I listened to a very interesting episode of the Making Sense podcast the other day. It was between the founder of the podcast, Sam Harris, and cognitive psychologist, Scott Barry Kaufman. A topic that came up was pathological altruism, and it got me thinking about this paradox of selfish altruism. I’d like to elaborate on it further here.
What is Pathological Altruism?
According to a 2013 paper on altruism bias, you can define pathological altruism as an attempt to promote the well-being of others that results in harm. The key aspect is that the harm from pathological altruism is reasonably foreseeable from the perspective of an outside observer.
The harm of pathological altruism can occur to the recipient of the altruistic act or the person acting in an altruistic way. The aforementioned paper cites an example of a mother refusing to vaccinate her child in the belief that she’s protecting her child, only for this lack of vaccination to cause a local outbreak of a dangerous childhood infection that results in an infant death.
Selfish Altruism: When Being Selfish Benefits Others
I’ve always considered myself as being somewhat selfish because I don’t seek out traditional altruistic endeavors. I don’t volunteer with a charity or a local animal shelter. I don’t donate much to charity. I rarely put money in the cups of people begging on the streets. Maybe you are the same, maybe not.
The word cerebrotonic, which I named this blog after, has two meanings from my perspective. One is the literal meaning of introverted or introspective people who think deeply about the world, about big ideas, and about their own lives.
The other meaning of cerebrotonic is that some of the articles here are meant to act as a ‘tonic’ for people who are too cerebral—too much in their own heads to the detriment of engaging with the world. This is how I feel my selfishness mostly manifests; I focus a lot on what I can do to better myself rather than bettering the world.
I don’t post about this selfishness lightly. I consider it a personal character flaw and it’s something I have made attempts to address. The above altruistic efforts that I lack are no doubt commendable.
However, I started to think deeper about the topic and how my own seemingly self-serving decisions have benefited other people. The picture became a little less clear cut and somewhat paradoxical.
For example, when I make efforts to eat more healthy food, I notice that the people around me can’t help but to eat better, or at least eliminate crap from their diets. This is something that initially seems like a self-serving decision but it ends up improving the lives of people close to me.
Another example was my recent decision to learn piano at 29 years of age. Six months after buying a digital piano, I can play the main Don’t Stop Believin’ melody, Let It Be by The Beatles, and Lean On Me by Bill Withers.
I often switch on the piano when other people are present in the room, including my 18-month old daughter. She instantly smiles and begins dancing. My apparently self-serving act of learning to play piano brings joy to my child’s life.
I think the message is relatively clear, albeit paradoxical: if you consider yourself selfish, think deeper about your actions. You might be surprised how your selfish interests end up promoting the well-being of others. This is what psychologist Abraham Maslow termed healthy selfishness in an unpublished paper. You can read the paper in Future Visions: The Unpublished Papers of Abraham Maslow.
The other lens through which to view this topic is that you can consider traditional altruism can be somewhat selfish. After all, many people report “feeling good” when donating their time to volunteering or other worthy causes. Is this personal “feeling good” the primary motivator in some instances of altruism? I think it would be naive to suggest otherwise.
Closing Thoughts
There are clearly complex psychological forces at play when it comes to selfishness and altruism. And I don’t pretend to understand the full picture. For an in-depth perspective on healthy selfishness, read the recently published 2020 paper: Healthy Selfishness and Pathological Altruism: Measuring Two Paradoxical Forms of Selfishness. It’s co-authored by Scott Barry Kaufman and Emanuel Jauk.
The overarching aim of this blog post was to address this topic from a personal perspective. I wanted to reach out to people similar to myself, who give themselves a hard time for being too selfish. If you go deeper into your behavior, you’ll often find some surprisingly positive ripple effects of what you thought were selfishly motivated acts. And hopefully, you’ll go a little bit easier on yourself, as I am trying to do.