Altruism: Inherent or Learned?

I agree, I think if we really analyze why we help people at certain times most of us will come up with the conclusion that we felt guilt. We have been taught that helping is good and when we do it we are fulfilling what we believe to be a societal obligation. I also think this goes hand in hand with empathy because if we do consider ourselves in the same situation most people would want help but that could also be guilt because were not someone that is needing help if no one helped would we be inclined to probably not we would never even consider putting our-self in another shoes. To be honest though I like to believe in empathy because if its only guilt then its a pretty self oriented world in which everything is about ourselves and that is just depressing. Hope that makes sense and I got what you were trying to say.

I sort of came to the same conclusion as I was reading that chapter. I personally enjoy helping people, just to be nice and to help them out. Yet, after doing so, I feel good about myself as well. Perhaps altruism could be when a person first acts to help someone, then is pleased with themselves afterwards. As opposed to helping someone, because you know that you feel good about yourself afterward. In other times I also like to think that Karma exists. Which propels me to do good for others, so that perhaps good things happen to me. Which I think is fair reasoning, but by definition, it would not be altruism.

I agree with the thought that many seemingly altruistic actions have a self interested motive. In many cases that we are consciously aware of, our motive is merely to try to keep the guilt from overcoming us or to receive some favor further down the road. I think that we are relying on the availability heuristic to make this conclusion, however. Do you remember something better if you had an internal struggle or if it just comes natural? I would say the first is easier to remember. Many examples do fall under the second category such as helping old ladies with a door, or throwing a ball back to a group playing volleyball, or rescuing a child from a dog. Does one really think about helping another in these cases? I don't really think so. I think that this shows that genuine altruism is more or less automatic and that selfish altruism is voluntary.

I understand where you are coming form when you mention that we are helping others to help us relieve the sadness/guilt/anger/any other emotion that is applicable we feel. But other times I help others to receive some gratification for myself. When I see others smile I smile. We are social beings so we are all engulfed in emotions of others whether we like them or not. Some people can disassociate themselves form others feelings but most of us cannot. So in the end I do believe we help others and do things for others to feed our own selfish desires subconsciously and consciously.

I agree with many points in your argument. Its a safe bet to say that most of the time we help others because we feel empathetic. But other times it could be completely out of self-interest. For instance, at times we may feel bad because we'd "hate to be in that person's shoe's." We're not genuinely interested in the other's well-being, we just think how much that would suck to be us so we help out a little. And then there's the other point you brought up, how sometimes we only do good deeds to "feel good about ourselves." Again, not really altruistic, more self-intrinsic. In my opinion, altruism is more learned than inherited. We are born with some form of "innocence" and can bring upon the good, but influence does play a key role in shaping our values and emotions.

I agree with the points in your argument. I feel that most of the time the reason we help others is because we feel empathetic towards them. We can imagine ourselves in that position and know that we would hope someone else would help us if we were in need.

I believe that altruism is very subjective. For one because even though you you may have good intentions at heart you still feel good for helping people so subconsciously your reward system is stimulating making you more likely to do it again. Even though consciously you are being altruistic subconsciously there is a little selfishness involved.

I agree with all that has been said here, to an extent. Before reading this, I thought that there might be some good people out there that generally only want to help others. There may be a small amount of people like this, but for the most part, I think there is a little bit of selfish ambition in trying to help others. There is that feeling we get when we help someone else (reward), and there is also the feeling that is taken away when we help someone else, such as guilt (negative reinforcement). It is interesting to try and figure out what people are really trying to do when they help someone else.

i like to think of altruism as a joint effort. one isn't altruistic because they help someone else, but rather because they help someone else they're being altruistic.

as an example, let's say you and a friend go bowling. you both have fun. now, is the fact that you went bowling with a friend selfish because you're doing it to make yourself have fun? i don't think so, because presumably your friend is having fun too. therefore you both make each other happy, and in this case it would be silly to call both you and your friend selfish.