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By Root 1200 0

altruism: In the 1960s, a number of psychologists became interested in “prosocial behavior”—all those cooperative forms of behavior which make social life possible. Many were social psychologists, but others were developmentalists who were intrigued by one form of prosocial behavior, altruism. Much prosocial behavior is selfishly motivated—we stop at red lights and pay our taxes not out of love of our fellow creatures but out of self-interest—but altruism is motivated by concern for the other person. The question the developmentalists found interesting was how such behavior arises, since it is often in conflict with the strongest of all motivations, self-interest.

In the past four decades hundreds of developmentalists have conducted many hundreds of studies of altruism, using the empirical methods mentioned earlier. The answer to the question “How does altruism develop?” seems to be that it results from a complex interplay of influences: the brain circuitry that tends to cause humans to feel distress at the sight of another human in distress, the model set for children by parental care, cultural values, the growth of the child’s ability to imagine another person’s feelings, social experience (helping someone else enables the helper to see himself or herself as a good sort of person and to be seen as such a person by others), and judgment based on real-world knowledge of the probable consequences for the person in distress of being helped or not being helped.93

A few salient findings:

—At ten months or a year, a child, seeing his mother in pain, will, as noted above, whimper or try to crawl away, but by fourteen months is more likely to pat, hug, or kiss her.

—Beyond eighteen months, a child will make efforts to comfort another child who is crying or will seek adult help.

—At two to four, a child will ask worried questions of another who is hurt or in pain, try to give reassurance or get help, and will seek to protect other children from harm (by warning them, for instance, of some danger).

—By seven, most children will go to the aid of a strange child who appears injured or in some difficulty.

—From seven on, children become more and more willing to give money or toys to unknown poor children or to help others in trouble even when it means giving up something they want to do.

Developmentalists see a pattern in the data. Altruistic behavior seems to form in a series of fairly distinct stages, but there is no general agreement on how many there are or what they are. In one view there are four, in another five, and a six-stage model has been proposed by the longtime altruism expert Dennis L. Krebs and a colleague, Frank Van Hesteren, of Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. 94 Krebs and Van Hesteren’s six stages are based on (1) obedience to the rules of authorities and the need for personal security and safety, (2) the maximizing of personal gain and quid pro quo decisions, (3) conformity to role and group expectations, and reciprocity and cooperation, (4) a sense of social responsibility, and behaving in accord with internalized values, (5) upholding the rights of other individuals and a willingness to make a sacrifice to benefit another, and (6) the upholding of universal moral values and identification with all humanity.

Moral development: Altruism is only one outcome of the development of the moral sense. Interest in that aspect of psychological development began in 1908, when the distinguished English psychologist William McDougall sketched a theory of the development of the moral sense based on his general knowledge of human psychology. In the 1920s Piaget began empirical investigation of the subject by observing children playing games and by telling them stories of little transgressions and asking their views of the proper punishment. (An example: In the first case, a boy fills his father’s inkwell to be helpful but makes an inkblot on the tablecloth. In the second, a boy plays with his father’s inkwell and makes an inkblot on the tablecloth. Should the punishment be the same in each case?)

Piaget concluded