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Orne’s point was borne out rather spectacularly by at least two infamous lab experiments. In a 1961–62 study designed to understand why Nazi officers obeyed their superiors’ brutal orders, the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram got volunteers to follow his instructions and administer a series of increasingly painful electric shocks—at least they thought the shocks were painful; the whole thing was a setup—to unseen lab partners. In 1971, the Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted a prison experiment, with some volunteers playing guards and others playing inmates. The guards started behaving so sadistically that Zimbardo had to shut down the experiment.

When you consider what Zimbardo and Milgram got their lab volunteers to do, it is no wonder that the esteemed researchers who ran the Dictator game, with its innocuous goal of transferring a few dollars from one undergrad to another, could, as List puts it, “induce almost any level of giving they desire.”

When you look at the world through the eyes of an economist like John List, you realize that many seemingly altruistic acts no longer seem so altruistic.

It may appear altruistic when you donate $100 to your local public-radio station, but in exchange you get a year of guilt-free listening (and, if you’re lucky, a canvas tote bag). U.S. citizens are easily the world’s leaders in per-capita charitable contributions, but the U.S. tax code is among the most generous in allowing deductions for those contributions.

Most giving is, as economists call it, impure altruism or warm-glow altruism. You give not only because you want to help but because it makes you look good, or feel good, or perhaps feel less bad.

Consider the panhandler. Gary Becker once wrote that most people who give money to panhandlers do so only because “the unpleasant appearance or persuasive appeal of beggars makes them feel uncomfortable or guilty.” That’s why people often cross the street to avoid a panhandler but rarely cross over to visit one.

And what about U.S. organ-donation policy, based on its unyielding belief that altruism will satisfy the demand for organs—how has that worked out?

Not so well. There are currently 80,000 people in the United States on a waiting list for a new kidney, but only some 16,000 transplants will be performed this year. This gap grows larger every year. More than 50,000 people on the list have died over the past twenty years, with at least 13,000 more falling off the list as they became too ill to have the operation.

If altruism were the answer, this demand for kidneys would have been met by a ready supply of donors. But it hasn’t been. This has led some people—including, not surprisingly, Gary Becker—to call for a well-regulated market in human organs, whereby a person who surrenders an organ would be compensated in cash, a college scholarship, a tax break, or some other form. This proposal has so far been greeted with widespread repugnance and seems for now politically untenable.

Recall, meanwhile, that Iran established a similar market nearly thirty years ago. Although this market has its flaws, anyone in Iran needing a kidney transplant does not have to go on a waiting list. The demand for transplantable kidneys is being fully met. The average American may not consider Iran the most forward-thinking nation in the world, but surely some credit should go to the only country that has recognized altruism for what it is—and, importantly, what it’s not.

If John List’s research proves anything, it’s that a question like “Are people innately altruistic?” is the wrong kind of question to ask. People aren’t “good” or “bad.” People are people, and they respond to incentives. They can nearly always be manipulated—for good or ill—if only you find the right levers.

So are human beings capable of generous, selfless, even heroic behavior? Absolutely. Are they also capable of heartless acts of apathy? Absolutely.

The thirty-eight witnesses who watched Kitty