Altruism: Helping Others Why Is It Human Nature To Help Others? By Sam Johnson Why Is It Human Nature To Help Others? To discuss why people help others we must consider whether people are by nature selfless or selfish. The dominant view today in psychology is of universal egoism; that we are fundamentally selfish, and that altruism (helping motivated by the wish to benefit another person) an impossibility, which we see described in Chapter 12. In this article “Do-Gooders – Generation Y aspires to altruism”, the writer describes the Generation Y being kid’s today daydream about earning big bucks someday, while more of them fantasize about becoming Good Samaritans by helping others. The Sociobiological approach also sees helping as egoistic, but in terms of the individual maximizing their inclusive fitness (increasing the chances of their genes being passed on), rather than their personal fitness. According the report in the article we see that a 56 percent majority of kids aged 8 to 17 say that being rich is their number one fantasy — but that number has tumbled 9 percentage points from 1995. The likelihood of a person helping another was strongly correlated with their genetic relatedness to the person.
Critics of this theory, however, counter these findings with the argument that the subjects were more motivated to avoid social disapproval or feelings of guilt. On the other hand, even highly empathic people will avoid helping if the costs are high and they can escape responsibilities easily. In conclusion, I feel that the evidence seems to support the idea of universal egoism; in deciding whether to help or not, humans are fundamentally selfish, and altruism is impossibility. However, whether this egoism is driven by the motivation to maximize personal fitness or inclusive fitness is not yet clear. Works Cited: Gallop-Goodman, Gerda. ‘Do-Gooders – Generation Y aspires to altruism.’ 2001.
The Term Paper on Muddled Generation
Getting a group of youngsters to commit to an activity and to see it through to the end of a project is a real challenge these days. Anyone who runs an educational establishment for teens can attest to this. In the youth club that I run in a suburb of Dublin our aim has always been to help participants in an activity get the most out of it by sticking to the project until the objectives of the ...
Forecast. 01 Dec. 2004.
