Does Altruism Exist?

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To address the argument, psychologists on both sides have conducted their own experiments in order to assert whether true altruism exists or not. Batson and colleagues argue yes, empathic reaction is a source of altruistic motivation. On the contrary, Cialdini and colleagues argue that egoism is a source for helping and that altruism does not exist. Although neither truly answered the original question, they came up with different viewpoints from similar results based on Batson’s original experiment.
The yes argument suggests that empathy motivates people to help selfishly. For the yes experiment, altruistic is defined as helping another in order to reduce the other persons distress. In order to test this idea, Batson came up with a 2x2 design involving empathy and ease of escape. Participants are told they are involved in an experiment to test one idea instead of discover whether their motivations are altruistic which is tested with high empathy or egoistic which is tested through low empathy. Both situations are compared to difficulty of escape. Participants included 44 female students who were put under the influence that Elaine was administered shocks. In the easy to escape situation they were told they only have to watch 2 sets, then they were asked if they wanted to switch places, in the hard to escape situation the participants were told they had to watch all ten trials. Before asked if subjects wanted to switch places, Elaine admitted she had a horrific experiences with shocks and it may affect her horribly. High empathy was addressed when the participant appeared to be most similar to the subject.
Results from Batson and colleagues experiments lined up with their hypothesis that people are motivated by empathy. Subje...

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... in order to relieve stress and level out moods. Since the high empathy/rewards set helped less than the high empathy/no reward set it further showed people only help others when necessary to decrease current depressive symptoms.
Neither of the arguments addressed the issue whether altruism exists. Since both experiments had values for all scenarios, altruism must exist by both sides’ standards. Whether many people have altruistic motivations or not is another argument. Few people, rarely have altruistic motivations, but they do exist and show to be hard to prove. At this time I think of altruism as helping somebody carelessly, like giving somebody on the street a hamburger when nobody is around and feeling nothing afterward, just continuing home. Based on this personal assessment, I have committed one or true altruistic acts before, but none more than one or two.

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