The Existence of Altruism and Its Effect on Society

Introduction

It has long been assumed that the motivation for all intentional actions of humans, including actions intended to benefit others, is egoistic. People benefit others because they can benefit themselves ultimately. However, the empathy-altruism hypothesis challenges this assumption. The empathy-altruism hypothesis states that feelings of empathy for another person produce an altruistic motivation to increase that person’s welfare. The term “empathy” refers to feelings of compassion, sympathy, tenderness, and the like; altruism refers to a motivational state in which the goal is to increase another person’s welfare as an end in itself. (The definition of altruism in this hypothesis is different from the typical usage of the term, which is usually defined as helping others with considerable personal costs to the helper himself.) The empathy-altruism hypothesis was used in Batson & Shaw (1991), the study that concluded the popular and parsimonious explanation of prosocial motivation in terms of universal egoism must give way to a pluralistic explanation that includes altruism as well as egoism. The existence of altruism has been proved for a long time with tons of studies, and the understanding of human society has changed since altruism was introduced to the world.

The human society is complex, there are so many different things that build up the complete society that we are living in. Human relationships is one of the most important factors that people need to know in order to understand how the society works. Relationships are the thing that connects people with each other, it creates bonds between people. There are so many different relationships in the world, and they can be both positive and negative. Altruism is one of the factors that affect relationships or determine the trend of relationships. But the question is, how serious does altruism affect the relationships between people, in other words, to what extent does altruism affect human relationships? There are different aspects that we can look at and examine the influence of altruism to the society.

Evidence of The Existence of Altruism

Altruistic behaviors are now very common in human society, there is tons of evidence that shows the existence of altruism, and mostly altruistic behaviors are discovered in the economy. The economic system is the most common place where people can get benefit from, according to the definition of both egoism and altruism, they are both related to beneficial purposes, whether it is benefiting the subject itself or pay with personal cost for benefiting others, so in the place of benefits, altruistic behaviors can be found easily. Molly Crockett, a psychologist, has conducted an experiment with her team. In the experiment, Molly Crockett was aiming to see whether people will care more about the benefit they got or the harm to other people. There were 160 participants in the experiment, and Molly and her team did a small test of the pain threshold level of all participants, which the pain level will be used in later experiment, for the electric shot that would be used. After the test, researchers separated participants into groups, there were two participants in one group, and one person would be selected to become the decision maker in the group for the experiment. Then the participants in a group would be sitting face to face but they won’t be able to see each other, and they knew that their partners are in front of them. After the participants were settled, the decider of the group would have to apply electric shots to the partner, and the electric shots were labeled with prices between $0.15 to $15. There were different choices of giving electric shots (one of the participants in the group will be selected randomly to receive electric shots, but the decider will always get money), such as giving/receiving 7 shots and getting 10 dollars or giving/receiving 10 shots and getting 15 dollars, there was no conversation between the two partners in the group, the decider would make their own choice. Before the results are shown, Molly and her team predicted that people that participants would ignore the amount of electric shots that they were giving/receiving and focus on the size of benefit. However, the results show that participants were more likely to choose the option that has less electric shots even when they would receive less amount of money, which contradicts the prediction that Molly made. The conclusion of this study is that people are not willing to experience painful situations in order to gain benefit. Also, more importantly, people are willing to gain less benefit in order to protect other people’s from getting hurt or pain. In this study, the actions of gaining less benefit for preventing harmful situations happen to others are recognized as altruistic behaviors, participants were giving up personal benefits to provide a safe and harmless situation for their partner even when they did not know each other. Molly Crockett’s experiment has provided evidence that supports the existence of altruistic behaviors in human society.

Altruistic behaviors do not only exist between adults, in fact, children are capable of presenting altruistic behaviors as well. In Harbaugh and Krause (2000), researchers conducted an experiment among children. In the study, children were randomly assigned to groups of six and given 5 white poker chips (tokens) as an endowment before each round. And researchers set a low-MPR and a high-MPR treatment for the participants. Participants who were having low-MPR treatment would have a marginal private return (MPR) of ⅓ of a token for every token contributed; participants who were having high-MPR treatment would have a MPR of ⅔ of a token for every token contributed. When the experiment started, there were two choices that those children could make, they can either keep their tokens in their own cups, or they can contribute to the envelope. Then the pooled contents in the envelope would be doubled (quadrupled for the high-MPR treatment). In this case, if every participant contributes, they would receive less tokens than they originally had, but as a group they would receive more. Additionally, researchers had emphasized the fact that if participants do not contribute in the envelope. The results show that in most of the cases, participants were willing to contribute in the envelope in order to have a greater benefit for the whole group while they pay their cost and receive nothing. In other words, these children were giving up their personal costs knowing that they would not get any advantages from their contributions but they still contributed to benefit other group members. Harbaugh and Krause (2000) has shown that altruism is everywhere in human society, age difference does not seem to be very significant to the altruistic level of a person.

Some psychologists argue that altruistic behavior is an innate ability of humans, they believe that people are born into the world preprogrammed to be nice to others. However, Rodolfo Cortes Barragan, a psychology graduate student at Stanford has conducted an experiment with Carol Dewck, who is a professor of psychology. In the experiment, there were 34 one- and two-year-old kids participating, and they were split into two groups. In the first group, the experimenter would roll a ball back and forth with the child and chat. After a few minutes, the experimenter would pretend to accidentally knock an object off the table, and observe whether the child would help pick it up or not. In the second group, the experimenter and the child would each play with their own ball (parallel play), while the experimenter engaged in the same kind of chitchat, then the experimenter would “accidentally”knock an object off the table after a couple minutes. The result is that those children who were in the first group were three times more likely to help pick up the items as the children who were in the second group. Barragan and Dweck concluded that innate altruism is an evolutionarily beneficial adaptation, in other words, instinctively caring for others would result in reciprocal care, improving one’s own chances of survival. Additionally, this experiment suggests that altruism and egoism might coexist.

Altruism In The Internet World

With the quick advancement and promotion of the Internet, the Internet has importantly affected individuals' brain science and conduct. The examination on organizing brain research has become a hot issue in brain research, and numerous analysts have led a ton of conversations on arranging brain research and conduct and accomplished more extravagant research results. In any case, taking a gander at the exploration on arrange brain science, it is discovered that the vast majority of the examines center around the negative impacts of the Internet, for example, Internet compulsion, Internet interruption, and Internet sex entertainment. In reality, the improvement of the Internet itself is yet not developed enough, and a systematic system request and compelling system particulars have not yet been shaped. Individuals likewise neglect to locate the best harmony between the system society and reality. There will be a few issues during the time spent utilizing the system, and the system has carried a progression of pessimistic impacts to individuals. In any case, an excess of thoughtfulness regarding the contrary impacts of the Internet will constrain the examination to a specific reasoning mode and can't really equitably mirror the job of the Internet on individuals' brain research. Also it might cause illusions or misleading information, which leads to negative opinions on the use of the internet. In fact, just like in the real world, although there are some immoral and irregular behaviors in the network society, these behaviors are only part of the network behavior and cannot summarize the overall panorama of network life. In addition to negative phenomena such as deception and attacks on the Internet, there is also a warm side. In this warm side, the last thing to ask for is network altruism. Altruistic behavior is also a lot in daily life, but due to the sharing of the Internet and openness, the benefit of this behavior has been greatly expanded. Wallace points out that online altruistic behavior is more than real-life helping behavior. There are a lot of benevolences in network life at all times. There are all kinds of altruistic behaviors, ranging from actively adjusting the atmosphere of online forums to providing helpful information to combating cybercrime and saving others' lives. On the Internet, people are always more willing to help strangers than in real life, in other words, people on the Internet show a high spirit of altruism.

Concepts of Online Altruism

In recent years, domestic researchers have discussed the definition of network altruistic behavior. According to Weimin, online altruistic behavior refers to behaviors that meet social expectations and are beneficial to others, groups, or society in the online environment. It is not fundamentally different from real life altruistic behavior. Wang Xiaolu and Feng Xiaotian state that network altruistic behavior refers to conscious voluntary behavior in the network environment that will benefit others and cause material loss without obvious selfish motivation. Among them, 'material loss' refers to the network expenses, time and energy, and virtual network currency spent by helpers in helping others; 'no obvious selfish motivation' mainly refers to those who do not expect to have spiritual or external Material reward, but it does not exclude the intrinsic rewards such as the psychological satisfaction and self-realization achieved by doing good things. 

Peng Qinghong and Fan Fuyi define online altruistic behavior as voluntary behavior that occurs in the network environment and will benefit others without the actor's own selfish motivation. It can be seen that researchers' definitions of online altruistic behavior are similar. We can understand the meaning of online altruistic behavior from the following aspects: 1. Network altruistic behavior must be performed in the network environment with the help of online media. 2. The purpose of online altruistic behavior is to benefit others. 3. Online altruistic behavior is a completely self-reliant behavior, and it is not done under the influence of external pressure. 4. Online altruistic behavior does not expect any form Rewards or rewards, but it does not exclude the inherent rewards of psychological satisfaction, satisfaction, etc. after altruistic behavior. 5. Network altruistic actors may lose money, and they must pay a certain price in time, energy, and material.

Characteristics of Online Altruistic Behaviors

Researchers have described the characteristics of online altruistic behavior. Peng Qinghong and Fan Fuyi summarized the characteristics of network altruism as: 1. Immateriality, that is, network altruism is not material transmission, but information flow. 2. Extensiveness, that is, the occurrence of network altruism has a wide range of participation, basically, it is not restricted by region, nationality, time, etc. 3. Timeliness, that is, the process of online altruistic behavior from the sending of help signals to feedback of altruistic behavior can basically be synchronized. 4. Openness, that is, in addition to the identity information of netizens Outside of anonymity, the process of online altruism is publicly reflected on the Internet.

Wang Xiaolu and Feng Xiaotian point out that the characteristics of adolescents' online altruistic behavior are: 1) Adolescents' altruistic behaviors on the Internet are timely and effective. 2) Adolescents' netizens are heterogeneous. 3) Adolescents have intellectual advantages in online altruistic behaviors. 4) The altruistic behavior of young people in the network has continuous interaction. 5) The influence of factors that hinder the occurrence of altruistic behavior in the network is weakened. 6) The help of young people's altruistic behavior on the Internet has a realistic foundation. An Xiaolu used the 'programmer community' of Monopoly Forum and China Software Network Expert Forum as examples to explore the new characteristics of altruistic behavior in the virtual community. He believed that the altruistic behavior in the 'programmer community' compared with the real world Altruistic behavior and other forms of network altruistic behavior are non-incidental, time-delayed, reduced 'bystander effect' and high efficiency.

Manifestations of Online Altruistic Behaviors

Altruistic behaviors on the Internet are just as diverse as altruistic behaviors in real life, and it is difficult to categorize them clearly. Researchers have explored the manifestations of online altruism from different perspectives according to different subjects. Wang Xiaolu and Feng Xiaotian point out that the main manifestations of adolescents' online altruistic behavior are: 1) providing technical services, maintaining servers, and managing websites; 2) providing information consulting, which is the most common form of adolescent altruistic behavior on the Internet; 3) provide online resources, such as examination recruitment, entertainment, audio-visual and other resources for free; 4) provide spiritual support, such as publicizing their special experience and mental journey to help others, 5) provide game support, For example, to provide free assistance to playmates who do not know each other in the community, 6) provide social assistance, such as disease assistance, donation, blood donation, etc. 

Peng Qinghong and Fan Fuzheng believe that the main manifestations of college students' altruistic behavior are: 1. Providing information consulting without compensation, such as publishing some daily information on BBS (Bulletin board system). 2. Providing free resource sharing, such as providing software download services. 3. Conducting free Technical or method guidance to help novices learn online technology. 4. Publicity, such as assisting website staff to launch social assistance, such as calling for help for difficult conditions. 5. Providing spiritual comfort or moral support, such as comforting emotionally frustrated people. 6. Provide virtual resource assistance, such as lending property to partners when playing games. 7. Provide network management voluntary services, such as network management such as 'Bamboo'. 

Zheng Xianliang combine open questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews with college students, and summarized the manifestation of altruistic behaviors of the university student network: 1) Internet support network as: persistence, which means affirming and encouraging others online. Caring and encouraging, blessing others online, and giving positive responses after reading the post, etc. 2) Network guidance: refers to the guidance and guidance for others to help others online, such as guiding novices on how to go online and how to protect personal information online And privacy, etc. 3) Internet sharing refers to the sharing behavior of giving resources owned by others to others online, such as transferring learning materials to others for sharing, and recommending some good articles, songs or movies to others online. 4) Network reminders refer to the alert behaviors given to others on the Internet, such as exposing some illegal events on the Internet, telling netizens some network traps or online fraud, and reporting bad online information.