People are not Inherently Altruistic

People are not Inherently Altruistic

Apathy or Altruism

There is a long-standing debate in behavioral economics that revolves around whether people are inherently apathetic or altruistic. When labeling a group of people it is important to clarify what is that you are labeling them as.

An apathetic person is someone with a lack of care, interest, or concern about emotional or social life
An altruistic person is someone who is characterized by selflessness and caring for the well-being of others

Although these two are not perfect opposites, they are talked about in which they are mutually exclusive. Some social scientists believe that people are inherently altruistic but the busier and more hectic their life the more apathetic they become.

I believe that no one is inherently altruistic. In fact, I believe everyone is selfish and they there are very few acts in which are actually selfless.

Selfless Acts

We define an altruistic person as some who is selfless and would perform selfless acts for others. Some of these acts include:

Giving your lunch to someone who is hungry
Forgoing personal benefit because it creates costs for others
Volunteer work
Donating to charity

But all of these acts have something in common. They are in fact selfish acts in disguise. This is because selfless acts make you feel good, or free you from feeling guilty. Therefore, selfless acts are selfish.

Giving Up Your Lunch

Giving up your lunch to someone who is hungry seems like a selfless and altruistic act. You are sacrificing your food and hunger for someone else so they won’t be hungry.

When being generous and offering your food, you feel good that you helped someone out. You feel good even though you might be slightly more hungry than you would have been. As long as the positive feeling you get is greater than the hunger you feel, it is not a selfless act. This is because you are doing it more for your benefit than theirs.

Keeping your lunch would also make you feel guilty knowing that someone else is hungry and there was something you could have done to prevent it but didn’t. Giving up your lunch relieves you of the guilt of not doing so. Doing this act because of the relief of guilt is a selfish act.

Donating to Charity

Another big act that we conflate to being selfless is donating to charity. In the United States, we donate nearly $500 Billion dollars a year to charity. This is one of the big arguments on why we think people are inherently altruistic. That is a lot of money people are generously giving away. But that’s not the whole truth about these donating altruists.

For one, charity donations are tax-deductible. Meaning that your taxable income is reduced based on how much you donate to charity. This tax break is popular among individuals as well as businesses.

In fact, when you are at the store and they ask if you want to donate to charity so-in-so they are donating the money on your behalf so they can get a tax deduction. It’s not because the business is very altruistic but instead that the business cares about maximizing profits.

Individuals and businesses also have their own charities that they donate to. This will give them a tax break and benefit their charity, so they get tax-deductible income to spend through their own charity.

Many people also love to post their charitable donations on social media or on the news. We like the affirmation of being an altruist. So the best way to do this is by notifying everyone of your selfless acts. But in reality, many of these selfless acts are quite selfish.

Incentives

Although I make the claim that people are not inherently altruistic, I do believe that it is not a bad thing. These triggers that make us feel good when we do something for someone else are biological incentives to help others. Or in the case of the tax-deductible charity donation, it is a tax incentive that gives nearly a half-trillion dollars a year to people in need.

These are very good things. Just classifying these acts as selfless is just incorrect. This is the perfect way to structure incentives. Humans are inherently apathetic people, but give them self-interested incentives to help others and they will.