## 1. Some Philosophical Background



People often behave in ways that benefit others, and they sometimes do
this knowing that it will be costly, unpleasant or dangerous. But at
least since Plato's classic discussion in the second Book of the
*Republic*, debate has raged over *why* people behave in
this way. Are their motives *really* altruistic, or is their
behavior ultimately motivated by self-interest? Famously, Hobbes gave
this answer:



> 
> 
> No man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is
> voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his
> own good; of which, if men see they shall be frustrated, there will be
> no beginning of benevolence or trust, nor consequently of mutual help.
> (1651 [1981]: Ch. 15)
> 
> 
> 



Views like Hobbes' have come to be called
 *egoism*,[1]
 and this rather depressing conception of human motivation has
apparently been favored, in one form or another, by a number of
eminent philosophical advocates, including Bentham, J.S. Mill and
 Nietzsche.[2]
 Egoism was also arguably the dominant view about human motivation in
the social sciences for much of the twentieth century (Piliavin &
Charng 1990: 28; Grant 1997). Dissenting voices, though perhaps fewer
in number, have been no less eminent. Butler, Hume, Rousseau, and Adam
Smith have all argued that, sometimes at least, human motivation is
genuinely altruistic.



Though the issue dividing egoistic and altruistic accounts of human
motivation is largely empirical, it is easy to see why philosophers
have thought that the competing answers will have important
consequences for moral theory. For example, Kant famously argued that
a person should act "not from inclination but from duty, and by
this would his conduct first acquire true moral worth" (1785
[1949]: Sec. 1, parag. 12). But egoism maintains that *all*
human motivation is ultimately self-interested, and thus people
*can't* act "from duty" in the way that Kant
urged. Thus if egoism is true, Kant's account would entail that
no conduct has "true moral worth". Additionally, if egoism
is true, it would appear to impose a strong constraint on how a moral
theory can answer the venerable question "Why should I be
moral?" since, as Hobbes clearly saw, the answer will have to
ground the motivation to be moral in the agent's
self-interest.



There are related implications for political philosophy. If the
egoists are right, then the *only* way to motivate prosocial
behavior is to give people a selfish reason for engaging in such
behavior, and this constrains the design of political institutions
intended to encourage civic-minded behavior. John Stuart Mill, who was
both a utilitarian and an egoist, advocated a variety of manipulative
social interventions to engender conformity with utilitarian moral
standards from egoistic moral
 agents.[3]



It is easy to find philosophers suggesting that altruism is required
for morality or that egoism is incompatible with morality--and
easier still to find philosophers who claim that *other*
philosophers think this. Here are a few examples culled from a
standard reference work that happened to be close at hand:



> 
> 
> Moral behavior is, at the most general level, altruistic behavior,
> motivated by the desire to promote not only our own welfare but the
> welfare of others. (Rachels 2000: 81)
> 
> 
> 
> [O]ne central assumption motivating ethical theory in the Analytic
> tradition is that the function of ethics is to combat the inherent
> egoism or selfishness of individuals. Indeed, many thinkers define the
> basic goal of morality as "selflessness" or
> "altruism". (W. Schroeder 2000: 396)
> 
> 
> 
> Philosophers since Socrates worried that humans might be capable of
> acting only to promote their own self-interest. But if that is all we
> can do, then it seems morality is impossible. (LaFollette 2000a: 5)
>  [4]
> 
> 
> 



While the egoism/altruism debate has historically been of great
philosophical interest, the issue centrally concerns psychological
questions about the nature of human motivation, so it's no
surprise that psychologists have done a great deal of empirical
research aimed at determining which view is correct. The psychological
literature will be center-stage in
 section 5,
 the longest section in this entry, and in
 section 6.
 But before considering the empirical literature, it is important to be clear 
on what the debate is about.


## 2. Defining "Egoism" and "Altruism"--The Standard Account



Providing definitions for "egoism" and
"altruism" is a contentious matter, since these terms have
been understood in radically different ways both in philosophy and in
the biological and social sciences. In this entry the focus will be on
the most widespread interpretation of
"egoism" and "altruism", understood as
descriptive claims about human psychology, within philosophy.
We'll call it "the standard account", versions of
which have been offered by numerous authors including Broad (1950),
Feinberg (1965 [1999]), Sober and Wilson (1998: Chs. 6 & 7),
Rachels (2003: Ch. 6), Joyce (2006: Ch. 1), Kitcher (2010, 2011: Ch.
1), May (2011a), and many others. Not surprisingly, there are minor
differences among the accounts provided by these authors, and those
differences occasionally provoke disagreement in the literature. But
all of them bear a strong family resemblance to the one we're
about to
 sketch.[5]




At the end of this section, a different account of altruism proposed
in philosophy is briefly discussed. Biological accounts of altruism
will be considered in
 section 3,
 and accounts proposed by social scientists will be discussed in
 section 4.
 But our present focus is the standard philosophical account. 



As already intimated, while advocates of altruism and of
egoism agree that people often help others, they disagree about
*why* they do this. On the standard account, defenders of
altruism insist that, sometimes at least, people are motivated by an
ultimate desire for the well-being of another person, while defenders
of egoism maintain that all ultimate desires are self-interested. This
formulation invites questions about (1) what it is for a behavior to
be *motivated by an ultimate desire*, and (2) the distinction
between *desires that are self-interested* and *desires for
the well-being of others*.



The first question, regarding ultimate desires, can be usefully
explicated with the help of a familiar account of *practical
 reasoning*.[6]
 On this account, practical reasoning is a causal process via which a
desire and a belief give rise to or sustain another desire. For
example, a desire to drink an espresso and a belief that the best
place to get an espresso is at the espresso bar on Main Street may
cause a desire to go to the espresso bar on Main Street. This desire
can then join forces with another belief to generate a third desire,
and so on. Sometimes this process will lead to a desire to perform a
relatively simple or "basic" action, and that desire, in
turn, will cause the agent to perform the basic action without the
intervention of any further desires. Desires produced or sustained by
this process of practical reasoning are *instrumental*
desires--the agent has them because she thinks that satisfying
them will lead to something else that she desires. But not
*all* desires can be instrumental desires. If we are to avoid
circularity or an infinite regress there must be some desires that are
*not* produced because the agent thinks that satisfying them
will facilitate satisfying some other desire. These desires that are
not produced or sustained by practical reasoning are the agent's
*ultimate* desires, and the objects of ultimate
desires--the states of affairs desired--are often said to be
desired "for their own sake". A behavior is
*motivated* by a specific ultimate desire when that desire is
part of the practical reasoning process that leads to the
behavior.



Although the second question, about the distinction between
self-interested desires and desires for the well-being of others,
would require an extended discussion in any comprehensive treatment of
the debate between egoists and altruists, some rough and ready
examples of the distinction will suffice
 here.[7]
 The desires that another person's life be saved, that another
person's suffering be alleviated, or that another person be
happy are paradigm cases of desires for the well-being of others,
while desires to experience pleasure, get rich, and become famous are
typical examples of self-interested desires. The self-interested
desires to experience pleasure and to avoid pain have played an
especially prominent role in the debate, since one version of egoism,
often called *hedonism*, maintains that these are our
*only* ultimate desires. Stich et al. (2010) maintain that some
desires, like the desire that I *myself* be the one to
alleviate my friend's suffering, are hard to classify, and
conclude that both egoism and altruism are best viewed as somewhat
 vague.[8]




Whether or not this is correct, it is clear that there are
*many* desires that are *neither* self-interested nor
desires for the well-being of others. One of the earliest examples was
provided by Bishop Joseph Butler (1726 [1887]) who noted that revenge
often engenders malevolent desires, like the desire that another
person be harmed, which are obviously not desires for the well-being
of the that person, and are not self-interested
 either.[9]
 Other examples include the desire that great works of art be
preserved and the desire that space exploration be pursued. More
interesting for moral theory are the desire to do one's moral
duty, and the desire to obey God's commandments. If people have
*ultimate* desires like these, then egoism is false. But, of
course, the existence of ultimate desires like these would not show
that altruism is true. The take-away from such cases is that on the
standard account, egoism and altruism might *both* be
mistaken.



Though interpretations of "altruism" in the standard
account family predominate in the philosophical literature, some
philosophers use the term in a very different way. A paper by Thomas
Schramme (2017) provides a clear example.



> 
> 
> [A]ltruism need not be reduced to its opposition to egoism. In this
> chapter, altruism is discussed as a psychological basis for moral
> conduct more generally, not just in terms of motivations to benefit
> others. Here *altruism* stands for the capacity to take the
> moral point of view and be disposed to act accordingly.... Seen
> in this way, altruism is a short word for the psychological phenomenon
> of the internalized pull of morality... (2017: 203-204).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Altruism is then basically identical with taking the moral point of
> view, i.e., an individual appreciation of the normative force of
> morality. (2017: 209).
>  [10]
> 
> 
> 



Schramme is, of course, aware that many authors reject "such a
close connection of general moral motivation and altruistic
motivation" but he maintains that this account of altruism
"can certainly be found in the philosophical debate"
(2017: 209). Much the same claim is made by Badhwar (1993: 90):



In the moral philosophy of the last two centuries, altruism of one
kind or another has typically been regarded as identical with moral
concern.



Schramme is surely right that 



> 
> 
> [t]he fact that we can understand altruism both as referring to moral
> behavior quite generally and as restricted to a more specific set of
> helping behaviors may lead to confusion. (2017: 204) 
> 
> 
> 



Though some philosophers may believe there is a substantive dispute
about which account of altruism is correct, others think that
the issue is purely terminological. As noted earlier, the primary
concern in this entry is with what this entry dubs the "standard
account" of altruism. But in the next two sections a number of
accounts are considered that differ both from the standard account and
from the account discussed by Schramme and Badhwar. 


## 3. Altruism and Evolution



Readers familiar with some of the popular literature on the evolution
of morality that has appeared in the last few decades might suspect
that recent work in evolutionary biology has resolved the debate
between egoists and altruists. For some readers--and some
writers--seem to interpret evolutionary theory as showing that
altruism is biologically impossible. If altruistic organisms were
somehow to emerge, this literature sometimes suggests, they would lose
the competition for survival and reproduction to their selfish
conspecifics, and they would quickly become extinct. On this view, any
appearance of altruism is simply an illusion. In the memorable words
of biologist Michael Ghiselin (1974: 247) "Scratch an
'altruist' and watch a 'hypocrite'
bleed".



But as Sober and Wilson (1998) have argued with great clarity, there
is no *simple* connection between evolutionary theory and the
philosophical debate between egoism and altruism. This is because the
concept of altruism that is important in evolutionary theory is quite
different from the standard concept of altruism invoked in the
philosophical debate. For biologists, an organism behaves
altruistically if and only if the behavior in question reduces its own
fitness while increasing the fitness of one or more other organisms.
Roughly speaking, an organism's fitness is a measure of how many
descendants it will
 have.[11]
 As Sober and Wilson note, on this evolutionary account of altruism,
an organism can be altruistic even if it does not have a mind capable
of having beliefs and desires. Thus there can be no easy inference
from biological altruism to psychological altruism. Nor does the
inference go in the opposite direction. To make the point, Sober and
Wilson (Ch. 10) note that natural selection might well equip humans or
other psychologically sophisticated organisms with ultimate desires to
foster the welfare of their offspring under certain circumstances.
Organisms with these ultimate desires would be *psychological*
altruists, though the behavior that the desires gave rise to would
typically *not* be *evolutionarily* altruistic, since by
helping their offspring organisms typically are increasing their own
fitness. So, contrary to the presumption that evolutionary biology has
resolved the debate between egoists and altruists in favor of egoism,
it appears that evolutionary theory little to offer that will support
that
 conclusion.[12]


## 4. Altruism in the Social Sciences



In recent decades there has been an enormous amount of discussion of
altruism in psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology and
primatology. Much of the work in psychology, including all of the work
recounted in
 section 5,
 has adopted the "standard account" of altruism. But some
psychologists, and many researchers in other disciplines, have
something very different in mind. In a useful review of recent
discussions of altruism, Clavien and Chapuisat lament the fact
that 



> 
> 
> [t]he notion of altruism has become so plastic that it is often hard
> to understand what is really meant by the authors using the term, and
> even harder to evaluate the degree to which results from one research
> field--e.g., experimental economics--may facilitate the
> resolution of debates in another research field--e.g.,
> evolutionary biology or philosophy. (2013: 134) 
> 
> 
> 



One of the notions that Clavien and Chapuisat find playing a role in
evolutionary anthropology, evolutionary game theory and experimental
economics is what they call "preference altruism".
"An action is altruistic", in this sense, "if it
results from preferences for improving others' interests and
welfare at some cost to oneself" (2013: 131). Though the
agent's psychology is relevant, on this account of altruism,
there is no mention of the agent's *ultimate* desires.
Thus an action can be preference altruistic even if the agent's
preference for improving someone else's welfare is an
instrumental preference engendered by the belief that improving the
recipient's welfare will contribute to the agent's own
pleasure or treasure. 



A second, quite different, concept of altruism invoked in these
disciplines is what Clavien and Chapuisat call "behavioral
altruism". On this interpretation of altruism, an agent's
psychology plays no role in determining whether her action is
altruistic. 



> 
> 
> A behavior is altruistic if it brings any kind of benefit to other
> individuals at some cost for the agent, and if there is no foreseeable
> way for the agent to reap compensatory benefits from her behavior.
> (2013: 131)
> 
> 
> 



Ramsey (2016) makes a plausible case that some eminent primatologists
and psychologists (including de Waal (2008) and Warneken and Tomasello
(2008)) invoke an even less demanding account of altruism, one that
requires that the recipient benefit but drops the requirement that
altruistic behavior must involve some cost to the agent. Ramsey labels
this notion "helping altruism".



Combining accounts from philosophy, biology and the social sciences,
Piccinini and Schulz (2019) offer a multidimensional taxonomy for
different accounts of altruism, and argue that the distinctions they
draw are essential for assessing the moral status of different kinds
of altruism. 



In reviewing the many different ways in which the term
"altruism" has been used in the empirical and
philosophical literature, it is hard to resist allusions to the
biblical Tower of Babel. But for the remainder of this entry, these
interpretations of "altruism" will be left behind. From
here on, the focus will be on altruism as it is understood in the
standard account.


## 5. The Egoism vs. Altruism Debate in Psychology



The psychological literature relevant to the egoism *vs.*
altruism debate is
 vast;[13]
 in the interests of a tolerable brevity, the entry will focus on the
work of Daniel Batson and his associates, who have done some of the
most influential and philosophically sophisticated work in this
area.



Batson, along with many other researchers, begins by borrowing an idea
that has deep roots in philosophical discussions of altruism. Though
the details and the terminology differ significantly from author to
author, the core idea is that altruism is often the product of an
*emotional response* to the distress of another person. Aquinas
(1270 [1917]: II-II, 30, 3), for example, maintains that 



> 
> 
> mercy is the heartfelt sympathy for another's distress,
> impelling us to succour him if we can. 
> 
> 
> 



And Adam Smith (1759 [1853]: I, I, 1. 1) tells us that 



> 
> 
> pity or compassion [is] the emotion we feel for the misery of others,
> when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively
> manner 
> 
> 
> 



and these emotions 



> 
> 
> interest [man] in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness
> necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the
> pleasure of seeing it.
> 
> 
> 



Batson (1991: 58) labels this response "empathy" which he
characterizes as "an other-oriented emotional reaction to seeing
someone suffer", and calls the traditional idea that empathy
leads to altruism the *empathy-altruism hypothesis.* On
Batson's account (1991: 86), empathy 



> 
> 
> includes feeling sympathetic, compassionate, warm, softhearted,
> tender, and the like, and according to the empathy-altruism
> hypothesis, it evokes altruistic motivation 
> 
> 
> 



though that motivation does not always lead to behavior. Batson (1991:
117) contrasts empathy with a cluster of affective responses he calls
"personal distress" which is "made up of more
self-oriented feelings such as upset, alarm, anxiety, and
 distress".[14]



If the philosophical tradition that suggests the empathy-altruism
hypothesis is on the right track, and Batson believes it is, one would
predict that when people feel empathy they will desire to help those
who evoke the emotion, and thus be more inclined to engage in helping
behavior than people who do not feel empathy. This does not mean that
people will *always* engage in helping behavior when they feel
empathy, since people may often have conflicting desires, and not all
conflicts are resolved in favor of empathy's urgings. Nor does
it mean that when people feel little or no empathy they will not
engage in helping behavior, since the desire to help can also be
produced by a variety of processes in which empathy plays no role. But
we should expect that typically people feeling empathy will be more
likely to help than people who aren't feeling empathy, and the
stronger their feelings of empathy the more likely it is that they
will engage in helping behavior.



In order to put this claim to empirical test, it is important to have
ways of inducing empathy in the laboratory, and there is a substantial
body of literature suggesting how this can be done. For example,
Stotland (1969) showed that subjects who were instructed to
*imagine* how a specified person (often called "the
target") *felt* when undergoing what subjects believed to
be a painful medical procedure reported stronger feelings of empathy
and showed greater physiological arousal than subjects who were
instructed to watch the target person's
 movements.[15]
 Relatedly, Krebs (1975) demonstrated that subjects 
who observe someone *similar to themselves* 
undergo painful experiences show more physiological
arousal, report identifying with the target more strongly, and report
feeling worse while waiting for the painful stimulus to begin than do
subjects who observe the same painful experiences administered to
someone who is not similar to themselves. Krebs also showed that
subjects are more willing to help at some personal cost when the
sufferer is similar to themselves. Batson (1991: 82-87) interprets
these findings as indicating that people are more inclined to feel
empathy for those they believe to be similar to themselves, and thus
that empathy can often be induced by providing a person with evidence
that she and a target person are similar.



To make the case that empathy leads to helping behavior, Batson relies
in part on work by others, including the just-cited Krebs (1975) study
and a study by Dovidio et al. (1990). In that latter study,
Stotland's technique for manipulating empathy by instructing
subjects to take the perspective of the person in distress was used to
induce empathy for a young woman. Subjects focused on one of two quite
different problems that the young woman faced. When given an
opportunity to help the young woman, subjects in whom empathy had been
evoked were more likely to help than subjects in a low empathy
condition, and the increase in helping was specific to the problem
that had evoked the empathy.



Many of Batson's own experiments, some of which are
described below, also support the contention that both spontaneously
evoked empathy and empathy engendering experimental manipulations
increase the likelihood of helping behavior. Another important source
of support for the link between empathy and helping behavior is a
meta-analysis of a large body of experimental literature by Eisenberg
and Miller (1987) which found positive correlations between empathy
and prosocial behavior in studies using a variety of techniques to
assess empathy. On the basis of these and other findings, Batson
(1991: 95) argues that 



> 
> 
> there is indeed an empathy-helping relationship; feeling empathy for a
> person in need increases the likelihood of helping to relieve that
> need.
> 
> 
> 



It might be thought that establishing a causal link between empathy
and helping behavior would be bad news for egoism. But, as Batson
makes clear, the fact that empathy leads to helping behavior does not
resolve the dispute between egoism and altruism, since it does not
address the nature of the *motivation* for the helping behavior
that empathy evokes. One possibility is that empathy does indeed cause
a genuinely altruistic desire to help--an ultimate desire for the
well-being of the sufferer. But there are also a variety of egoistic
routes by which empathy might lead to helping behavior. Perhaps the
most obvious of these is that empathy might simply be (or cause) an
unpleasant experience, and that people are motivated to help because
they believe this is the best way to *stop* the unpleasant
experience that is caused by someone else's distress.



Quite a different family of egoistic possibilities focus on the
rewards to be expected for helping and/or the punishments to be
expected for withholding assistance. If people believe that others
will reward or sanction them for helping or failing to help in certain
circumstances, and that the feeling of empathy marks those cases in
which social sanctions or rewards are most likely, then we would
expect people to be more helpful when they feel empathy, even if their
ultimate motivation is purely egoistic. A variation on this theme
focuses on rewards or punishments that are self-administered. If
people believe that helping may make them feel good, or that failing
to help may make them feel bad, and that these feelings will be most
likely to occur in cases where they feel empathy, then once again we
would expect people who empathize to be more helpful, though their
motives may be not at all altruistic.



During the last four decades, Batson and his collaborators have
systematically explored these egoistic hypotheses and many others.
Their strategy is to design experiments in which the altruistic
explanation of the link between empathy and helping can be compared to
one or another specific egoistic explanation. Reviewing all of these
experiments would require a far longer
 entry.[16]
 Instead the focus will be on two clusters of experiments that
illustrate the potential philosophical rewards of designing and
interpreting experiments in this area, as well as some difficulties
with the project.


### 5.1 The Social Punishment Hypothesis



One of the more popular egoist alternatives to the empathy-altruism
hypothesis is the idea that people engage in helping behavior because
they fear that other people will punish them if they do not. If I
don't help, the actor is supposed to worry, people will be angry
or they will think badly of me, and this may have negative effects on
how they treat me in the future. As it stands, this egoist hypothesis
can't explain the fact that empathy increases the likelihood of
helping, but a more sophisticated version is easy to construct by
adding the assumption that people think social sanctions for not
helping are more likely when the target engenders empathy.



To test this hypothesis--which Batson calls the *socially
administered empathy-specific punishment hypothesis*--against
the empathy-altruism hypothesis, Batson and his associates (Fultz et
al. 1986) designed an experiment in which they manipulated both the
level of empathy that subjects felt for the target and the likelihood
that anyone would know whether or not the subject had opted to help a
person in need. Others can form a negative evaluation of your decision
not to help only if they *know* the choice you are facing and
the decision you have made; if your decision is secret, you need have
no fear of social sanctions. Thus the socially administered
empathy-specific punishment hypothesis predicts that subjects who
exhibit high empathy on a given occasion will be more likely to help
when they believe others will know if they fail to do so. On the
empathy-altruism hypothesis, by contrast, high empathy subjects are
motivated by an ultimate desire to help, and thus their helping levels
should be high whether or not others would know if they decided not to
help. In the low empathy condition, both hypotheses predict that
levels of helping will be low. These predictions are summarized in
Tables 1 and 2. 





|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| *Potential for Negative
Social Evaluation* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *High* | Low | High |
| *Low* | Low | Low |

 |  |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
|  |



Table 1. Predictions About the Amount of
Helping (Low or High) on the Socially Administered Empathy-Specific
Punishment Hypothesis.






|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| *Potential for Negative
Social Evaluation* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *High* | Low | High |
| *Low* | Low | High |

 |  |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
|  |



Table 2. Predictions About the Amount of
Helping (Low or High) on the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis.




Subjects in the experiment were told that they were participating in
an impression formation study, and that they had been randomly
assigned to the role of "listener" in which they would
read confidential notes from another student participant, the
"communicator". They were given two notes from Janet
Arnold, an out-of-state freshman who reveals that she is very lonely
and hoping to find a friend. After completing a form on which subjects
indicated their impressions of Janet and their emotional responses to
her note, they were presented with an unexpected opportunity to
befriend Janet by volunteering to take part in a study of long-term
relationships involving an initial meeting with Janet and periodic
phone interviews about the development of their friendship.
Participants who were willing to help were asked how much time they
were willing to spend with Janet during the next month.



To manipulate empathy, Batson and his associates used the Stotland
technique. Subjects assigned to the low-empathy condition were
instructed to 



> 
> 
> Read the information in the communicator's notes carefully,
> trying to be as objective as possible. Try to focus on the techniques
> used to get the communicator's message across. 
> 
> 
> 



Subjects assigned to the high-empathy condition were instructed to




> 
> 
> Read the information in the communicator's notes carefully,
> trying to take the perspective of the individual writing the notes.
> Try to imagine how this individual feels about what he or she writes.
> (1991: 132)
> 
> 
> 



Four steps were taken to manipulate the perceived potential for
negative social evaluation. In the *low-potential* condition
(1991: 132):


1. Subjects were told that they would be the only person ever to read
the communicator's notes, and the notes were delivered in a
sealed envelope.
2. Subjects were assured that the questionnaires reporting their
reactions to Janet's note would be anonymous.
3. Subjects' responses to the invitation to participate in the
long-term relationship study were returned to the professor in a
sealed envelope, so no one would know if they did not want to help
Janet. (Since they believed the professor had not read Janet's
note, they could be expected to surmise that he would not know that
Janet needed a friend.)
4. In the letter inviting them to participate in the relationship
study, subjects were told that Janet would be contacted "only if
you want a meeting; if you do not, then we will not contact the
communicator and he or she will not know that you were ever asked
about actually meeting".



In the *high-potential* condition (1991: 133):


1. Subjects were told that the experimenter would read the
communicator's notes. Also, the experimenter would collect the
questionnaire when the subject completed it and would compare the
content of the notes with the impressions the subject formed.
2. No envelope was provided for their response to the invitation to
participate in the long-term relationship study, so subjects could
infer that the experimenter would know about Janet's need for a
friend, about their emotional reaction to Janet, and would also know
whether or not they had agreed to help Janet.
3. Subjects were told that Janet would know if they decided not to
help.



As Batson notes, procedures in the high-potential condition 



> 
> 
> were designed to highlight the possibility of negative social
> evaluation if the participant decided not to volunteer to spend time
> with Janet.
> 
> 
> 





|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| *Potential for Negative
Social Evaluation* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *High* | 0.67 | 1.71 |
| *Low* | 1.29 | 2.44 |

 |  |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
|  |



Table 3. Amount of Help Offered Janet,
given as the mean amount of time participants offered to spend with
Janet (Fultz et al. 1986, Study 2)




The results, given in Table 3, indicate that the socially administered
empathy-specific punishment hypothesis did not fare well. On the basis
of this experiment and a similar experiment in which empathy for Janet
was not manipulated but was measured by self-report, Batson concludes
that the socially administered empathy-specific punishment hypothesis
is not consistent with the experimental facts.



> 
> 
> Contrary to what the social-evaluation version of the empathy-specific
> punishment hypothesis predicted, eliminating anticipated negative
> social evaluation in these two studies did not eliminate the
> empathy-helping relationship. Rather than high empathy leading to more
> help only under high social evaluation, it led to more helping under
> both low and high social evaluation. This pattern of results is not
> consistent with what would be expected if empathically aroused
> individuals are egoistically motivated to avoid looking bad in the
> eyes of others; it is quite consistent with what would be expected if
> empathy evokes altruistic motivation to reduce the victim's need
> (Batson 1991: 134).
> 
> 
> 



Though two experiments hardly make a conclusive case, these studies
make the socially administered empathy-specific punishment hypothesis
look significantly less plausible than the empathy-altruism
hypothesis. So one popular egoist hypothesis has been dealt a serious
blow: high empathy subjects were more likely to help *whether or
not* they could expect their behavior to be socially
scrutinized. At least in some circumstances, empathy appears to
facilitate helping independently of the threat of social sanction.


### 5.2 The Aversive-Arousal Reduction Hypothesis



Another popular egoistic strategy for explaining the link between
empathy and helping behavior is the *aversive-arousal reduction
hypothesis*, which maintains that witnessing someone in need, and
the empathy it evokes, is an unpleasant or aversive experience, and
that helping is motivated by the desire to diminish that aversive
 experience.[17]
 If this is right, Batson maintains, people in a high empathy
condition will sometimes have two quite different ways of reducing the
aversive experience--they can help the person in need or they can
simply *leave*. Which strategy a person adopts will depend, in
part, on how difficult or costly it is to depart the scene. If escape
is easy, people will be more likely to take that option, while if
leaving is more difficult people will be more likely to help, since
that is a less costly way of ending the aversive experience. If, on
the other hand, the empathy-altruism hypothesis is correct and empathy
leads to genuinely altruistic motivation, one would expect people in a
high empathy condition to help whether escape is easy or hard, since
only helping will satisfy an altruistic desire.



Altruism and egoism both allow that even in the absence of empathy, an
emotionally disturbing need situation will produce feelings of
personal distress, thus they would *both* predict that people
in a low empathy condition will be more inclined to help when escape
is difficult, and less inclined when escape is easy. Batson summarizes
these predictions in Tables 4 and 5 (Batson 1991: 111).





|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| *Escape* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *Easy* | Low | Low |
| *Difficult* | High | High/Very High |

 |  |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
|  |



Table 4. Predictions from the
Aversive-Arousal Reduction Hypothesis for the Rate of Helping in an
Escape X Empathy Design






|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| *Escape* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *Easy* | Low | High |
| *Difficult* | High | High |

 |  |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
|  |



Table 5. Predictions from the
Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis for the Rate of Helping in an Escape X
Empathy Design




To test these predictions, Batson and his associates conducted a total
of six experiments. In one of these (experiment 1 in Batson, Duncan,
et al. 1981), student subjects were required to watch, via what they
believed to be closed circuit TV transmission--actually a
scripted video recording--as another student subject,
Elaine--actually a confederate--attempted to perform a task
while receiving electric shocks at random intervals. Observer subjects
were told that their task would be to form and report an impression of
how Elaine performs under aversive conditions. On the tape, Elaine is
clearly finding the shocks very uncomfortable, and after her second
trial at doing the task, she explains to Martha, the assistant
administering the shocks, that she is unusually sensitive to mild
electric shocks because of a childhood trauma. Martha then suggests
that perhaps the observer subject might be willing to help Elaine by
taking her place, and the experimenter asks whether the subject is
willing to do that. To manipulate ease of escape, some subjects were
told that if they decide not to take Elaine's place, they will
be required to watch eight additional trials, while other subjects
were told that if they decide not to take Elaine's place they
are free to go. To manipulate the level of empathy that subjects feel
for Elaine, subjects were given a copy of a personal values and
interests questionnaire, allegedly filled out by Elaine, in order to
help them form an impression of her performance. In the high empathy
condition, Elaine's values and interests were very similar to
the subject's (which had been determined in a screening session
several weeks before), while in the low empathy condition, they were
very different.



The results, given in Table 6, clearly exhibit the pattern predicted
by the empathy-altruism hypothesis, not the pattern predicted by the
aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis.





|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| *Escape* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *Easy* | 0.18 | 0.91 |
| *Difficult* | 0.64 | 0.82 |

 |  |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
|  |



Table 6. Proportion of Subjects Agreeing
to Take Shocks for Elaine (Batson, Duncan, et al. 1981,
Experiment 1)




In additional experiments, Batson and his associates used four
different techniques to create the low- and high-empathy conditions,
two techniques for manipulating ease of escape, and two different need
situations (Batson, Duncan, et al. 1981; Toi and Batson 1982; Batson,
O'Quin et al. 1983). The results in all of these experiments
exhibited the same pattern. Intriguingly, in another experiment,
Batson and colleagues attempted to break the pattern by telling the
subjects that the shock level they would have to endure was the
highest of four options, "clearly painful but not
harmful". They reasoned that, under these circumstances, even if
high empathy subjects had an ultimate desire to help, this desire
might well be overridden by the desire to avoid a series of very
painful shocks. As expected, the pattern of results in this experiment
fit the pattern in
 Table 4.



These are impressive findings. Over and over again, in well designed
and carefully conducted experiments, Batson and his associates have
produced results which are clearly compatible with the predictions of
the empathy-altruism hypothesis, as set out in
 Table 5,
 and clearly incompatible with the predictions of the aversive-arousal
reduction hypothesis, as set out in
 Table 4.
 Even the "clearly painful shock" experiment, which
produced results in the pattern of Table 4, are comfortably compatible
with the empathy-altruism hypothesis; as noted earlier, the
empathy-altruism hypothesis allows that high empathy subjects may have
desires that are stronger than their ultimate desire to help the
target, and the desire to avoid a painful electric shock is a very
plausible candidate.



There is, however, a problem to be overcome before one concludes that
the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis cannot explain the findings
that Batson and his associates have reported. In arguing that
 Table 4
 reflects the predictions made by the aversive-arousal reduction
hypothesis, Batson must assume that escape will alleviate the aversive
affect in both low & high empathy situations, and that subjects
*believe* this (although the belief may not be readily
available to introspection). One might call this the *out of
sight, out of mind* assumption. Elaborating on an idea suggested
by Hoffman (1991) and Hornstein (1991), an advocate of egoism might
propose that although subjects do believe this when they have little
empathy for the target, *they do not believe it when they have high
empathy for the target*. Perhaps high empathy subjects believe
that if they escape they will continue to be troubled by the thought
or memory of the distressed target and thus that physical escape will
not lead to psychological escape. Indeed, in cases where empathy is
strong and is evoked by attachment, this is just what common sense
would lead us to expect. Do you really believe that if your mother was
in grave distress and you left without helping her you would not
continue to be troubled by the knowledge that she was still in
distress? We're guessing that you don't. But if the
high-empathy subjects in Batson's experiments believe that they
will continue to be plagued by distressing thoughts about the target
even after they depart, then the egoistic aversive-arousal reduction
hypothesis predicts that these subjects will be inclined to help in
both the easy physical escape and the difficult physical escape
conditions, since helping is the only strategy they believe will be
effective for reducing the aversive arousal. So neither the results
reported in
 Table 6
 nor the results of any of Batson's other experiments would give
us a reason to prefer the empathy-altruism hypothesis over the
aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, because both hypotheses make
the same prediction.



Is it the case that high empathy subjects in experiments like
Batson's believe that unless they help they will continue to
think about the target and thus continue to feel distress, and that
this belief leads to helping because it generates an egoistic
instrumental desire to help? This is, of course, an empirical
question, and a cleverly designed experiment by Stocks and his
associates (Stocks et al. 2009) suggests that, in situations like
those used in Batson's experiments, a belief that they will
continue to think about the target does *not* play a
significant role in causing the helping behavior in high empathy
subjects.



Batson's work on the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis,
buttressed by the Stocks et al. finding, is a major advance in the
egoism vs. altruism debate. The aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis
has been one of the most popular egoistic strategies for explaining
helping behavior. But the experimental findings strongly suggest that
in situations like those that Batson and his associates have studied,
the empathy-altruism hypothesis offers a much better explanation of
the subjects' behavior than the aversive-arousal reduction
hypothesis.



As noted earlier, Batson and his colleagues have also designed
experiments pitting the empathy-altruism hypothesis against a
substantial list of other egoistic explanations for the link between
empathy and helping behavior. In each case, the evidence appears to
challenge the egoistic alternative, though as is almost always the
case in empirical work of this sort, some researchers remain
 unconvinced.[18]
 There is however, an influential critique of Batson's work that
challenges *all* of his experimental work on the
empathy-altruism hypothesis. It argues that empathy and its precursors
alter people's self-concept in a way that undermines the claim
that their helping behavior is genuinely altruistic.


### 5.3 The Challenge Posed by "Self-Other Merging"



During the last three decades, psychologists have devoted a great deal
of effort to exploring how people think of the self. One major theme
in this literature is that people's conception of themselves
varies across cultures, and that in many non-western cultures
one's social roles and one's relation to other people play
a much more central role in people's self-concepts than they do
in the individualistic West (Markus & Kitayama 1991; Baumeister
1998). One very simple way of studying these differences is to ask
people to respond to the question "Who am I?" fifteen
times. Non-westerners will typically mention social groups, group
roles and relationships: "I am Maasai", "I am a
person who brings fruit to the temple", "I am my
father's youngest son". Westerners, by contrast, will
typically mention personal attributes, aspirations and achievements:
"I am intelligent", "I am a pre-med student",
"I am the fastest swimmer in my school" (Ma &
Schoeneman 1997). Another theme is that people's conception of
themselves is situationally malleable--it changes depending on
who we are with, where we are and what we are doing (Kihlstrom &
Cantor 1984; Markus & Wurf 1987). 



While this sort of situational malleability may not be surprising, a
number of psychologists have suggested a much more radical situational
malleability. Under certain circumstances, notably when we have a
close personal relationship with another person, when we are trying to
take the perspective of another person, or when we feel empathy for
another person, the conceptual boundary between the self and the other
person disappears; the self and the other merge. According to Arthur
Aron and colleagues,



> 
> 
> Much of our cognition about the other in a close relationship is
> cognition in which the other is treated as self or confused with
> self--the underlying reason being a self-other merging. (Aron et
> al. 1980: 242)
> 
> 
> 



If this is true, then it poses a fundamental challenge to the claim
that helping behavior directed at someone for whom we feel empathy is
really altruistic. For, as Melvin Lerner memorably observed:



> 
> 
> It seems that we respond sympathetically, with compassion and a sense
> of concern, when we feel a sense of identity with the victim. In
> effect, we are reacting to the thought of ourselves in that situation.
> And, of course, we are filled with the "milk of human
> kindness" for our own sweet, innocent selves. (Lerner 1980:
> 77)
> 
> 
> 



A bit less colorfully, Batson notes that for "the contrast
between altruism and egoism to be meaningful", an individual
providing help "must perceive self and other to be distinct
individuals" (2011: 145-146). And 



> 
> 
> if the distinction between self and other vanishes then so does the
> distinction between altruism and egoism, at least as these terms are
> used in the empathy-altruism hypothesis. (2011: 148)
> 
> 
> 



Psychologists who have debated the rather astonishing claim that
people who provide help to others often lose track of the distinction
between themselves and the person being helped have proposed several
different ways of determining whether this sort of "self-other
merging" has occurred. Before considering these, however, we
should remind ourselves of an important philosophical distinction that
will be crucial in assessing tests for self-other
 merging.[19]
 The distinction is often made using the labels "qualitative
identity" and "numerical identity". Qualitative
identity is the relation that often obtains between two TV sets
manufactured by the same company. They share most of their important
properties. Numerical identity is a relationship that obtains between
a person at one time in his life and that same person at another time
in his life. If the time gap is substantial, the person at the earlier
time may differ in many ways from the person at the later time. When
you were a baby, you weighed less than 10 kg, spoke no language, and
couldn't walk. But you now are numerically the same person as
the baby. Numerical identity can be of enormous legal and moral
importance, a point nicely illustrated by the trial of John Demjanuk,
the Ukrainian-born auto worker who was accused of being the sadistic
Nazi concentration camp guard whose victims called him "Ivan the
Terrible". The man on trial, in 1988, differed in many ways from
the concentration camp guard: he was much older, heavier, bald, and
spoke English. He was obviously not even close to being qualitatively
identical with perpetrator of Ivan's crimes. What the court had
to determine was not whether Ivan and Demjanuk were qualitatively
identical but whether they were numerically
 identical.[20]
 What makes this distinction important for present purposes is that
the sort of identity that is relevant to the debate between egoists
and altruists is numerical identity, not qualitative identity. If
Sophia, at age 30, sets aside a large sum of money that will be paid
to Sophia at age 70, young Sophia is not being altruistic. If her
ultimate goal is to ensure that old Sophia has the means to live a
comfortable life, then young Sophia's action is
straightforwardly egoistic. The take-home message here is that if a
test used to determine whether person *A* takes herself to be
identical to person *B* is to be relevant to the egoism versus
altruism debate, the test must provide evidence that person *A*
takes herself to be *numerically* identical to person *B*,
not that she takes herself to be *qualitatively* identical to
person *B*.



Now let's consider how psychologists have attempted to assess
whether experimental participants feel a sense of identity with
someone they might be called on to help. In one of the most
influential studies claiming to show that helping is often the product
of a feeling of oneness, Cialdini et al. (1997) used a pair of
tests.



> 
> 
> [P]articipants rated the extent of oneness they felt with the [person
> they might help] by responding to two items that were combined in all
> analyses to form a oneness index. The first item incorporated the
> Inclusion of Other in Self (IOS) Scale used by Aron et al. (1992) to measure self-other
> boundary overlap. It consisted of a set of seven pairs of increasingly
> overlapping circles. Participants selected the pair of circles that
> they believed best characterized their relationship with the [person
> they might help]. The second item asked participants to indicate on a
> 7-point scale the extent to which they would use the term *we*
> to describe their relationship with the [person they might help].
> (1997: 484)
> 
> 
> 



In a critique of the Cialdini et al. paper, Batson, Sager, et al.
(1997) used three measures of self-other merging. One was the IOS
Scale used by Cialdini et al. The second was a "perceived
similarity" task in which "[p]articipants were asked,
'How similar to you do you think the person ...is?'
(1 = somewhat, 9 = extremely)" (1997: 500). In the third,
participants rated both themselves and the target on a series of
personal attributes. The "measure of merging was the mean
absolute difference between ratings of self and other" (1997:
498).



It does not seem that any of these four tests of self-other merging
provide a reason to believe that the participant views herself as
numerically identical with another person. Indeed, both the perceived
similarity test and the personal attribute rating test seem to be
assessing qualitative identity rather than numerical identity. And it
is far from clear what, if anything, the other two tests are
measuring. So it seems that there is really no evidence at all that
people in close relationships lose track of the distinction between
themselves and another person. Indeed, as May notes, if someone really
did believe that he exists in two obviously distinct bodies, the most
natural conclusion to draw would be that he is delusional (May 2011b:
32).



While the literature on self-other merging provides little reason to
believe that normal people take themselves to be numerically identical
with another person, it does provide a different kind of challenge to
the empathy-altruism hypothesis defended by Batson and his colleagues.
That hypothesis, it will be recalled, is that empathy often causes an
ultimate desire to help another person. But in the Cialdini et al.
(1977) paper cited earlier, they report three studies indicating that
empathy, though it does occur, is not playing any causal role in the
process that leads to helping. Rather, they maintain, it is
"merging"--which is used here as a label for whatever
the IOS scale and the use-of-*we* test measure--that is
actually leading participants to help. Though the Cialdini et al.
paper is quite sophisticated, Batson et al. (1997) pointed out a number of
methodological problems. When they conducted a pair of experiments
that avoided these methodological problems, the role of empathy in
producing helping behavior was clearly evident. However, most
experiments exploring the link between empathy and helping behavior,
including this one, use a relatively small number of participants. And
the "replication crisis" that has emerged in recent years
has led many to worry about the robustness of the effects reported in
experiments like these (Chambers 2017). McAuliffe et al. (2018) have
addressed these concerns. Their high powered, pre-registered study,
run on the internet, analyzed data from 680 participants. Their
findings were "unambiguously supportive" (2018: 504) of
the link between empathy and helping behavior.


### 5.4 Have Batson's Studies Made a Convincing Case for the Existence of Altruism in Humans?



Batson's answer to this question is clear.



> 
> 
> Having reviewed the evidence from research designed to test the
> empathy-altruism hypothesis against the six egoistic alternatives
> ..., it is time to come to a conclusion--albeit
> tentative--about the status of this hypothesis. The idea that
> empathy produces altruistic motivation may seem improbable given the
> dominance of Western thought by the doctrine of universal egoism. Yet,
> in the words of Sherlock Holmes, "When you have eliminated the
> impossible, whatever remains, *however improbable*, must be the
> truth". It seems impossible for any known egoistic explanation
> of the empathy-helping relationship--or any combination of
> them--to account for the research evidence we have reviewed. So
> what remains? The empathy-altruism hypothesis. Pending new evidence or
> a plausible new egoistic explanation of the existing evidence, we seem
> forced to accept this improbable hypothesis as true. (Batson 2011:
>  160)[21]
> 
> 
> 
> 



Batson's research program is compelling, and he certainly has
shown that the empathy-altruism hypothesis is "in the
hunt", but his findings are not conclusive. There are a number
of reasonable challenges to the methodology and the conclusions in some
of Batson's studies. Setting these out in detail is a
substantial project (see Stich, Doris, & Roedder 2010). But there
is also a plausible egoistic hypothesis that has not been
systematically explored. 



In recent years, a number of authors have made an impressive case for
the hypothesis that belief in a "Big God"--a
supernatural being who is omniscient, morally concerned, and acts as a
policing agent in human affairs--played a crucial role in the
transition from face-to-face "band level" human groups
made up of at most a few hundred individuals to much larger tribal
groups, and ultimately to chiefdoms and nation states (Norenzayan et
al. 2016). These are provocative and controversial ideas. Much less
controversial is the claim that many people believe that even when no
other human can observe them, a supernatural being of some sort is
aware of what they are doing and thinking, and that this being may
punish thoughts and behavior it disapproves of and reward thoughts and
behavior it approves of, with the punishments and rewards delivered
either during the agent's lifetime or after she
 dies.[22]
 In the experiments, described in
 section 5.1,
 designed to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis against the social
punishment hypothesis, Batson and his colleagues went to great lengths
to insure that participants in the "low potential for negative
social evaluation" condition would think that no one knew of
their decisions, and thus that no one would think badly of them or
sanction them if they decided not to help. But, of course, none of the
steps taken to insure secrecy would be effective in keeping an
omniscient God from knowing what these participants had decided. So if
we assume that many people believe an omniscient God wants them to
help others in need, and that they believe Divine sanctions for not
helping are more likely when the target engenders
 empathy,[23]
 the experiments do nothing to rule out a variation of the social
punishment hypothesis which maintains that participants are motivated
by a desire to avoid punishments administered by God.



The egoistic alternative just sketched, which might be called
"the divine punishment hypothesis", also leads to
the pattern of predictions derived from the empathy-altruism
 hypothesis sketched in
 Table 5,
 and the results reported in
 Table 6.
The bottom line is that using the Sherlock Holmes standard that Batson
favors, there is still a lot of work to do. There is a family of
egoistic hypotheses invoking beliefs in supernatural
punishments--or supernatural rewards--that still needs to be
ruled out before we accept the "improbable hypothesis" as
true.[24]



## 6. Beyond Egoism vs. Altruism



In the colorful passage quoted at the beginning of
 section 5.4,
 Batson seems to suggest that in the debate between egoists and
altruists there are only two possible outcomes. If all human behavior
is ultimately motivated by self-interested desires, then the egoist
wins; if some human behavior is motivated by ultimate desires for the
well-being of other people, then the altruist wins. However, as 
noted in
 section 2,
 the dialectical landscape is more complex, for there are many desires
that are neither self-interested nor desires for the well-being of
other people. If any of these are ultimate desires that lead to
behavior, then the egoist is mistaken. But, as Batson clearly
recognizes, this would not vindicate altruism; both egoism and
altruism might be mistaken. 



Batson has used the term *principlism* for one family of
ultimate desires that would support neither egoism nor altruism.



> 
> 
> Principlism is motivation with the ultimate goal of upholding some
> moral principle--for example, a principle of fairness or justice,
> or the utilitarian principle of greatest good for the greatest number.
> (Batson 2011: 220)
> 
> 
> 



Under some circumstances, one or another of these principles might
require helping behavior, though that helping behavior would not be
altruistic, since the ultimate desire motivating the behavior is to
uphold the principle. On Batson's view, we really don't
know much about principlism. 



> 
> 
> To the best of my knowledge, there is no clear empirical evidence that
> upholding justice (or any other moral principle) functions as an
> ultimate
>  goal.[25]
>  Nor is there clear empirical evidence that rules this possibility
> out. (Batson 2011: 224)
> 
> 
> 



But if that's right, then Batson's conclusion that the
empathy-altruism hypothesis is true and that people are sometimes
altruistic is premature. For even if it were conceded that all the
plausible *egoistic* alternatives to empathy-altruism have been
excluded, the job of testing empathy-altruism against principalist
alternatives has hardly begun. Moreover, the scope of that project may
be much larger than Batson imagines. 



One way to see this is to ask which action guiding principles are
*moral*
 principles.[26]
 There is ongoing debate about this question in both philosophy and
psychology (Stich 2018). Though Batson does not address that debate,
the examples he offers ("fairness or justice or the utilitarian
principle") suggest that when he talks about moral principles he
has a rather limited set of principles in mind. But if principlism is
limited to a relatively small set of moral principles familiar from
the philosophical literature, then principlism hardly exhausts the
non-egoistic alternatives that defenders of psychological altruism
must rule out. In recent years, there has been a growing body of work
on the role of *norms* in human life, where norms are
understood as action guiding rules that can govern just about any
human activity. Researchers from a variety of disciplines have argued
that norms, and a robust innate psychology for acquiring, storing and
acting on norms, have played a fundamental role in shaping human
culture and making humans the most successful large animal on the
planet (Henrich 2015; Boyd 2018; Kelly & Davis 2018). Others have
proposed accounts of norm psychology on which people have ultimate
desires to comply with culturally acquired norms (Sripada & Stich
2006) and accounts of how a psychological system generating such
ultimate desires might be favored by natural selection (Sripada 2008).
The sorts of behavioral rules that count as norms in this literature
might well include the sorts of moral principles that Batson had in
mind when he characterized principlism. But these are only a small
subset of the norms that these researchers have in mind. What makes
all of this relevant to our current topic is that *any*
culturally acquired norm might generate an ultimate desire to comply,
and *most* of those ultimate desires are neither egoistic nor
altruistic. Thus to make a plausible case that an episode of helping
behavior is altruistic, it is not enough to rule out egoistic
explanations and explanations that appeal to principlism. The defender
of psychological altruism must also rule out explanations that trace
the helping behavior to an ultimate desire to comply with any of the
vast collection of norms that prevail in human cultures. And
that's a job that defenders of altruism have not even begun.




Another possibility is that some helping behavior might not be
motivated by ultimate desires at all. Gesiarz and Crockett (2015)
argue that, in addition to the goal-directed system, behavior,
including helping behavior, is sometimes produced by what they call
the *habitual* and *Pavlovian* systems. The habitual
system leads to actions that have the highest expected value based on
previous life experiences rather than possible consequences indicated
by features of the current situation. As a result, helping behavior
may be repeated in the future and in circumstances in which motivating
factors like the promise of rewards are absent if the behavior has
been rewarded in the past. Like the habitual system, the Pavlovian
system produces behavior with the highest expected value based on the
past. Unlike the habitual system, however, the Pavlovian system
produces behavior that has been successful in the evolutionary past,
rather than in an individual's past. This means that behavioral
dispositions that have led to reproductive success in a
individual's evolutionary past may have become innate or
"hard-wired" through natural selection. If it is indeed
the case that some helping behavior is produced by the habitual or
Pavlovian systems, then egoism is false. And if some helping behavior
is egoistically motivated and the rest is produced by the habitual and
Pavlovian systems, then altruism is also false. 


## 7. The Bottom Line



Batson and his collaborators have accomplished a great deal. They have
formulated a sophisticated altruist hypothesis, the empathy-altruism
hypothesis, that can be tested against competing egoist hypotheses,
and they have designed experiments making a strong case that many of
those egoist hypotheses are false. But to show that altruism is true,
it is not enough to show that specific egoist hypotheses can't
explain specific episodes of helping behavior. Nor would it be enough
to show that all plausible versions of egoism are false. It must also
be shown that episodes of helping behavior that can't be
explained egoistically can't be explained by another process,
such as principalistic ultimate motivation or ultimate motivation by a
non-moral norm. In addition, the defender of altruism must show that
non-egoistic episodes of helping behavior are not the product of the
habitual or Pavlovian systems. None of Batson's experiments were
designed to rule out these non-egoistic options or others that might
be suggested. So there is still much work to be done. 



On a more positive note, it seems that Batson and his associates have
shown quite conclusively that the methods of experimental psychology
can move the debate forward. Indeed, one might argue that Batson has
made more progress in this area during the last four decades than
philosophers using the traditional philosophical methodology of a
priori arguments buttressed by anecdote and intuition have made in the
previous two millennia. Their work powerfully demonstrates the utility
of empirical methods in moral psychology; philosophical moral
psychologists debating the altruism-egoism question have always made
empirical claim, and it is now evident that the human sciences possess
resources to help us empirically assess those empirical claims.