The Altruism Question: Toward A Social-psychological Answer by C. Daniel Batson

by C. Daniel Batson

Are our efforts to help others ever driven solely by altruistic motivation, or is our ultimate goal always some form of self- benefit (egoistic motivation)? This volume reports the development of an empirically-testable theory of altruistic motivation and a series of experiments designed to test that theory. It sets the issue of egoism versus altruism in its larger historical and philosophical context, and brings diverse experiments into a single, integrated argument. Readers will find that this book provides a solid base of information from which questions surrounding the existence of altruistic motivation can be further investigated.

Genres: Psychology

Hardcover

First published July 1, 1991

Reviews

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yeaaaaaaahhhh, there's a lot about this book I really enjoyed. I mean the most important part is the research, which I think is undoubtedly fascinating. I'm not a psychologist, but I'm consistently impressed with Batson's experimental design. So often, there will be things that I'm completely sceptical you're going to be able to find evidence for with an empirical study, and he comes up with these really ingenious elegant ways of testing things, and I have to hand it to him - fair enough. As I say, I'm not a psychologist, but he seems way better in this respect to most other psychologists I've read.

I think something that's easy to forget when you're reading through it is that what the experiments test, is the difference between the way people behave when their empathy is aroused and when it's not. Coming from a philosophy angle, you might want more than that. I believe Batson has done some stuff about empathetic personalities in later work.

I also think the argument is overdetermined. I think it's a shame in academia in general – and it seems to be a case particularly in psychology – that they have to argue that all the other theories are bad before they say theirs are good. The arguments against philosophical accounts of altruism are poorly developed. Essentially, if someone is going to feel bad if they don't do something moral, then on some level that person cares, and this makes up part of their reasons for acting. There's no way of fully describing that situation, without making reference to someone's genuine concern for someone else. Yes sure, they may have their long-term self-interest in mind, but still, you cannot eliminate the reference to people caring about other people as an end in itself. I think a large part of the confusion is that psychologists - and philosophers are often guilty of this - act as if we do each action for one reason, which it shouldn't take much introspection to see is clearly false.

There's a really nice history of the philosophy of altruism and self-interest at the beginning and it includes a lot of things that many philosophers leave out.

To be honest unless you really want to get into the details of the experiments, I think you don't really need to read this book. You can get most of what's important about the research from a few papers. But it's a good book, and you can always skip over the details of the studies when you read it.

[Leonardo]

Citado en Sin fines de lucro pág.64

[Tom Steenblok · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ingewikkeld, intrigerend, optimistisch