Pure, Impure and Competitive: Altruism

September 5, 2011 by
Filed under: Social Brain 

On Tuesday Sept 6th the RSA is hosting the event: The Price of Altruism.  Oren Harman will speak about the polymath George Price, perhaps the leading contributor to the study of altruism.  In the run up to the event, I’ve been thinking more about altruism.  After some shallow digging, I uncovered three different categories of it: pure, impure and competitive. 

Economist James Andreoni made a distinction between pure and impure altruism in a paper from back in 1990. The distinction is based on what exactly it is which one feels good about, when committing an altruistic deed.  Let’s take an example of voluntarily contributing money towards the building of a playground in a deprived area.  Pure altruism would describe when someone donates money, and enjoys the knowledge that the playground will be built.  Impure altruism would be when someone donates money, but enjoys the knowledge that he himself has donated to the project.  It is the difference between feeling happy about the total supply of a public good versus feeling happy about the individual contribution to that public good.  The behavioural outcome may be the same (e.g. donating money to the playground), but the distinction is in the motivation behind the behaviour.    

Despite the negative connotation of “impurity”, impure altruism is not a bad thing.  First of all, as just mentioned, there is still a positive outcome.  Secondly, as this Action for Happiness blog post states, the warm glow associated with altruism may last much longer than other forms of pleasure.  My guess is that the warm glow associated with impure altruism may be even stronger than that of pure altruism, because the afterglow is personal and internalised. 

A third motivation for altruism is more strategic.  Competitive altruism is the term used to describe when someone acts in a way to display his selflessness, in an effort to gain some sort of social status. 

In an interesting article by Steven and Alison Sexton, they suggest that competitive altruism may help explain the relative success of the Prius versus other hybrid cars.  The Civic Hybrid, for example, has a similar environmental rating to the Prius.  The Civic Hybrid has the same chassis as its sister model, the “regular” Civic; a Prius, on the other hand, has its own unique design.  So the Prius is easily recognisable as being an environmentally friendly car, whereas the Civic Hybrid is not.  The Prius driver is in essence signalling to others that he or she is someone who is selflessly sacrificing something (perhaps performance or purchase price) for the benefit of the environment and his or her fellow human.  For the driver of the Civic Hybrid, this selfless reputation is not as easily achieved.  Competitive altruism is driven by reputational motives.

Of course, one could ask that age old question: if a person derives some benefit (a warm glow or a good reputation) from behaving altruistically, is that behaviour really altruistic?  It’s a conundrum to which I don’t know the answer, but I’m looking forward to learning more about altruism, and George Price, on Tuesday.  Click here to join the waiting list or to listen to the event online.

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Comments

  • http://www.potlatch.org.uk Will Davies

    This ‘pure altruist’ is a fascinating individual. Does he speak? Does he have arms and legs like real people? Or is he just a compulsive lier? If altruism requires people to behave in some form of self-negating buddhism or self-hating ascetism, then give me crazed consumerism any day. Derrida said that the only form of pure gift was a fake bank note, given to an unsuspecting recipient, because it was the only act that admitted of no possible equivalence or reciprocation.

    Curb Your Enthusiasm nails it best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqncCjxGqGw

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VSXKB66GAVSD65DWDAM6SMESJY none

    We talked about this is Social Psychology class and I remember reading about charity in the Hindu Gita. The Gita talks about the 3 levels of giving. Pure, earthly and passion. I think. It’s really the same thing. I don’t have any bias against the middle category except that in some ways, it won’t truly help. A Prius gets 35 MPG? That’s really not much. Why not 60 or 70? What about 100? How much does that really help? You know, my car gets about 27 MPG and because of that, I choose not to drive it much. If I had a Prius, I think I would less hesitant to drive. What I’m getting at is this; are we really truly helping? Pure Altruism is a total package deal. It’s a big picture sort of deal. I want a Prius so badly but instead, I’m riding my bicycle as much as I can to get around and I’m hoping to start taking the bus even though I have 2 cars. I’d rather drive a wonderful Prius but I’m not so sure I would truly be helping mankind this way.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VSXKB66GAVSD65DWDAM6SMESJY none

    We talked about this is Social Psychology class and I remember reading about charity in the Hindu Gita. The Gita talks about the 3 levels of giving. Pure, earthly and passion. I think. It’s really the same thing. I don’t have any bias against the middle category except that in some ways, it won’t truly help. A Prius gets 35 MPG? That’s really not much. Why not 60 or 70? What about 100? How much does that really help? You know, my car gets about 27 MPG and because of that, I choose not to drive it much. If I had a Prius, I think I would less hesitant to drive. What I’m getting at is this; are we really truly helping? Pure Altruism is a total package deal. It’s a big picture sort of deal. I want a Prius so badly but instead, I’m riding my bicycle as much as I can to get around and I’m hoping to start taking the bus even though I have 2 cars. I’d rather drive a wonderful Prius but I’m not so sure I would truly be helping mankind this way.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VSXKB66GAVSD65DWDAM6SMESJY none

    Oops. I can’t believe I didn’t say a word about Kant here. My Ethics professor would be ashamed of me. :-D

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VSXKB66GAVSD65DWDAM6SMESJY none

    Oops. I can’t believe I didn’t say a word about Kant here. My Ethics professor would be ashamed of me. :-D

  • http://www.potlatch.org.uk Will Davies

    May I suggest that the RSA might want to, ahem, trust social networks and communities sufficiently that these comment threads can develop unmoderated? I left a comment here this morning which still hasn’t appeared. The comment may have been disposable, I agree, but that is scarcely the point. How are commentors expected to debate with each other, if there is a) a long delay before comments appear and b) some never appear at all?

    • N. Spencer

      Hi Will, thanks for bringing this to our attention.  I contacted a colleague here who explained:”The RSA has to manage hundreds of pieces online and due to its popularity of its blogs, it is a target for over-zealous spammers. We have limited resources, hence normally comments without links are approved automatically – however if the system has any reason to suspect that it is spam (which meant that your comments were left unapproved), there will be a delay in approving comments. Apologies for the inconvenience.”That said, there were no comments pending.  If you’d like to restart a discussion, please feel free to resubmit your original comment.  We look forward to hearing from you.

  • http://www.potlatch.org.uk Will Davies

    May I suggest that the RSA might want to, ahem, trust social networks and communities sufficiently that these comment threads can develop unmoderated? I left a comment here this morning which still hasn’t appeared. The comment may have been disposable, I agree, but that is scarcely the point. How are commentors expected to debate with each other, if there is a) a long delay before comments appear and b) some never appear at all?

    • N. Spencer

      Hi Will, thanks for bringing this to our attention.  I contacted a colleague here who explained:”The RSA has to manage hundreds of pieces online and due to its popularity of its blogs, it is a target for over-zealous spammers. We have limited resources, hence normally comments without links are approved automatically – however if the system has any reason to suspect that it is spam (which meant that your comments were left unapproved), there will be a delay in approving comments. Apologies for the inconvenience.”That said, there were no comments pending.  If you’d like to restart a discussion, please feel free to resubmit your original comment.  We look forward to hearing from you.

  • mitch weisburgh

    Perhaps you are familiar with Maimonides levels of charity:
    http://judaism.about.com/od/beliefs/a/charity_nine.htm