J. (1980). Op. cit., p. 373.
52. Lacan, J., Encore: Le séminaire, Book 20, Seuil, 1999, p. 64.
53. Quoted in Van Rillaer, J., “Les bénéfices de la psychanalyse,” in Le Livre noir de la psychanalyse, Les Arènes, 2005, p. 200.
54. Rey, P., Une saison chez Lacan, Laffont, 1999, p. 74.
55. Ibid., p. 156.
56. Bettelheim, B., The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self, The Free Press, 1972, p. 66.
57. Autisme: Un scandale français. Sciences et Avenir, 782, April 2012.
58. Ibid.
59. Franck Ramus, statements gathered by Hervé Ratel, Sciences et Avenir, March 29, 2012. Some autistic people have a more voluminous brain, and a recent study, published in the journal PNAS, highlighted an overproduction of neurons by 67% in the prefrontal cortex involved in language and thought.
60. Herbert, M. R., & Weintraub, K., The Autism Revolution: Whole-Body Strategies for Making Life All It Can Be, Ballantine, 2012.
61. Wallach, M. A., & Wallach, L., Psychology’s Sanction for Selfishness: The Error of Egoism in Theory and Therapy, W. H. Freeman, 1983.
62. Horney, K., Neurosis and Human Growth—The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951.
63. Wallach, M. A., & Wallach, L. (1983). Op. cit., pp. 116–120.
64. Ibid., p. 162.
1. For an excellent overview of all the research, see Gilbert, P., & Irons, C. (2005). Focused therapies and compassionate mind training for shame and self-attacking. Compassion: Conceptualisations, Research and Use in Psychotherapy, 263–325.
2. Ibid.
3. Gilbert, P., & Irons, C. (2005). Op. cit., p. 271.
4. Ibid.
5. Bohus, M., Limberger, M., Ebner, U., Glocker, F. X., Schwarz, B., Wernz, M., & Lieb, K. (2000). Pain perception during self-reported distress and calmness in patients with borderline personality disorder and self-mutilating behavior. Psychiatry Research, 95(3), 251–260.
6. For suicidal tendencies, see Stanley, B., Gameroff, M. J., Michalsen, V., & Mann, J. J. (2001). Are suicide attempters who self-mutilate a unique population? American Journal of Psychiatry, 158(3), 427–432.
7. Gilbert, P., & Irons, C. (2005). Op. cit.
8. Ibid., p. 291.
9. Neff, K. D. (2011). Op. cit., p. 41.
10. Ibid., p. 43.
11. Kohut, H., The Analysis of the Self, New York University Press, 1971. Neff, K. D. (2011). Op. cit., p. 64. See also Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497.
12. Neff, K. D. (2011). Op. cit., p. 69.
13. Gilbert, P., & Irons, C. (2005). Op. cit., p. 312.
14. Kabat-Zinn, J., Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, Delta, 1990.
15. See Kabat-Zinn, J., Lipworth, L., & Burney, R. (1985). The clinical use of mindfulness meditation for the self-regulation of chronic pain. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 8(2), 163–190.
16. Davidson, R. J., Kabat-Zinn, J., Schumacher, J., Rosenkranz, M., Muller, D., Santorelli, S. F.,… Sheridan, J. F. (2003). Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation. Psychosomatic Medicine, 65(4), 564–570. On the long-term effects of meditation, see Chapter 21, “Training the Mind: What the Cognitive Scientists Have to Say.”
17. Shapiro, S. L., Astin, J. A., Bishop, S. R., & Cordova, M. (2005). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for health care professionals: Results from a randomized trial. International Journal of Stress Management, 12(2), 164–176.
18. Gilbert, P., Mindful Compassion: How the Science of Compassion Can Help You Understand Your Emotions, Live in the Present, and Connect Deeply with Others, New Harbinger, 2014.
19. Neff, K. D. (2003a). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101; Neff, K. D. (2003b). The development and validation of a scale to measure self-compassion. Self and Identity, 2(3), 223–250.
20. Crocker, J., Moeller, S., & Burson, A. (2010). The costly pursuit of self-esteem. Handbook of Personality and Self-Regulation, 403–429.
21. Neff, K. D. (2003b). Op. cit.
22. Gilbert, P., Human Nature and Suffering, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989; Gilbert, P., & Irons, C. (2005). Op. cit.
23. Neff, K. D., Kirkpatrick, K. L., & Rude, S. S. (2007). Self-compassion and adaptive psychological functioning. Journal of Research in Personality, 41(1), 139–154. See also Swann, W. B., Self-Traps: The Elusive Quest for Higher Self-Esteem, W. H. Freeman, 1996.
24. Leary, M. R., Tate, E. B., Adams, C. E., Allen, A. B., & Hancock, J. (2007). Self-compassion and reactions to unpleasant self-relevant events: The implications of treating oneself kindly. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(5), 887.
1. Singer, T., & Lamm, C. (2009). The social neuroscience of empathy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1156(1), 81–96.
2. Krasner, M. S., Epstein, R. M., Beckman, H., Suchman, A. L., Chapman, B., Mooney, C. J., & Quill, T. E. (2009). Association of an educational program in mindful communication with burnout, empathy, and attitudes among primary care physicians. JAMA, 302(12), 1284–1293.
3. David Shlim, preface to Rinpoche, C. N., Medicine and Compassion, Wisdom Publications, 2006.
4. Harvey Fineberg, Foreword to Rinpoche, C. N., Medicine and Compassion, p. ix.
5. Ibid.
6. Maslach, C., Burnout: The Cost of Caring, Prentice Hall Trade, 1982, p. 3.
7. Ibid., p. 4.
8. Preface by Prof. Patrick Légeron in Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P., Burnout: Le syndrome d’épuisement professionnel, Les Arènes, 2011, p. 16.
9. Maslach, C. (1982). Op. cit., pp. 10 ff.
10. Ibid., p. 58.
11. Ibid., p. 59.
12. Ibid., p. 70.
13. McGrath, M., & Oakley, B., “Codependency and Pathological Altruism,” in Oakley, B., Knafo, A., Madhavan, G., & Wilson, D., Pathological Altruism, Oxford University Press, Chapter 4, 2011, p. 59.
14. Zanarini, M. C. (2000). Childhood experiences associated with the development of borderline personality disorder. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 23(1), 89–101.
15. Richard Davidson, in conversation.
16. American Psychiatric Association, DSM-IV: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed., American Psychiatric Association, 1994.
17. Blair, R. J. R., Jones, L., Clark, F., & Smith, M. (1997). The psychopathic individual: A lack of responsiveness to distress cues? Psychophysiology, 34(2), 192–198.
18. Hare, R. D., McPherson, L. M., & Forth, A. E. (1988). Male psychopaths and their criminal careers. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 56(5), 710.
19. Hare, R. D. (1993). Without Conscience. Op. cit.
20. Hare’s twenty-point list includes: superficial charm, a sense of the grandiose, a need for stimulation and a predisposition to boredom, pathological lying, the art of manipulating others and deceiving them, the absence of remorse and any guilt feeling, interpersonal coldness, lack of empathy, a parasitic lifestyle, weak emotional control, sexual promiscuity, behavioral problems at an early age (lying, theft, deception, vandalism, cruelty to animals), the absence of long-term realistic goals, impulsiveness, irresponsibility, inability to assume responsibility for one’s own actions, a large number of short-term romantic relationships, juvenile delinquency, repeat offenses, and multiple, diverse criminal activities. For the most recent version of this list, see Hare, R. D., Manual for the Revised Psychopathy Checklist, 2nd ed., Multi-Health Systems, 2003.
21. Hare, R. D. (1993), Without Conscience. Op. cit.
22. Raine, A., Lencz, T., Bihrle, S., LaCasse, L., & Colletti, P. (2000). Reduced prefrontal gray matter volume and reduced autonomic activity in antisocial personality disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry, 57(2), 119.
23. Quoted in Pinker, S., The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Viking, 2011, p. 495.
24. Fazle, S., & Danesh, J. (2002). Serious mental disorder in 23,000 prisoners: A systematic review of 62 surveys. Lancet, 359(9306), 545–550. Hart, S. D., & Hare, R. D. (1996). Psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 9(2), 129–132.
25. Hemphill, J. F., Hare, R. D., & Wong, S. (1998). Psychopathy and recidivism: A review. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 3(1), 139–170.
26. Blair, R. J. R., Peschardt, K. S., Budhani, S., Mitchell, D. G. V., & Pine, D. S. (2006). The development of psychopathy. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47(3–4), 262–276; Blonigen, D. M., Hicks, B. M., Krueger, R. F., Patrick, C. J., & Iacono, W. G. (2005). Psychopathic personality traits: Heritability and genetic overlap with internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. Psychological Medicine, 35(05), 637–648.
27. Muhammad, M, Scared Silent, 1st ed., Strebor Books, 2009.
28. Babiak, P., & Hare, R. D., Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, HarperBusiness, 2007.
29. Board, B. J., & Fritzon, K. (2005). Disordered personalities at work. Psychology, Crime and Law; and Board, B. “The Tipping Point.” New York Times, May 11, 2005, Opinion section. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/11/opinion/11board.html.
30. Kiehl, K. & Buckholtz, J. Dans la tête d’un psychopathe (November–December 2011). Cerveau et Psycho, 48.
31. Harenski, C. L., Harenski, K. A., Shane, M. S., & Kiehl, K. A. (2010). Aberrant neural processing of moral violations in criminal psychopaths. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 119(4), 863; and for an overview, see Blair, R. J. R. (2010). Neuroimaging of psychopathy and antisocial behavior: A targeted review. Current Psychiatry Reports, 12(1), 76–82.
32. Ermer, E., Cope, L. M., Nyalakanti, P. K., Calhoun, V. D., & Kiehl, K. A. (2012). Aberrant paralimbic gray matter in criminal psychopathy. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 121(3), 649.
33. Weng, H. Y., Fox, A. S., Shackman, A. J., Stodola, D. E., Caldwell, J. Z., Olson, M. C.,… Davidson, R. J. (2013). Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering. Psychological Science. Retrieved from http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/05/20/0956797612469537.short; Lutz, A., Brefczynski-Lewis, J., Johnstone, T., & Davidson, R. J. (2008). Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: Effects of meditative expertise. PLoS One, 3(3), e1897.
34. Anderson, N. E., & Kiehl, K. A. (2012). The psychopath magnetized: Insights from brain imaging. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(1), 52–60.
35. Aside from the orbitofrontal cortex and the amygdala, the paralimbic system includes the anterior cingulate cortex, which regulates emotional states and helps individuals control their impulses and regulate their behavior, as well as the insula, which plays an essential role in recognizing a violation of social norms, as well as in feelings of anger, fear, empathy, or disgust. But we know that psychopaths don’t care about social norms and have a particularly high threshold of disgust, calmly tolerating repugnant smells and images.
36. Raine, A., Lencz, T., Bihrle, S., LaCasse, L., & Colletti, P. (2000). Reduced prefrontal gray matter volume and reduced autonomic activity in antisocial personality disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry, 57(2), 119.
37. Miller, G. (2008). Op. cit.
38. Cleckley, H. (1941). Op. cit.; Salekin, R. T. (2002). Psychopathy and therapeutic pessimism: Clinical lore or clinical reality? Clinical Psychology Review, 22(1), 79–112.
39. Caldwell, M., Skeem, J., Salekin, R., & Van Rybroek, G. (2006). Treatment response of adolescent offenders with psychopathy features a 2-year follow-up. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 33(5), 571–596; Caldwell, M. F., McCormick, D. J., Umstead, D., & Van Rybroek, G. J. (2007). Evidence of treatment progress and therapeutic outcomes among adolescents with psychopathic features. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 34(5), 573–587.
40. Michael Caldwell, in conversation with the author, Madison, October 2012.
41. Caldwell, M. F., et al. (2006). Op. cit., Kiehl, K., & Buckholtz, J. (2011). Op. cit.
42. Testimony taken from the book by Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, Scribner, 2002, p. 346.
43. Milner, J. S., Halsey, L. B., & Fultz, J. (1995). Empathic responsiveness and affective reactivity to infant stimuli in high- and low-risk for physical child abuse mothers. Child Abuse & Neglect, 19(6), 767–780. For comparable results obtained by using physiological methods, see Frodi, A. M., & Lamb, M. E. (1980). Child abusers’ responses to infant smiles and cries. Child Development, 51(1), 238. Quoted in Batson, C. D., Altruism in Humans, Oxford University Press, 2011.
44. See especially Schewe, P. A., Preventing Violence in Relationships: Interventions Across the Life Span, Vol. 8, American Psychological Association, 2002.
45. See especially McCullough, M. E., Worthington Jr., E. L., & Rachal, K. C. (1997). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(2), 321; McCullough, M. E., Rachal, K. C., Sandage, S. J., Worthington Jr., E. L., Brown, S. W., & Hight, T. L. (1998). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships, II. Theoretical elaboration and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(6), 1586; Witvliet, C. V. O., Ludwig, T. E., & Vander Laan, K. L. (2001). Granting forgiveness or harboring grudges: Implications for emotion, physiology, and health. Psychological Science, 12(2), 117–123. Quoted in Batson, C. D. (2011). Op. cit.
46. Harmon-Jones and his collaborators evaluated the effect of empathy on anger by measuring by EEG the activity of the left frontal cortex, which we know is related to the intensity of anger. In the initial phase of the experiment, the experimenters influenced the degree of empathy of members of two groups of volunteer students (who took part in the experiment one at a time) by asking some to imagine the feelings of a female student suffering from multiple sclerosis, thus inducing increased empathy for her (she was actually an accomplice of the experimenters), and others to consider the sick person’s situation in a detached, objective way, which induced only a weak amount of empathy. Soon after, the volunteer student supposedly suffering from MS gave the volunteers either a rude, insulting report, meant to give rise to an aggressive reaction, of an essay these volunteers had written, or a neutral evaluation. The EEG activity of the volunteers was recorded immediately after they received these evaluations. It turned out that the activity of the frontal cortex that normally increases when one is insulted and that accompanies aggression increased markedly among the subjects of the group who were asked to adopt a detached attitude, but was inhibited in those in whom empathy was induced. This experiment is one of those that show most clearly that empathy can directly inhibit the desire to attack. Harmon-Jones, E., Vaughn-Scott, K., Mohr, S., Sigelman, J., & Harmon-Jones, C. (2004). The effect of manipulated sympathy and anger on left and right frontal cortical activity. Emotion, 4(1), 95. Quoted in Batson, C. D. (2011). Op. cit., p. 167.
1. Hare, R. D., Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, Pocket Books, 1993, p. 33. Quoted in Baumeister, R. F., Evil: Inside Human Cruelty and Violence, Barnes & Noble, 2001, p. 221.
2. Quoted in Pinker, S. (2011). Op. cit., p. 509.
3. Aaron Beck said this during a meeting with the Dalai Lama in Sweden in 2005. This number suggests the importance of the mental superimpositions that affect our perceptions under the influence of anger, but are not a precise, measured evaluation of cognitive distortions.
4. For a detailed explanation of this mechanism, see Beck, A., Prisoners of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence, Harper Perennial, 2000.
5. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, 365 Dalai Lama: Daily Advice from the Heart, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2012.
6. Pinker, S. (2011). Op. cit., p. 164; Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., p. 157.
7. Quoted in Pinker, S. (2011). Op. cit., p. 529.
8. Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., p. 167.
9. Brezina, T., Agnew, R., Cullen, F. T., & Wright, J. P. (2004). The code of the street. A quantitative assessment of Elijah Anderson’s subculture of violence thesis and its contribution to youth violence research. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 2(4), 303–328.
10. Courtwright, D. T., Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City, new ed., Harvard University Press, 1998. Quoted in Pinker, S. (2011). Op. cit., p. 103.
11. King James Bible. Deuteronomy, 42–43.
12. The Dalai Lama, in a speech at the Sorbonne, during a meeting of recipients of the Prix de la Mémoire, in 1993.
13. Hillesum, E., Etty: A Diary 1941–43, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans, Jonathan Cape, 1983.
14. Dui Hua Foundation (2010). Reducing death penalty crimes in china more symbol than substance. Dialogue, 40.
15. Report broadcast on the BBC World Service, October 6, 2006.
16. Vergely, B., Souffrance, Flammarion, 1998.
17. Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., 1990, pp. 132–134.
18. Scully, D., Understanding Sexual Violence: A Study of Convicted Rapists, Routledge, 1990. Quoted in Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., p. 138.
19. Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., pp. 141, 144.
20. Kernis, M. H., “The Roles of Stability and Level of Self-Esteem in Psychological Functioning,” in Self-Esteem: The Puzzle of Low Self-Regard, Plenum Press, 1993, pp. 167–182.
21. Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., p. 149.
22. Berkowitz, L. (1978). Is criminal violence normative behavior? Hostile and instrumental aggression in violent incidents. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 15(2), 148–161.
23. Ford, F. L., Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism, Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 80. Quoted in Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., p. 152.
24. Johnson, D. D., McDermott, R., Barrett, E. S., Cowden, J., Wrangham, R., McIntyre, M. H., & Rosen, S. P. (2006). Overconfidence in wargames: Experimental evidence on expectations, aggression, gender and testosterone. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 273(1600), 2513–2520.
25. Beck, A. (2004). Op. cit., p. 34.
26. Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., pp. 39–48.
27. Straus, M. (1980). Victims and aggressors in marital violence. American Behavioral Scientist, 23(5), 681. Cited by Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., p. 53.
28. Black, D. (1983). Crime as social control. American Sociological Review, 34–45. Quoted in Pinker, S. (2011). Op. cit., p. 83.
29. Including Luckenbill, Gottfredson, and Hirschi.
30. Luckenbill, D. F. (1977). Criminal homicide as a situated transaction. Social Problems, 176–186; Gottfredson and Hirschi, A General Theory of Crime, Stanford University Press, 1990. Quoted in Baumeister, R. F. (2001) Op. cit., p. 53.
31. Baumeister, R. F., (2001), Op. cit., p. 117.
32. Ibid., p. 62.
33. Twitchell, J. B., Dreadful Pleasures: An Anatomy of Modern Horror, Oxford University Press, 1985; quoted in Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., pp. 64, 66.
34. Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., p. 77.
35. Norris, J., Walking Time Bombs, Bantam, 1992, p. 53.
36. Ibid., pp. 18–19.
37. Jankowski, M. S., Islands in the Street: Gangs and American Urban Society, University of California Press, 1991, p. 177.
38. Finkelhor, D., & Yllö, K., License to Rape: Sexual Abuse of Wives, The Free Press, 1987.
39. Toch, H., Violent Men: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Violence, 2d rev. ed., American Psychological Association, 1993.
40. Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., pp. 232–236.
41. Gottfredson, M., & Hirschi, T., A General Theory of Crime, Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 105.
42. Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., p. 106.
43. Gelles, R. J., Intimate Violence, Simon & Schuster, 1988.
44. Katz, J., Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil, Basic Books, 1990, as well as Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., p. 111.
45. Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371.
46. “Le Jeu de la mort” [“The Game of Death”], broadcast on France 2, March 17, 2010.
47. Zimbardo, P., The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Random House, 2007.
48. We even thought of repeating the Stanford prison experiment using only longtime Buddhist practitioners, and considered several variants: either all the guards, or all the prisoners, could be Buddhist meditators, or both could. One could also envisage a mixed population of students and meditators. But, according to Phil, it would be almost impossible today to obtain permission from the ethics committees that review research propositions, because of the potentially disturbing effects for the volunteers.
49. Zimbardo, P. (2007). Op. cit.
50. Quoted in Pinker, S. (2011). Op. cit., p. 509.
51. See the table in the New Scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/embedded/20worst, based on White, M., The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities, W. W. Norton, 2012, as well as McEvedy, C., Jones, R., & others, Atlas of World Population History, Penguin Books, 1978, for numbers concerning the world population at various times in history.
52. Pinker, S. (2011). Op. cit., p. 196.
53. Fanon, F., The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press, 2007.
54. Baumeister, R. F., Evil: Inside Human Cruelty and Violence, Barnes & Noble, 2001, p. 120.
55. Maalouf, A., The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, Schocken, 1989.
56. Rummel, R. J., Death by Government, Transaction Publishers, 1994.
57. Freud, S., Reflections on War and Death (Kindle Locations 341–343), Kindle Edition, 2012.
58. Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and Its Discontents (Kindle Locations 825–826), Kindle Edition, 2013.
59. What’s more, as Jacques Van Rillaer, a former psychoanalyst who has explored this question in detail in his book Les Illusions de la psychanalyse, explains, psychologists today challenge the principle by which living beings basically try to search for a state completely without tension, and to reduce any new tension that arises in them. On the contrary, an animal or a person placed in a comfortable place but completely isolated from any stimulation likely to arouse tension soon experiences this situation as very disagreeable. Van Rillaer, J., Les Illusions de la psychanalyse, 1995. Op. cit., p. 289, and note 94.
60. Ibid., p. 296.
61. Lorenz, K., On Aggression, Routledge, 2005, p. 5.
62. Ibid., p. 265.
63. Ibid., pp. 232–233.
64. Ibid., p. 48.
65. Waal, F. B. M. de, Le Bon Singe: Les bases naturelles de la morale, Bayard, 1997, pp. 205–208.
66. Eibl-Eibesfeldt I., Contre l’agression, Stock, 1972. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I., Love and Hate: On the Natural History of Basic Behaviour Patterns, AldineTransaction, 1973, p. 5.
67. Kohn, A., The Brighter Side of Human Nature, 1992. Op. cit., p. 51.
68. Davidson, R. J., Putnam, K. M., & Larson, C. L. (2000). Dysfunction in the neural circuitry of emotion regulation—a possible prelude to violence. Science, 289(5479), 591–594; Friedman, H. S., Hostility, Coping, and Health, Vol. 16, American Psychological Association, 1992.
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70. Douglas, J. E., Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, Scribner, 1995. Quoted in Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Op. cit., p. 273.
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73. Panksepp, J., Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions, Vol. 4., Oxford University Press, 2004.
74. Davidson, R. J., Putnam, K. M., & Larson, C. L. (2000). Dysfunction in the neural circuitry of emotion regulation—a possible prelude to violence. Science, 289(5479), 591–594.
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76. Conclusion of a joint report by six of the leading American medical associations, American Academy of Pediatrics, Policy statement. Media violence, in Pediatrics, vol. 124, pp. 1495–1503, 2009.
77. In contrast to the thousands of studies that show that violent images and video games increase violent behavior, not a single study has identified any effect of release that would reduce these behaviors (i.e., no cathartic effect). For overviews on the impact of violence in the media, see Christensen, P. N., & Wood, W. (2007). Effects of media violence on viewers’ aggression in unconstrained social interaction, in Preiss, R. W., Gayle, B. M., Burrell, N., Allen, M., & Bryant, J., Mass Media Effects Research: Advances Through Meta-Analysis, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007, pp. 145–168. Quoted in Lecomte, J. (2012). La Bonté humaine. Op. cit., p. 316.
78. Desmurget, M. (2012). La télévision creuset de la violence. Cerveau et Psycho, 8, November–January 2012. Desmurget, M., TV Lobotomie: La vérité scientifique sur les effets de la télévision, Max Milo Éditions, 2012.
79. Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Morgan, M., & Signorielli, N. (1986). Living with television: The dynamics of the cultivation process. Perspectives on media effects, 17–40. Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Morgan, M., Signorielli, N., & Shanahan, J. (2002). Growing up with television: Cultivation processes. Media effects: Advances in theory and research, 2, 43–67.
80. Quoted in Kohn, A. (1992). Op. cit., p. 37.
81. Mares, M. L., & Woodard, E. (2005). Positive effects of television on children’s social interactions: A meta-analysis. Media Psychology, 7(3), 301–322.
82. Christakis, D. A., & Zimmerman, F. J. (2007). Violent television viewing during preschool is associated with antisocial behavior during school age. Pediatrics, 120(5), 993–999.
83. Desmurget, M. (2012). La télévision creuset de la violence. These effects are independent of the normal temperament, more or less aggressive, of the individual.
84. Sestir, M. A., & Bartholow, B. D. (2010). Violent and nonviolent video games produce opposing effects on aggressive and prosocial outcomes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(6), 934–942; Bartholow, B. D., Bushman, B. J., & Sestir, M. A. (2006). Chronic violent video game exposure and desensitization to violence: Behavioral and event-related brain potential data. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42(4), 532–539; Engelhardt, C. R., Bartholow, B. D., Kerr, G. T., & Bushman, B. J. (2011). This is your brain on violent video games: Neural desensitization to violence predicts increased aggression following violent video game exposure. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(5), 1033–1036. Still, when it comes to the authors of serious violent actions, murders especially, the influence of the media affects them especially when they are already predisposed to violence. Compared to the rest of the population, aggressive individuals, in fact, go to see more violent films, and the influence these films exercise on their tendency to become angry and commit violent actions is stronger than among other people. See Bushman, B. J. (1995). Moderating role of trait aggressiveness in the effects of violent media on aggression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 950.
85. Desmurget, M. (2012), L’empreinte de la violence, Cerveau et Psycho, 8, November–January 2012.
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101. Prosocial games include Chibi Robo, in which the player controls a robot that helps everyone at home and elsewhere. The more the player helps, the more points he earns. In Super Mario Sunshine, the players help clean up a polluted island. The goal of the research teams that are now developing new prosocial games is for the games to be truly attractive and maintain the player’s interest.
102. They also verified that violent video games not only increased aggression, but also diminished positive mental states.
103. Saleem, M., Anderson, C. A., & Gentile, D. A. (2012). Effects of prosocial, neutral, and violent video games on college students’ affect. Aggressive Behavior, 38(4), 263–271; Greitemeyer, T., Osswald, S., & Brauer, M. (2010). Playing prosocial video games increases empathy and decreases schadenfreude. Emotion, 10(6), 796–802.
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114. Ibid., pp. 304–342.
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