Help! – The Psychology of Altruism

Posted by Cate Bolt on 18 August 2009 | 3 Comments

Tags: altruism, charity, giving, psychology, help

"When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody’s help in any way. But now these days are gone, I’m not so self assured, Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors.”

We’re all familiar with the lyrics from that famous Beatles song and can probably think of a time in our lives where this has related to ourselves. I’ve long been fascinated by human nature, and in fact I think my need to work in the prison system for a spell was motivated almost totally by a fascination with criminal psychology. The fact of the matter is that everyone is motivated by different things at different times in their lives, but there’s some interesting psychology associated with altruism and what makes people want to give.

It’s been glaringly apparent to me since starting this voyage that a lot of things in life are never quite what they seem, and sometimes the things that you might consider to be the “constants” in life, aren’t as rock solid as they might have initially appeared. I knew from day one that my greatest challenge in this exercise was going to be my own emotional vulnerability, I probably didn’t really realise however from what angle that might become a challenge. I’m talking in riddles again, aren’t I?

When you put your ass on the line there are certain people who you expect will have your back. You don’t really have delusional thoughts that thousands of people from all over the world will champion your campaign and want to donate their time, money and compassion. Even though, in rational thinking, this is what has to happen – you don’t actually THINK that will happen (at least I didn’t). You do think though that people who have known you for many years, people that you have stood by in hard times, people that you might have given a bit of a leg up professionally, or in a shared area of interest might be there to rally around you. It’s an interesting experiment – go through your phone index or your email contacts and consider each person – would they help you if you were doing it tough? Would they back you if you gave up everything and decided to be poor to help others? Even if that means you can’t do happy hour every Friday?

You may think you know the answers to these questions, but until you actually put each person to the test it’s impossible to know the answer. One of my biggest emotional challenges in this to date has been finding out the answers. The answer surprisingly isn’t motivated by how much you might have helped that person, or how close to you they might be but stems back to a complex psychology of what makes people give. I read an interesting example of this recently. The reader is asked to imagine the following scenario:

You’re walking through an isolated area and notice a small child swimming in shallow water. As you walk you notice the child becoming increasingly agitated and realise the child is in trouble and at risk of drowning. You look around for the child’s parent or carer and realise no one else is around. You have seconds to do something to save this child, but you’re also wearing some rather expensive designer shoes. What do you do?

You don’t have to be Mother Teresa to jump into the water without a second thought and save the child. But if you change just one small factor in this equation, suddenly the outcome starts to change. You look around and notice 6 other people standing at the edge of the water who have also noticed the child. Suddenly now we have 7 people looking at each other inquisitively, all realising that something needs to be done, but wondering which one will do it. Obviously it won’t be you… I mean you’ve just had your hair done!

I relate this also to my wedding dress dilemma of a few weeks ago. Very few people I know will willingly hand over their wedding dress to save a child who they cannot see. Yet if a child was bleeding to death in front of them, and the only thing they had to stop the bleeding was their beloved gown I think it’s fair to say most people would give it a go.

Obviously there are many more deciding factors in whether someone has the ability, desire or even need to be altruistic. A person’s ability to empathise with the person in need of help is probably the greatest of deciding factors. Those who have been, or are poor or homeless have a greater ability to empathise with others in this situation, in the same way that someone who has suffered cancer or lost someone dear to cancer is more likely to donate to cancer related charities.

Probably the biggest kick in the guts to me though is the fact that those who have the least, seem almost always to be the ones who have the greatest desire to give. I spoke to a person recently, who worked in an upper management position of a large corporation – nationally recognisable (I won’t name them) who found it in their heart to donate their time to explaining to me how I should change my charity, to make it more appealing to their organisation (that’s my sarcastic voice, in case you’re wondering!).

Apparently this organisation is more than happy to sponsor charities who meet their criteria. Firstly, the charity must be Australian owned & operated, and their primary objectives must be to meet the needs of Australians (ie, no foreign aid). Secondly, their objectives must marry well with their brand (be good and wholesome – not funding anything lewd like… god forbid… homosexuality or HIV research), and then of course the real clincher – the charity needs to be high profile enough that their sponsorship dollar brings them a good return on investment. Is anyone else starting to feel sick??

What saddens me the most is that, by their own admission, “Corporation X” above could walk past the drowning child if there was no one there to watch them jump in and save the child, but they would be more than happy to jump in – in front of an audience? One might argue that it doesn’t matter what the motivation for their assistance is, as long as the assistance is given. I mean after all, is it better to let the child drown while we stare at each other wondering who will help, or for everyone to jump in with their brand name on their shirts – as long as we make the news. I’m sorry but for me the jury is still out on that one.

 What happened to helping just because it’s the right thing to do?