Reflections and Scientific Evidence
DIMITRI PUTILIN
All things are linked with one another, and this oneness is sacred; there is nothing that is not interconnected with everything else. For things are interdependent, and they combine to form this universal order.
—Marcus Aurelius, The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius
Tribalism is built deeply into the human psyche, as evidenced by Henri Tajfel’s research using the so-called minimal group paradigm. In Tajfel’s experiments, participants arbitrarily divided into two groups immediately behaved preferentially toward members of their own group and discriminated against the other group (that is, the outgroup). When choosing between maximizing the benefit to the in-group or maximizing the difference in benefit between the in-group and the outgroup, participants chose the latter—even at the cost of reducing their own group’s rewards. Moreover, they expected outgroup members to behave as they did. Tajfel (1978, Tajfel et al. 1971) identified two motives at play in his studies, which he termed “groupness” and “fairness.” In allocating resources between groups, “groupness” (that is, in-group favoritism) dominates; fairness comes into play primarily when allocating resources within one’s in-group.
Given how little it takes to initiate intergroup conflict, it is perhaps unsurprising that much of history has been characterized by violence and oppression manifested in war, slavery, and countless other forms of strife and exploitation. Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, as the Athenian army was invading the island nation of Melos and offering the Melians enslavement as a compromise, the Melians appealed to the famously democratic Athenians’ sense of fairness and justice. When the Athenian generals replied, “you know as well as we do that right [that is, justice], as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” they could have been summarizing Tajfel’s conclusions: fairness is reserved for the in-group; domination and exploitation for the outgroup (Thucydides 2009).
If the problem of group relations is ancient and global, so is the proposed solution. Writing nearly two and a half millennia ago, the Chinese sage Mozi considered selfishness and partiality, that is, tribalism, to be the cause of all conflict, and argued that regarding others as self is the antidote:
If there were universal mutual love in the world, with the love of others being like the love of oneself, would there still be anyone who was not filial? If one were to regard one’s father, older brothers and ruler like oneself, how could one not be filial towards them? … Would there still be thieves and robbers? If there were regard for the households of others like one’s own household, who would steal? If there were regard for the persons of others like one’s own person, who would rob? Therefore, thieves and robbers would also disappear. Would there still be great officers who brought disorder to each other’s households or feudal lords who attacked each other’s states? If there were regard for the households of others like one’s own household, who would bring about disorder? If there were regard for the states of others like one’s own state, who would attack? Therefore, there would be no instances of great officers bringing disorder to each other’s houses or of feudal lords attacking each other’s states. If the world had universal mutual love, then states would not attack each other, households would not bring disorder to each other, there would be no thieves and robbers, and rulers, ministers, fathers and sons could all be filial and loving. In this way, then, there would be order in the world.
(Mozi 2013, 14.3)
The appeal of these ideas has not diminished in the intervening centuries. The contemporary philosopher Peter Singer argues that inclusivity of moral regard is the essence of moral progress, inevitably culminating in the ascription of equal weight to our own interests as well as those of all other sentient beings: “The circle of altruism has broadened from the family and tribe to the nation and race, and we are beginning to recognize that our obligations extend to all human beings. The process should not stop there.… The only justifiable stopping place for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are included within the circle of altruism” (2011, 120). Like Kant and Rawls before him, Singer suggests that impartiality is the only standpoint from which truly ethical decisions can be made, overcoming our natural tendencies to favor ourselves and the in-groups that serve as extensions of our individual identities:
When my ability to reason shows me that the suffering of another being is very similar to my own suffering and matters just as much to that other being as my own suffering matters to me, then my reason is showing me something that is undeniably true.… The perspective on ourselves that we get when we take the point of view of the universe also yields as much objectivity as we need if we are to find a cause that is worthwhile in a way that is independent of our own desires.
(2000, 238)
The universalist perspective advanced by Singer and Mozi stands in direct conflict with the automatic (that is, instinctive) tribalist tendencies documented by Tajfel. Whereas the inclusivity motive promotes cooperation and mutual support and respect, tribalism reserves these goods predominantly for the inner circle from which others may be excluded.
Between the age of Mozi and Singer’s modern treatment of the same idea, its central aspect—impartially valuing the well-being of all others as one’s own, also known as the Golden Rule—has found its way into religions and philosophies around the world. It is sometimes stated as “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A naïve interpretation of this might suggest that the rule is advocating imposing one’s desires upon others; however, that is a mistake. Interpreted that way, the rule becomes self-contradictory. People generally do not enjoy having others’ wishes imposed on them, in contravention of their own desires, and therefore by doing to others what I would wish done to myself in the concrete sense (for example, feeding BBQ chicken to a vegetarian, if that happens to be what I am craving at that moment), I am in fact not doing to others what I would wish done to myself (respecting their wishes and preferences). Rather, the rule is more reasonably, commonly, and coherently interpreted as advocating for equality in the consideration that we show to ourselves and to others—a counterweight to our natural self-favoring tendencies.
The importance ascribed to the Golden Rule across cultures is attested to not only by its ubiquity, but also by the fact that we are able to be aware of its ubiquity today: the mere fact that it has been preserved in oral and written traditions for millennia and into the present day. In many of these traditions, the Golden Rule has been emphasized as the very essence of right conduct and moral thought. To cite only a few examples, the Talmud records Rabbi Hillel (110 BCE–10 CE) as stating, “What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole of Torah and the remainder is but commentary” (quoted in Allinson 2003). In the Bible, Jesus emphasizes the Golden Rule as one of the two core commandments: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37–40). It was emphasized in ancient Rome by Epictetus (“What you shun enduring yourself, attempt not to impose on others”; 1935) and when Confucius was asked for the single word that can guide one’s entire life, the Golden Rule was his reply. Recognizing it as a shared thread in the diversity of the world’s religious thought, the World Congress of Religions in 1993 produced a statement that reads, in part, “There is a principle which is found and has persisted in many religious and ethical traditions of humankind for thousands of years: What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others. Or in positive terms: What you wish done to yourself, do to others! This should be the irrevocable, unconditional norm for all areas of life, for families and communities, for races, nations, and religions” (Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions 1993, 23).
Clearly, the idea of equal concern for oneself and all others as the guide to life has historically been a tremendously compelling one. But is it plausible as a practical guide to behavior—is it realistic? In this essay, I will address some of the psychological facilities and barriers that are relevant to the demands of attempting to live in accord with the Golden Rule. First on the agenda: the Golden Rule asks us to care about others’ needs equally with our own. But are we psychologically capable of truly caring about another’s needs at all? This simple question has been a surprisingly contentious one in both psychology and philosophy. I shall summarize the relevant empirical evidence next.
Evidence for Altruism
Defining altruism as “a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare,” Daniel Batson (2011) sought to determine whether it is a psychological possibility using a series of more than thirty cleverly designed experiments. He recognized that it is not sufficient to observe overt helping behavior, however heroic or self-sacrificial it may appear, in order to determine whether its motive is altruistic or selfish. Fortunately, if one suspects that helping behavior is selfishly motivated, it is possible to discern this by varying the contingencies under which the behavior occurs. Altruistic behavior is costly, and if a given self-focused goal is its true objective, then providing a less costly means of achieving the same self-focused goal should decrease the rates of helping. On the other hand, helping (or having someone else help) is the only means to attain the altruistic goal of improving the other’s well-being, and therefore the ready availability of easier ways to reach self-focused goals should not deter altruistically motivated individuals from helping.
Batson further proposed that empathic concern—the emotional state associated with valuing the well-being of another who is in distress—produces altruistic motivation. The expectation, then, is that people experiencing empathic concern would be more likely to help whether or not an easier way to obtain self-focused rewards is available, whereas those not experiencing empathic concern would be more likely to take the easier, nonhelping path toward self-focused goals.
To test this hypothesis, Batson identified the self-focused goals that could motivate helping behavior. These included (a) reduction of aversive inner states, that is, the sadness or distress one feels when confronted with another’s distress, (b) avoidance of negative evaluation by others for not helping, (c) avoiding negative self-evaluation (for example, pangs of conscience, guilt, having acted inconsistently with one’s positive self-image), and (d) seeking rewards for helping, which could be material rewards, social rewards (praise, honor), or self-rewards (satisfaction, sympathetic joy).
It is important to note that the core issue at stake is not whether these benefits can occur as a result of helping—clearly, they can. Rather, it is whether at the time one chooses to help, she or he is motivated by those consequences—or by the aim of reducing another’s distress. The two motives are not incompatible: one can both wish to help and wish to feel good as a consequence of that helping, for example. However, as long as altruistic motivation is present—whether alone or together with self-focused motives—it can only be satisfied by helping, and not by any easier route if that route only provides self-focused benefits.
To appreciate the research evidence, it is helpful to consider the procedural details of Batson’s approach. A sample experiment consisted of participants observing an interview with “Katie Banks,” a senior at their university, who described her struggle to support her surviving younger siblings after the death of their parents and sister (Batson et al. 1988). Participants were randomized into two groups, one of which was told to watch the interview while imagining how Katie feels (in order to induce empathic concern), while the other was told to remain objective and detach from Katie’s feelings. Both groups were randomized further: half were told that most of the previous students watching the interview did not help Katie, while the other half were told that the majority had chosen to help. This served to manipulate perceived behavior norms, providing the former group but not the latter with justification for not helping. Helping opportunities required investment of hours of one’s time or, in other studies, willingness to take the place of another participant (actually a research confederate) who was apparently receiving painful electric shocks.
If empathic concern produces altruistic motivation, then the group undergoing empathic concern induction should be less sensitive to the presence or absence of justification for not helping. Within this group, both the high-justification and low-justification subgroups would be expected to help at high and roughly equal rates. In contrast, the group told to remain objective would be more likely to avoid helping when provided with a justification for doing so (that is, the information that the majority of previous participants had not helped), but the rates of helping would be higher if the justification for not helping was withheld. In other words, their behavior would be under the control of manipulated norms rather than the altruistic goal of alleviating Katie’s distress.
The results precisely conformed to the prediction. In the objective/high-justification group, only 15 percent of participants helped Katie, compared to 55 percent in the objective/low-justification group. However, in the empathic concern conditions, the presence of justification had little impact: 60 percent and 70 percent of participants in the two justification conditions elected to help her, with no significant difference between the two values. These results supported the hypothesis that empathic concern produced a genuine desire to benefit Katie, rather than the self-serving motivation of avoiding guilt and shame.
Although this study alone does not address all the possible self-serving motives for helping behavior, Batson’s systematic approach across the spectrum of such goals has consistently found support for the empathy-altruism hypothesis. Across these studies, researchers varied the following conditions designed to differentiate between altruistic and self-focused motivations (Batson 2011, Batson, Lishner, and Stocks 2015):
1. Ease vs. difficulty of escape from exposure to suffering. If participants’ goal is to escape the personal distress caused by witnessing the suffering of the victim, then they will be less likely to help when escape is easy than when escape is more difficult. This indeed occurred in the low empathic concern condition, but there were no differences in the high empathic concern condition, where high rates of helping occurred regardless of ease of escape.
2. Justification for ineffective helping. If one’s motive for helping is egoistic, having an excuse for having failed to help effectively should produce minimal distress, whereas not having an excuse (and thus being culpable) should produce significantly greater distress. If the motive is altruistic, learning that one has failed to help should produce increased distress regardless of excuse availability, and this is what occurred.
3. Public knowledge (others know) vs. private knowledge (no one except the participant can possibly know) whether any given participant helped. In these tests of social rewards or punishments as the nonaltruistic motive for helping, the highest rates of helping occurred in the high empathic concern, private condition. This once again supports the altruistic explanation.
4. Expectation of positive feedback about one’s helping efforts. If helping behavior is motivated by the expectation of empathic joy due to having helped, helping should be greater when positive feedback will be provided than when it is not. If the motivation is altruistic, high levels of helping attempts should occur regardless of feedback, which was the result.
5. After hearing about someone’s need, learning that the need either continues to exist or not, and that one will be able to offer help or not. If one is motivated by the rewards of helping, reduced positive affect should occur if one is blocked from offering help, whether or not the target remains in need. If the motive is altruistic, reduced positive affect should occur only if the need for help remains, as was found to be the case.
6. Availability of alternative means of improving one’s own mood. Following the induction of low mood, participants were led to either expect a subsequent induction of positive emotions or not. They were then offered the opportunity to help a target in need. Self-focused motivation for helping (as a means to improve one’s mood) would predict that inducing empathy would produce little to no increase in helping (a costly behavior) among participants expecting their mood to be improved at no cost. Altruistic motivation predicts that inducing empathy will increase helping, which is what occurred.
To summarize this literature, Batson and his colleagues have successfully demonstrated that, when exposed to a person in need and instructed to consider how that person is feeling, people are more likely to value his or her well-being as an end in itself, to experience the emotional state of empathic concern, and to be increasingly willing to engage in helping behavior at a cost to themselves. Providing an easier means of obtaining self-focused goals makes little to no impact on their rates of helping. In contrast, the availability of alternative ways to obtain self-focused benefits has a substantially stronger impact on the helping rates of individuals who are not experiencing empathic concern. Batson (2011) concludes that humans are, indeed, capable of altruism.
Altruism or Oneness?
In follow-ups to Batson’s research, Cialdini et al. (1997) and Maner et al. (2002) showed that the degree of kinship or perceived similarity of the participant to the victim simultaneously increased empathic concern, helping behavior, and what they called “oneness.” “Oneness” was also found to be a stronger predictor of helping behavior than empathic concern. Arguing that “oneness” represented a loss of distinction between the participant and the victim, they concluded that by helping the victim the participants were in fact selfishly helping themselves.
There are several problems with this logic; to understand them, it is necessary to understand the relevant measure. “Oneness” was measured by a combination of two items: participant’s degree of willingness to describe the victim and self using the word we, and the Inclusion of Self in Other (IOS) scale—a series of seven increasingly overlapping sets of two circles from which the participant must choose the set that most accurately represents the relationship between self and other (Aron, Aron, and Smollan 1992). Both were measured on a scale from one to seven.
To claim, as Cialdini, Maner, and their colleagues do, that participants became unable to distinguish between themselves and the victim requires reaching significantly beyond the evidence. The creators of the IOS describe it as “a single item, pictorial measure of closeness,” and for conceptual clarity I will retain that term rather than “oneness,” which carries different connotations. Even in the condition where the highest degree of perceived oneness was obtained, the average level (M = 3.98, SD = 1.52) corresponded to the midpoint of the scale—the set of IOS circles with only approximately 35 percent overlap, and moderate (again, midpoint of the scale) willingness to use “we” to describe participant and victim (Maner et al. 2002). This suggests that participants saw both the majority of their own identity and that of the victim as unique and separate from whatever it was they shared in common.
Furthermore, even if Batson’s perspective-taking instructions led participants to see the victim’s problems as to some extent their own, a very important asymmetry persists. Whereas the actual victim has no choice but to deal with the aversive circumstances in which she finds herself, the potential helper (that is, the participant) has the ability to walk away from the problem, avoiding both the emotional costs and burdens of helping. There is an inherent difference in perspectives between the two people, and nothing in the data or common human experience suggests that the participant becomes so merged with the victim that he or she ceases to perceive choosing to take care of one’s individual self rather than the victim as an option—in fact, a substantial percentage of participants in all conditions chose to do just that by refusing to help.
Batson also notes that even when empathic concern is activated, people nonetheless weigh costs to self as part of the decision on whether to help—and it is this ability to continue experiencing ourselves as emotionally connected to yet distinct from the victim that facilitates (that is, lowers the barrier to) but does not compel altruistic action (Batson 2011). For the drowning man, struggling to survive is not an option; for the bystander, however merged, the choice remains—emotional closeness does not rule out selfishness. Thus, it appears that whatever type of self-other merger or closeness occurs as a consequence of Batson’s perspective-taking instructions, it does not preclude altruism. The participants experiencing closeness with the victim are in fact electing to remain and to help, and—as the data suggest—are guided in part by the altruistic goal of benefiting the victim when they do.
Although Maner, Cialdini, and colleagues’ conclusion that altruism does not exist is not borne out by the data, their work does highlight the inherently tribalistic nature of our default programming as human beings, if our instincts can be considered as such. The closer we feel to another person, the more readily we are predisposed to help them; psychological closeness (sometimes called psychological distance) appears to reduce our automatic selfish bias toward strangers (for a review, see Davis 2015). Why should that be the case? By exploring this question, we may gain useful insight into the compatibility of our instinctive behavioral inclinations with the Golden Rule.
Closeness, Interdependence, and the Origins of Tribalism
Psychologically, emotional closeness signals interdependence. The prototypical example is the bond of emotional closeness between mother and child, but closeness exists to varying degrees in all forms of kin and nonkin relationships. From the perspective of evolution, genetic kinship is not necessary in order for a relationship to be interdependent and valuable for one’s survival and reproductive success: in human societies, friendships are also essential, and we have evolved the capacity to feel emotionally close to both friends and relatives. In other words, we feel close to people whose well-being is relevant to our own happiness and perhaps even survival—whose well-being we ignore only at our own risk and detriment. To quote the country singer Tracy Byrd, “when mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” Therefore it makes perfect sense from the perspective of evolutionary theory that closeness with others should automatically predispose us to take their needs seriously and to act altruistically toward them. Consistent with this, emotional closeness was found to mediate the relationship between genetic relatedness and altruism (Korchmaros and Kenny 2001).
In other words, although the motivation produced when we feel empathic concern for another is altruistic—that is, focused on increasing their well-being, rather than attaining some benefit for oneself—such motivation is most likely to arise when we are exposed to the suffering of another with whom we are interdependent: a member of the in-group. Our altruistic intentions are most likely to arise spontaneously when having them is to our long-term advantage. In this way, nonpsychopathic humans are biologically prepared to form successful interdependent social units such as the family or the tribe, with the degree of automatic concern for the needs of its other members being proportionately related to our degree of emotional closeness with them.
Conversely, it makes a great deal of evolutionary sense for this altruistic machinery to fail to engage as readily when interacting with distant others—those categorized into the outgroup. There are several reasons for this. First, if one is not interdependent with certain others, sharing scarce resources with them may disadvantage the survival of one’s own group and, ultimately, oneself. Second, whereas emotional closeness signals the availability of reciprocal help when needed, there is no such expectation of reciprocity when dealing with the outgroup. Resources allocated to outgroup members are, in this sense, wasted.
The third and final reason I shall propose is that outgroups represent a potential source of valuable resources for the in-group. These can be obtained through cooperation (for example, trade) or force; however, experiencing automatic empathic concern for the outgroup would inhibit one of these two strategies. Without the possibility of discounting the outgroup members’ emotions and needs—what has become known as dehumanization and infrahumanization in the group conflict literature—the exploitation of outgroup members for the in-group’s benefit is severely impeded, creating an adaptive disadvantage compared to other groups without such qualms. As a consequence, the empathic concern that automatically predisposes humans to altruism when interacting with close others is reduced or even reversed when encountering members of the outgroup (Cikara, Bruneau, and Saxe 2011, Tajfel 1971).
However, this status quo is neither inevitable nor ideal. A trait evolved under one set of conditions may become maladaptive when environmental circumstances change. Among geographically isolated tribes, viewing contact with other groups primarily in terms of potential benefit or threat to the in-group may have been a viable survival strategy. However, given today’s unprecedented levels of global connectedness and interdependence, continued tribalism reflects a situation akin to a family in which every member is only out for themselves and on guard against the others. The constant friction thus produced exacts ongoing costs in stress and mutual harm that threaten to overwhelm the potential gains of this approach.
It appears that evolution has provided us with a mechanism for genuinely caring about others—but has restricted it primarily to close others by default. This serves to decrease conflict within groups, but may increase the potential for conflict between them. In a massively cross-cultural program of research, Schwartz has identified a circumplex of values present in all societies (Schwartz and Bilsky 1990, Schwartz et al. 2012). Although a full review of the theory is beyond the scope of this essay, two values it describes are directly relevant: benevolence and universalism. Benevolence captures concern for the well-being of close others, while universalism reflects the same concern directed toward all.
On the surface, it may appear that both of these values are entirely prosocial; however, they differ in one crucial respect. Whereas benevolence allows for the existence of outgroups that may enter into moral consideration to varying degrees or not at all, universalism (in its full expression) does not. As a result, benevolence may facilitate intergroup conflict by transforming individual conflict tendencies into group conflict tendencies—for example, “an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.” In contrast, universalism eliminates the concept of an outgroup entirely, and with it, the possibility of perceiving an exploitable or expendable other.
Our evolutionary disinclination to altruism with outsiders can be further strengthened by what I shall call misguided pragmatism. When choosing whether to cooperate or compete with another, we are essentially playing a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, an economic game that illustrates why people who don’t know each other’s intentions often do not cooperate, even when it would be in their mutual best interest to do so. It boils down to fear of having one’s good intentions or generosity exploited by a more selfish other. Until everyone cooperates, it seems disadvantageous to risk being the first. As a reminder, Tajfel found that arbitrary division of participants into groups was sufficient to produce expectations of receiving unfair treatment from the outgroup, which undoubtedly makes a cautious and suspicious approach to interacting with outgroup members seem particularly prudent.
In summary, our automatic cognitive processes effortlessly divide the world into “us” and “them,” and make us less likely to feel empathic concern when faced with the suffering of distant others. This is experienced as differences in the natural inclination to help (or avoid harming) them. A second, conscious cognitive process further reinforces this pattern by making partiality appear to be the rational and optimal approach to dealing with uncertainty regarding others’ intentions—that is, “a healthy dose of suspicion.”
The Way Out of Tribalism
Fortunately, there is a way out of this predicament. Writing more than a century ago, William James observed that our relationship with objects in our world (objects in the psychological sense, including people, physical objects, and even intangibles) can vary along a continuum of antipathy or indifference on the one hand, and a merging of the object into our self on the other; varying degrees of psychological distance or closeness lie in between:
The Empirical Self of each of us is all that he is tempted to call by the name of me. But it is clear that between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves. Our fame, our children, the work of our hands, may be as dear to us as our bodies are, and arouse the same feelings and the same acts of reprisal if attacked. And our bodies themselves, are they simply ours, or are they us? Certainly men have been ready to disown their very bodies and to regard them as mere vestures, or even as prisons of clay from which they should someday be glad to escape.
We see then that we are dealing with a fluctuating material. The same object being sometimes treated as a part of me, at other times as simply mine, and then again as if I had nothing to do with it at all.
(James 2012)
If, as James states, our degree of closeness with others can fluctuate significantly over time, and if we may be able to exercise conscious control over how close or distant we feel toward others, then we may be able to redirect our evolved, tribalistic altruism toward more universally inclusive ends.
Evidence certainly points in this direction: we do have the capacity to include others in self, and to adjust the degree of that relationship. This is the case even in our relationship with that most essential core of what James calls our “empirical self”: the body. We have the capacity to experience foreign objects as parts of ourselves—but also to disown and wish to annihilate our own flesh. The so-called rubber hand illusion—where a healthy participant’s real hand is hidden from view and replaced with a visible fake rubber hand and both hands are stroked simultaneously with a brush—shows that our brains possess the capacity to psychologically adopt an inanimate and unfeeling object. During the illusion, participants report and fMRI scans show a fear response when the rubber hand is threatened (Ehrsson, Spence, and Passingham 2004, Ehrsson et al. 2007). At the opposite end of the closeness continuum, chronic pain patients can perceive their affected limb as a foreign object, and express “a desperate desire to amputate [the affected] part despite the prospect of further pain and lack of function” (Lewis et al. 2007, 133). To quote one study participant, the afflicted body part is “just like this foreign body you were carrying around with you cause it didn’t feel like it was part of you.”
Our relationships with groups can also span the entire length of the closeness continuum. The tendency to automatically devalue the outgroup was described earlier; yet we are also able to reverse this by incorporating outgroups into the in-group via recategorization—a change of group boundaries whereby “us” and “them” become “we” (Gaertner et al. 1989). This process reduces all forms of in-group bias, leading former outgroup members to be evaluated as more likeable, valuable, cooperative, and honest, and improving the emotional tone of interpersonal interactions. Through recategorization, the benefits of in-group membership—including greater automatic empathy and altruism—become available to former outgroup members.
Identity fusion—“a visceral sense of union, or oneness, with a group” (Talaifar and Swann in this volume)—has been another fruitful conceptual framework for understanding how humans relate to groups. Strong identity fusion can motivate the sacrifice of one’s life for the group’s benefit—yet through our conscious choices we can separate even from groups we’ve been fused with from birth. A dramatic (although anecdotal) example of this, Megan Phelps-Roper had been indoctrinated from birth into the ideology of the Westboro Baptist Church—an organization combining three powerful inducements to fused in-group loyalty: family, religion, and a cult-like demand for obedience under the threat of severe punishment or excommunication (Chen 2015). Creation of family-like bonds may explain the strength of commitment to the group in fused individuals; but in Phelps-Roper’s case, the group actually was the family (Whitehouse et al. 2014). She had participated in the group’s picketing activities since age seven and describes having enthusiastically worked to spread its message on the Internet. Despite this, Phelps-Roper was able to consciously and successfully choose to divest herself from the group (that is, her family) and its ideology.
Yet, despite this evolutionary heritage, we are—or, rather, can choose to be—masters of how our instincts and evolved proclivities are to be channeled. Batson’s experiments spanning four decades have demonstrated that the simple instruction “Try to imagine how the person who is being interviewed feels about what has happened and how the events have affected her life. Try to feel the full impact of what this person has been through and how she feels as a result” triggers the biological program of empathic concern and altruism—even when the victim is a stranger in a relative outgroup, such as a rival college (Batson et al. 1988, 61). A simple instruction to remain objective had the opposite effect. The striking differences in the helping rates between the perspective-taking and objective conditions obtained in these studies demonstrate not only the existence of the two programs, but also our capacity to engage them at will, should we so choose.
The Benefits of Universalism
Even if we can, why would we want to engage empathy universally, if the pragmatic considerations discussed earlier suggest that it could place us at a competitive disadvantage? This raises the question of what is truly pragmatic (that is, benefits ourselves) versus what only appears to do so. The benefit derived from a good—its utility—can be divided into two distinct types, which I will call subjective (or psychological) utility and objective (or material) utility. Subjective utility is measured in the units of happiness: the psychological goods that directly impact the quality of lived experience. Objective goods (for instance, wealth), on the other hand, produce their impact indirectly through subjective goods. The variables that impact one of the two types of utility may or may not impact the other, or might impact them in opposite directions. For example, a promotion at work may significantly increase objective utility in the form of higher pay, increasing the availability of subjective goods in the form of expensive positive experiences that are now more affordable and available to be indulged in with greater frequency (for example, gourmet restaurant meals or vacations). However, if the new job carries a stronger negative impact on subjective utility in the form of greater stress and conflict, the overall change to well-being could be negative. Focusing solely on objective utility when assessing the job change would produce misleading conclusions in this scenario. The recognition of the imperfect correlation between objective and subjective utilities has led to the establishment of alternative means of measuring progress to the traditional GDP, such as Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness index, and to calls for a more widespread adoption of such measures by the United Nations (UN General Assembly 2011). Therefore, when discussing pragmatic considerations, it is necessary to be explicit with regard to the type of utility in question.
Objective utility follows the simple math of zero-sum relationships between using one’s resources to benefit self, or others, that is, spending a dollar on someone else, in the absence of an expectation of reciprocity, is equivalent to losing a dollar’s worth of utility to oneself. It is increasingly clear, however, that this model entirely fails to consider the very different mathematics governing the psychological realities of subjective utility: by benefiting others, we derive benefit for ourselves. For instance, Anik and colleagues (2009) and Dunn, Aknin, and Norton (2008) found that spending money on oneself had no correlation with happiness, whereas spending money on others increased it. Notably, people intuitively expect the opposite to be the case (Dunn, Aknin, and Norton 2008). These relationships were found in diverse cultures, across levels of income, and at ages as young as two. Objective and subjective utilities appear to be governed by different rules, and maximizing the former at the expense of the latter may produce a net decrease in the overall quality of life.
Following the Golden Rule may help to maximize subjective utility, and Putilin and Costanzo (2015) explored whether this might explain its ubiquity in world philosophies. Could it be that like the eye, which evolved independently in multiple unrelated organisms, the Golden Rule arose independently across cultures and civilizations because of its usefulness? Observing that the Golden Rule is most commonly embedded in religious teachings, we looked at the extent to which its perceived centrality to the faith of a given member of our combined sample of over five hundred Indian Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs predicted various indicators of well-being.
As expected and regardless of the religion followed, the centrality of the Golden Rule (measured more broadly as concern for all others) consistently correlated with all other indicators in the direction of greater psychological and social health—the constellation of psychological benefits I refer to as “subjective utility.” The more strongly participants endorsed that caring for all others was central to their religion, the more likely they were to enjoy higher levels of happiness and well-being, to experience more meaning and purpose in their lives, and to have more satisfying, supportive relationships. They also were more likely to have better self-reported physical and mental health, including fewer days on which physical or mental problems interfered with their daily lives. They felt and expressed more gratitude to others, and—consistent with our characterization of the inclusivity of care perspective as inhibiting cycles of aggression—were less willing to seek revenge against those who had harmed them in the past. Their attitudes toward themselves were more harmonious, characterized by higher self-compassion—a trait associated in other studies with less anger, anxiety, narcissism, and negative affect, and more positive affect and optimism (for a review, see Barnard and Curry 2011). Notably, this occurred in India—a collectivist culture with rigidly defined hierarchical and in-group/outgroup boundaries, as exemplified by the caste system (Hofstede 2015). The effects were robust to controlling for socially desirable responding.
These results contribute to a broader literature demonstrating the benefits of prosocial attitudes and behaviors for emotional and physical health. For instance, a series of studies conducted by Jennifer Crocker identified two types of motivation: “egosystem” (for example, self-image) goals and “ecosystem,” that is, compassionate, other-focused goals. Endorsement of egosystem motivation was associated with impoverished relationship quality, increased depression and anxiety, and lower psychological well-being; conversely, compassionate goals were associated with the opposite effects (Crocker and Canevello 2012). In another relevant program of research, Kasser and his colleagues have consistently found that self-focused, materialistic goals are associated with psychopathology and decreased well-being; these relationships have been most recently confirmed in a cross-cultural meta-analysis of 259 independent samples (Dittmar et al. 2014, Kasser 2011).
Ecosystem motivation may further contribute to subjective utility via the socially contagious nature of goals. Crocker and Canavello (2012) found that, over time, participants’ endorsement of compassionate goals increased endorsement of compassionate goals by their relationship partners, and the opposite was true for egoistic goals. In this manner, compassionate attitudes not only benefit oneself and others directly, but also maximize the probability that compassionate behavior will be reflected toward oneself from one’s immediate social environment.
Contrary to the predictions of economic theory, it appears that investing one’s resources—whether psychological or material—into caring about others produces a wide range of benefits. Altruism may not be the optimal way of amassing material fortunes, but it provides wealth of a different kind. Therefore, rationing empathy in the way to which we are automatically predisposed by evolution may well be self-defeating rather than pragmatic in the sense of maximizing subjective utility. Surprisingly, altruism turns out to not be a sacrifice, despite being perceived as such in what is clearly a paradox of human cognition. Our intuitive blindness to the true state of things, in combination with the Western cultural bias toward valuing objective utility over subjective, may explain why it has taken psychology as a field more than one hundred years since its inception to discover that treating others well produces greater happiness than does treating ourselves well at others’ expense.
Oneness in Its Full Manifestation
We have now gathered all the ingredients required to put the Golden Rule into practice, namely, the human capacity for altruism, the ability to choose whom to include in our circle of altruistic concern, the understanding of why we don’t naturally do so with distant others, and both the capacity and reasons for shifting away from that default. In this final section, I will briefly share some thoughts on the manifestations of a universally inclusive perspective.
As the research we have reviewed suggests, oneness (that is, closeness) and altruism are directly linked. In our previously described study (Putilin and Costanzo 2015), we found that individuals who saw concern for all others as central to their religion and experienced high levels of well-being were also more likely to endorse statements such as “all life is interconnected” and “on a higher level, all of us share a common bond” (Piedmont 2001). Their universalism was also reflected in their view of God as having the same universally inclusive attitudes as themselves, as evidenced by their endorsement of “God loves, and wants the best, for every single living being” and disagreement with “God favors some countries over others.”
Endorsement of these statements suggests a mindset where the circle of moral regard has been extended to all human beings. Just as closeness or merger with in-group others promotes altruism toward them, this universally inclusive attitude may naturally predispose individuals to make extraordinary moral commitments to promoting the rights of all others—and to do so using means that respect the rights of all involved. Consider the following quotations:
Both statements were spoken by individuals who dedicated their lives to—and died in the service of—their efforts to help others: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi. Their statements echo Rousseau’s description of “some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people, after the example of the Sovereign Being from whom we all derive our existence, make the whole human race the object of their benevolence” (1761, 139).
Dr. King in particular was prone to stating that oneness of all mankind was a religious truth, and proceeded to explore the ways in which this truth could be realized in America in the 1950s. This was not a small task, given the obstacles he faced in the form of segregation along racial lines, and opposition to any alteration to the status quo that existed. However, he strongly opposed any efforts, advocated by others, to use violence as the means to achieving the goal of equality. Similarly, Mahatma Gandhi stated, “violent means will bring violent self-rule.” Gandhi chose on four separate occasions to fast unto death, if necessary, to promote equality or to prevent others from using violence on his behalf, or on behalf of the causes he championed. The extraordinary resolve displayed by these individuals in both their commitment to the fight for equality of all and their rejection of seemingly more expeditious aggression in that fight may be a natural logical consequence of seeing all as part of self.
These individuals’ oneness-based strategies stand in stark contrast with the typical, tribalism-based approaches to conflict. Even when engaged in the service of ideals such as justice, freedom, or democracy, their usual pattern is to identify the perpetrator and the victim, disempower or eliminate the perpetrator, often by force, and aid the victim. More often than not, however, Gandhi’s words of warning resonate loudly as the oppressed become the oppressors, and violent means initiate cycles of violence. This dynamic has been witnessed, to cite just a few examples, in Germany’s resentment at the indignities imposed on it after World War I, leading to the rise of fascism and World War II, in the brutality of the Russian revolution of 1917 and the succeeding repressions, and the origin of the Khmer Rouge in response to the tyranny of Lon Nol. In the criminal system, the “us vs. them” perspective produces retributive justice as a natural consequence, where the criminal “other” is dehumanized and brutalized. Equally naturally, the idea of restorative justice follows from the inclusive “us and them” view.
We have summarized evidence that suggests that we all have the capacity for oneness—that is, for seeing others not as indifferent objects or resources, but as parts of a larger Self whose needs and wishes deserve consideration. This suggests that the gulf between ourselves and the exceptional individuals mentioned earlier may not be as unbridgeable as it appears at first glance: it may be one of degree, rather than kind. Whereas the majority of mankind extends the self in a limited fashion, they chose to exclude no one.
Whether or not oneness exists as some sort of metaphysical reality (as described in Eastern religions, for example) I cannot say, and will leave, with the utmost respect, as a question of discussion for my philosopher colleagues. Concepts do not have to be objectively real to have psychological potency, however; to a significant degree, our choices of volitional behavior are motivated not by objective reality, but by our subjective and imperfect mental models of it, which include not only our perceptions and interpretations of facts but also affective and value dimensions. As a psychological reality, oneness appears to naturally engender the empathic concern and perspective-taking that increase altruism and allow no one to be perceived as merely an obstacle or an exploitable resource.
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