Altruism
Broadcast starting week of February 27, 2008

Is everything we do motivated by selfishness? Can a person ever act only in the best interest of another person? And when we do charitable acts -- such as giving money to a homeless person - is that a truly selfless act? Guests in this one hour program include Dr. C. Daniel Batson, professor of psychology at the University of Kansas in Lawrence; Stacy Palmer, editor of “The Chronicle of Philanthropy;” Dr. Elliot Sober and Dr. David Sloan Wilson, authors of “Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior;” and a panel discussion with four religious leaders. With commentary by John Hockenberry.

The show begins with a visit to the New York Public Library. There, professionals, who have their own busy work day, volunteer to teach people how to read. One volunteer is so dedicated that he started an additional class in his home. The teachers at the library say they offer their time and resources because they understand the importance of reading, but they also say there’s a sense of joy they get out of helping others. Participants are part of the New York Public Library's Centers for Reading and Writing Adult Literacy Program. The organization can be contacted at 455 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016 (212-576-0071) or through The Library's web site at www.nypl.org/

For our first discussion, Dr. Fred Goodwin speaks with Dr. C. Daniel Batson, a social psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He talks about studies he conducts to analyze altruism, and he discusses how he came to study altruism and what was going on around him that made him wonder about people’s motivations. In one of his studies, he puts people in a room where they watch others suffer, and he notes to what extent a person will go to help another. Some participants may want to stop the sufferer's pain, while others will be content to simply walk out of the room. Dr. Batson discusses what this means from an altruistic perspective - does watching someone in misery make us uncomfortable because we don’t want another person to suffer? Or is it because we don’t want to have to deal with the guilt or the problem ourselves? Dr. Batson also he talks about empathy as something separate from altruism. Empathy, he explains is the emotional reaction, while altruism is the motivation to a reaction.

Next up, how and why do people give money and time to social causes? Fifty percent of people say they have volunteered their time in the past year, while 75 percent say they have made a cash donation to a religious or social group. Stacy Palmer is the editor of “The Chronicle of Philanthropy.” She talks about what it takes to motivate people to give. Does offering a tote bag or a mug entice potential funders? Or does it prevent them from giving when they’re offered a reward for doing something good? You can write to Stacy Palmer at The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 1255 23rd St. NW, Suite 700, Washington DC, 20037. The publication's website is www.philanthropy.com.

The Infinite Mind's Emily Fisher moderates a roundtable discussion on the way different religions view altruism: Christianity, Islam, Tibetan Buddhism and Judaism. Panelist Lama Pema Wangdak says that Tibetan Buddhism teaches that all good comes from altruism, that a goal of the religion is to overcome the self as a motivating factor. Imam Feisal Abdul-Rauf discusses how the Sufi Muslim obligates people to do good. He discusses how the self fits it to the conversation of altruism, and then when you feel a connection with the divine, then what you do is the divine acting through you. Reverend Robert Wright talks about how altruism can be justice. It is just, he says, to help people who are less fortunate. And that God extends his hand to the poor through an altruistic person. He says that we learn how to be altruistic from seeing God as altruistic. Rabbi Seth Frisch talks about how what we do matters in the next world and that what you do and don’t do can elevate you or lessen who you are, and that you must do good things to be altruistic and charitable.

Reverend Wright can be reached at St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue, New York New York, 10025. Lama Wangdak is at the Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies and Meditation at 4-10 West 101st Street, Apt 63, New York, New York 10025, and the center’s e-mail address is sangye@aol.com. You can write to Rabbi Frisch at The Academy for Jewish Religion, 15 West 86th Street, New York, New York, 10024. And Imam Feisal Abdul-Rauf can be contacted at the American Sufi Muslim Association, at feisalrauf@usa.net.

Dr. Goodwin then speaks with Dr. Elliot Sober and Dr. David Sloan Wilson, who talk about altruism in an evolutionary context. For them, the question of whether altruism exists or not isn’t only about whether a person’s own desire to do good takes away from altruistic tendencies. They add to the discussion by looking at how a species can survive if it is altruistic. Does it make a species weaker or stronger by doing good? Can being altruistic increase the chance that your species will continue? As examples, they talk about plants and monkeys. They say that since plants create insecticides that help other plants, that could be called altruistic. In addition, when monkeys find food they put out a “food call” to let other monkeys know there is food. And if a monkey fails to notify the others, he is punished. So in these cases, the plant and monkey act altruistically for survival of their species.

The authors wrote a book about this topic, “Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior." Dr. Sober is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Dr. Wilson is a professor of biology at Binghamton State University, State University of New York. They also talk to Dr. Goodwin about how people tend to act less altruistically in a group setting, relying on the group’s wishes rather than their own sense of duty as individuals. Dr. Sober’s mailing address is The University of Wisconsin, Department of Philosophy, 5185 Helen C. White Hall, Madison, WI 53706. Or you can e-mail him at ersober@facstaff.wisc.edu . Dr. Sloan is at the University of SUNY Binghamton, PO Box 6000, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, or you can e-mail him at Dwilson@binghamton.edu.

Finally, The Infinite Mind’s commentator John Hockenberry asks: "Is altruism ever possible?" To answer the question, he draws on everything from compassionate conservatism to high school surfer-dude debates about Ayn Rand.