A Scientific Search for Altruism

Do We Only Care About Ourselves?

C. Daniel Batson (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

312 Seiten

2019
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-065137-4 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

For centuries, the egoism-altruism debate has echoed through Western thought. Egoism says that the motivation for everything we do, including our seemingly selfless acts of care for others, is to gain one or another self-benefit. Altruism, while not denying the force of self-interest, says that under certain circumstances we can care for others for their sakes, not our own. Over the past half-century, social psychologists have turned to laboratory experiments on humans to provide a scientific resolution of this debate about our nature. The experiments have focused on the possibility that empathic concern-other-oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone in need-produces altruistic motivation to remove that need.

With carefully constructed experimental designs, these scientists have tested the nature of the motivation produced by empathic concern, determining whether it is egoistic or altruistic and, thereby, providing an answer to a fundamental question about what makes us tick.

Framed as a detective story, this book traces the scientific search for altruism through numerous studies and attempts to examine various motivational suspects, reaching the improbable conclusion that empathy-induced altruism is indeed part of our nature. The book then considers the implications of this conclusion both for our understanding of who we are as humans (the bad news as well as the good) and for how we might create a more humane society.

C. Daniel Batson is an experimental social psychologist. He received a Ph.D. in psychology from Princeton University in 1972 and taught at the University of Kansas until his retirement in 2008. For over 40 years, his research has focused on prosocial motivation, with particular emphasis on altruistic and moral motivation, and related emotions. He has published well over a hundred research articles and chapters on these topics, as well as two previous books on altruism.

Chapter 1. An Unsettling Surprise

Part I. Starting the Search
Chapter 2. What We're Looking For
Chapter 3. How to Find It
Chapter 4. The Prime Suspect

Part II. More Suspects
Chapter 5. Avoiding Shame and Guilt
Chapter 6. Pursuing Pride
Chapter 7. One Way to Feel Better
Chapter 8. The Pleasure of Empathic Joy

Part III. Three New Possibilities
Chapter 9. A Gang
Chapter 10. Self-Other Merging
Chapter 11. Premature Release of the Prime

Part IV. Facing the Consequences
Chapter 12. How Can It Be?
Chapter 13. Some Good News
Chapter 14. Some Bad
Chapter15. After the Fall

Acknowledgements
References

Erscheinungsdatum	16.11.2018
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	236 x 155 mm
Gewicht	544 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Ethik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Psychoanalyse / Tiefenpsychologie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Sozialpsychologie
ISBN-10	0-19-065137-7 / 0190651377
ISBN-13	978-0-19-065137-4 / 9780190651374
Zustand	Neuware