Altruistic Behavior

Altruistic behaviors refer to behaviors of helping others regardless of a cost to ourselves (Kalat, 2013, p. 422). Human beings are always willing to help others without expectations of getting rewards. Although people take altruistic behaviors as granted, it is rare for other species of animals to help unrelated individuals with any cost. In the research which studied altruism among chimpanzees, it was found that chimpanzees just conducted their behaviors without realizing that the other chimpanzee may need help (Silk et al., 2005). However, whether human beings possess the genes of conducting altruistic behaviors is not found yet.

From the definitions of altruistic behaviors, it can be seen that altruistic behaviors possess mainly four traits. The first characteristics of altruistic behaviors is that the purpose of the behavior is helping other people. The second trait of altruism is that when those conduct helping behaviors, they have no expectations of getting benefits from what they do such as getting prizes. For example, one risks his/her life to save people from fire and he/she does not expect to get rewarded, which is the altruistic behavior. Besides, the definition of altruistic behaviors demonstrates that people conduct the behavior of helping others voluntarily. In other words, the behavior of altruism is not compulsory. People help others because they want to and they conduct behaviors of helping others spontaneously. The last trait of altruistic behaviors is that helping behaviors may lead to a loss. However, pure altruism is rare. Many researchers think that altruistic behaviors contain both of altruism and egoism (Gintis et al., 2003, p.153-172). The motivations of altruistic behaviors vary, which may contradicts with the definition. Altruistic behaviors can be classified into three types. Researchers such as Gintis suggested that the motivations of some people who helped others was through helping, they may get their expected rewards. For instance, when a philanthropist donates a large amount of money to help those in need, he may expect to gain a social reputation. According to Batson, when people see those in need, there might be two kinds of motivations of altruistic behaviors. For one hand, through helping those in need, some people feel their self-value has been achieved so that they get psychological satisfaction to some extent. Hence this kind of altruistic behavior has strong motivations of egoism. For the other hand, when some people see others in need, they may have the feelings of empathy. They would offer help in order to release anxieties of other people as well as theirs. Such altruistic behaviors in a sense belong to pure altruism. However, to some extent, the second motivations is one kind of hidden or unconscious motive because through helping others, those who conduct altruistic behaviors get psychological relief, which brings benefits to them to some extent. There is another kind of altruism – reciprocal altruism, which means people may conduct altruistic behaviors after they receive help from others. In this way, the conduction of altruistic behaviors spreads, which becomes a normal phenomenon in society.

Besides, the famous biologist Wilson put forward the idea that altruistic behaviors were decided by inherited genes which may determine how animals survived. Since features of human beings could be passed on to next generations, altruistic behaviors which are one kind of human beings’ features could also be inherited. However, until now, there are still a lot of heated debates on this topic.

As to me, altruistic behaviors are quite normal in my life. Since I was a kid, I learned a lot of events related to altruistic behaviors in school. I got to know many heroes who sacrificed their lives in order to help people in class, whose behaviors belonged to altruism. As a Chinese, we have been under the influence of Confucianism for a long time which states that it is necessary to help people in need. Chinese education also emphasizes the idea of helping others without expectations of gaining rewards. Hence, in my daily lives, there are lots of altruistic behaviors that are carried out unconsciously. For example, when I go to take bus, I would give up my seat to an elderly who is regarded as vulnerable members in Chinese society, which may sound weird to westerners. However, based on cultural differences, giving up seat to elderly or pregnant woman who suffer from physical difficulties is still quite common in China. Sometimes I may also help others at a cost of myself. For instance, I would print papers for others even though I could not take rest at noon. No one forces me to do so, but I just think it is pleasant to help others. However, nowadays, with the development of marketing economy in China, the idea of competition starts to be ingrained into people’s lives while the advocating of altruistic behaviors becomes less important. Besides, with the practice of reform and opening-up in China, society has become diverse. Except altruistic behaviors, other behaviors such as egoistic behaviors start to popularize. It is hard to judge whether altruistic behaviors would still take the leading position in guiding people’s behaviors or not in the future.

Usually, altruism is associated with a sense of morality. Some philosophers regard altruistic behaviors such as caritas and heroism as supererogatory behaviors. Superogatory behaviors are laudable and could be used as moral models of behaviors. Hence it can be seen that altruistic behaviors do not belong to moral obligations which refer to what people should do and not do. Fulfilling moral obligations makes one a ‘human being’ while carrying out altruistic behavior makes one a ‘sage’. In other words, moral obligations are moral base that one must perform while altruistic behaviors reflect the pursuit of moral standards. Theoretically and practically speaking, we should carry out moral obligations prior to altruistic behaviors. Hence altruistic behaviors should be spontaneous instead of being mandatory as moral obligations. Otherwise, it would exert great psychological pressure on people.

In the research The Development of Altruistic Behavior by Warneken, the experiment done to investigate altruistic behaviors in chimpanzees and children found that both of young children and chimpanzees engaged in helping behaviors, which was different from the research investigated by Silk. The research indicated that altruism was rooted in ontogeny, challenging the idea that altruistic behaviors were due to parental instruction or were influenced by society. Besides, interestingly, the research found that chimpanzees also carried out altruistic behaviors. Compared to human beings, altruism in chimpanzees is much more restricted (Warneken, 2013, p.437). Chimpanzees showed more tendency of being egoistic in many cases such as sharing food. However, when some chimpanzees were in urgent danger, others would sometimes lend a hand, challenging the idea that altruism only occurred in human beings.

In short, altruistic behaviors are usually associated with helping behaviors without rewards. People carry out altruistic behaviors spontaneously. However, some people conduct altruistic behavior with expectations or hidden motivations. Some philosophers consider altruistic behaviors as superogatory behaviors which are different from moral obligations. Altruistic behaviors are not mandatory while moral obligations are necessary. In addition, the gene of altruism in human beings is not found yet. However, altruistic behaviors are found to be based on biological prepositions because altruism can be observed among young children. Hence, whether human beings possess genes of altruism is worthwhile looking forward to.