Minding Other People's Business

Why Do Good? Brain Study Offers Clues - Forbes.com

I came across this very interesting article in Forbes the other day. It reports a recent study on the neurophysiology of "altruism." The researchers designed an experiment to see what regions of the brain increased in activity in altruistic people, as opposed to selfish people, upon seeing something good happen to someone else. They hypothesized that the "warm and fuzzy" department would increase activity, that is, the region associated with pleasure and reward. This would support the belief I've often heard that all love and service is really self-serving; I help other people because it feels good, or because it gives me something to be proud about.

Surprisingly, the study found that it is not the reward system, but the system that responds to meaningful stimuli in the environment, which is active, for example, when I see something threatening to me. Under the constraints of the experiment, this region was much more active in those who exhibited unselfish than in those who were selfish.

What motivates people to do good, the study suggests, is not self-satisfaction, but a deep, even primal solidarity by which I identify with a neighbor, realizing that "that could have been me." I haven't read the full study, only the report in Forbes, but it leaves me with some new questions. Here are a couple.

What I would study if I were a neurologist:
1) What trains or cultivates the region of the brain in question so that one responds to situations others face? Personal tragedy? Service work?

2) "Altruism" (there must be a more profound word they could have used!) often moves us to make costly sacrifices. How do ascetic practices, such as fasting, affect this region of the brain?

3) How much depends on genetics? How much on the way a child is raised?

Anyway, I was pretty pleased to see that a new scientific study is challenging the widespread assumptions of rational choice theory. Perhaps it will turn out that humans are even biologically a bit deeper than modern economics suggests.