Altruismens kollektiva former Persson Thunqvist, Daniel
Sociologisk forskning,
06/2022, Volume:
59, Issue:
1–2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Denna artikel tillämpar Émile Durkheims perspektiv på altruism som ett kollektivt fenomen i dagens arbetsliv. I fokus står det klassiska sociologiska problemet om hur altruism och arbetsliv kan ...förenas. Auguste Comte och Herbert Spencer lade grunden för två konkurrerande svar på den frågan: moralisk reglering respektive altruistisk konkurrens. Utifrån Durkheims tänkande utvecklas två förbisedda kollektiva former av altruism: medborgerlig altruism (professionsetik och medborgerlig moral) och heroisk altruism (antika dygder och militär anda). Dessa former av självuppoffrande altruism relateras till arbetslivets förändrade ideal och villkor. Vertikal differentiering spelar också en roll för att skapa altruistiska hjältar; den kosmopolitiske hjälten, den lokalpatriotiske hjälten, den modige eller amoraliske medborgaren i nödsituationer.
Altruismens kollektiva former Daniel Persson Thunqvist
Sociologisk forskning,
06/2022, Volume:
59, Issue:
1–2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Denna artikel tillämpar Émile Durkheims perspektiv på altruism som ett kollektivt fenomen i dagens arbetsliv. I fokus står det klassiska sociologiska problemet om hur altruism och arbetsliv kan ...förenas. Auguste Comte och Herbert Spencer lade grunden för två konkurrerande svar på den frågan: moralisk reglering respektive altruistisk konkurrens. Utifrån Durkheims tänkande utvecklas två förbisedda kollektiva former av altruism: medborgerlig altruism (professionsetik och medborgerlig moral) och heroisk altruism (antika dygder och militär anda). Dessa former av självuppoffrande altruism relateras till arbetslivets förändrade ideal och villkor. Vertikal differentiering spelar också en roll för att skapa altruistiska hjältar; den kosmopolitiske hjälten, den lokalpatriotiske hjälten, den modige eller amoraliske medborgaren i nödsituationer.
The emerging field of “AI safety” has attracted public attention and large infusions of capital to support its implied promise: the ability to deploy advanced artificial intelligence (AI) while ...reducing its gravest risks. Ideas from effective altruism, longtermism, and the study of existential risk are foundational to this new field. In this paper, we contend that overlapping communities interested in these ideas have merged into what we refer to as the broader “AI safety epistemic community,” which is sustained through its mutually reinforcing community-building and knowledge production practices. We support this assertion through an analysis of four core sites in this community’s epistemic culture: 1) online community-building through Web forums and career advising; 2) AI forecasting; 3) AI safety research; and 4) prize competitions. The dispersal of this epistemic community’s members throughout the tech industry, academia, and policy organizations ensures their continued input into global discourse about AI. Understanding the epistemic culture that fuses their moral convictions and knowledge claims is crucial to evaluating these claims, which are gaining influence in critical, rapidly changing debates about the harms of AI and how to mitigate them.
We present a simple framework that highlights the most fundamental requirement for the evolution of altruism: assortment between individuals carrying the cooperative genotype and the helping ...behaviours of others with which these individuals interact. We partition the fitness effects on individuals into those due to self and those due to the 'interaction environment', and show that it is the latter that is most fundamental to understanding the evolution of altruism. We illustrate that while kinship or genetic similarity among those interacting may generate a favourable structure of interaction environments, it is not a fundamental requirement for the evolution of altruism, and even suicidal aid can theoretically evolve without help ever being exchanged among genetically similar individuals. Using our simple framework, we also clarify a common confusion made in the literature between alternative fitness accounting methods (which may equally apply to the same biological circumstances) and unique causal mechanisms for creating the assortment necessary for altruism to be favoured by natural selection.
Do acts of kindness improve the well-being of the actor? Recent advances in the behavioural sciences have provided a number of explanations of human social, cooperative and altruistic behaviour. ...These theories predict that people will be ‘happy to help’ family, friends, community members, spouses, and even strangers under some conditions. Here we conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the experimental evidence that kindness interventions (for example, performing ‘random acts of kindness’) boost subjective well-being. Our initial search of the literature identified 489 articles; of which 24 (27 studies) met the inclusion criteria (total N = 4045). These 27 studies, some of which included multiple control conditions and dependent measures, yielded 52 effect sizes. Multi-level modeling revealed that the overall effect of kindness on the well-being of the actor is small-to-medium (δ = 0.28). The effect was not moderated by sex, age, type of participant, intervention, control condition or outcome measure. There was no indication of publication bias. We discuss the limitations of the current literature, and recommend that future research test more specific theories of kindness: taking kindness-specific individual differences into account; distinguishing between the effects of kindness to specific categories of people; and considering a wider range of proximal and distal outcomes. Such research will advance our understanding of the causes and consequences of kindness, and help practitioners to maximise the effectiveness of kindness interventions to improve well-being.
•Meta-analysis of effects of helping on the happiness of the helper•27 experimental studies included in review (total N = 4045)•The overall effect of kindness on well-being is small-to-medium (δ = 0.28).•No evidence of publication bias•Future research should test more specific theories of kindness.
Formal insurance and altruism networks Bene, Tizié; Bramoullé, Yann; Deroïan, Frédéric
Journal of development economics,
October 2024, 2024-10-00, Volume:
171
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We study how altruism networks affect the demand for formal insurance. Agents with CARA utilities are connected through a network of altruistic relationships. Incomes are subject to a common shock ...and to a large individual shock, generating heterogeneous damages. Agents can buy formal insurance to cover the common shock, up to a coverage cap. We find that ex-post altruistic transfers induce interdependence in ex-ante formal insurance decisions. We characterize the Nash equilibria of the insurance game and show that agents act as if they are trying to maximize the expected utility of a representative agent with average damages. Altruism thus tends to increase demand of low-damage agents and to decrease demand of high-damage agents. Its aggregate impact depends on the interplay between demand homogenization, the zero lower bound and the coverage cap. We find that aggregate demand is higher with altruism than without altruism at low prices and lower at high prices. Nash equilibria are constrained Pareto efficient.
•Altruism networks impact insurance demand under common shocks with varied damages.•Altruism yields demand homogenization.•Altruism decreases aggregate demand for formal insurance at relatively high prices.•Altruism boosts overall demand for formal insurance at low prices with a coverage cap.•Altruism’s impact hinges on demand homogenization, zero lower bound, and coverage cap.
People's engagement in altruistic behaviors depends on the relative importance given to values of humanistic altruism (HA) and biospheric altruism (BA). Specifically, while HA is considered the value ...base for prosocial behavior, BA is considered the value base of pro-environmental behavior. Despite the clear conceptual distinction, the two values often similarly correlate with outcome variables such as attitudes or choices and lead to ambiguous findings on the common versus unique impact of HA and BA on prosocial and pro-environmental behaviors. Here, we propose that the two types of altruism result in unique behavioral outcomes when they compete with each other, i.e., when people are forced to prioritize one value over the other. In two studies (Ntotal = 1163), we provided evidence for the assumed operational distinction between HA and BA. Moreover, we tested the self-activation hypothesis, the assumption that value centrality moderates the relationship between value activation and value expressive behavior. Results revealed that the experimental activation of HA and BA led to more value congruent behavior in people with high value centrality, but to reactance effects in people with low value centrality. Overall, this article offers new insight for the development of comprehensive theories of altruistic behavior.
•Trait humanistic altruism explains unique variance in prosocial behavior.•Trait biospheric altruism explains unique variance in pro-environmental behavior.•Situational activation of values impact behavior moderated by trait values.•Value activation leads to increase in congruent behavior when trait value is high.•Value activation leads to reactance effects when trait value is low.
Whether or not there are gender differences in altruistic behaviour in Dictator Game experiments has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Earlier studies found women to be more ...altruistic than men. However, this conclusion has been challenged by more recent accounts, which have argued that gender differences in altruistic behaviour may be a peculiarity of student samples and may not extend to other groups. Here we study gender differences in altruisticbehaviour and, additionally, in expectations of altruistic behaviour, in a sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk crowdworkers living in the US. In Study 1, we report a mega-analysis of more than 3, 500 observations and we show that women are significantly more altruistic than men. In Study 2, we show that both women and men expect women to be more altruistic than men.
•We study gender differences in altruistic behaviour. We also study gender differences in expected altruism.•We use a sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk crowdworkers living in the US (simple ¿ 4,000 workers).•We show that women are significantly more altruistic than men. We also show that both women and men expect women to be more altruistic than men.
Avoiding the Ask Andreoni, James; Rao, Justin M.; Trachtman, Hannah
The Journal of political economy,
06/2017, Volume:
125, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
If people enjoy giving, then why do they avoid fund-raisers? Partnering with the Salvation Army at Christmastime, we conducted a randomized field experiment placing bell ringers at one or both main ...entrances to a supermarket, making it easy or difficult to avoid the ask. Additionally, bell ringers either were silent or said “please give.” Making avoidance difficult increased both the rate of giving and donations. Paradoxically, the verbal ask dramatically increased giving but also led to dramatic avoidance. We argue that this illustrates sophisticated awareness of the empathy-altruism link: people avoid empathic stimulation to regulate their giving and guilt.
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