Almost everyone likes the more prosocial people among us and dislikes the more antisocial types. The more extreme the behaviour the more we like or dislike them. For example, most people revere the truly saintly. I went further and found out how good the saintly really are, and what makes them different from the rest of us.
America’s General Social Survey proved useful. I found 11 questions on how frequently respondents engage in altruistic behaviours, ranging from letting someone butt into a queue or giving someone directions to donating blood. Added together these formed a scale with scores ranging from 0 to 22. The average score was right in the middle and only 1 in 1,000 people had a score at the extremes. So, this range of behaviours is a decent measure of almost everyone, except the saintliest or nastiest.
Scoring less than 2 on the scale is equivalent to being altruistically retarded. Those that do are so unhelpful that simply giving someone directions is too much trouble. The 10% least altruistic score 5 or less. That is at most one of the less demanding helpful behaviours every two months.
The 10% most altruistic manage at least 1.5 altruistic acts per month. Engaging in all 11 of the behaviours at least twice a year makes one an altruistic ‘genius’ – at the same level as the conscientious objector. One act of altruistic kindness every two weeks, including some more demanding acts like giving blood every 2-3 months, is enough.
What about the saintlier types, like conscientious objectors, Nobel Peace laureates and actual saints?
Only 1 in 384 men in the First World War conscientiously objected and 1 in 1,023 ended up serving time in jail. The chances of winning a Nobel Peace prize (from the country with the most per capita winners) is 1 in 800,000. The chances of beatification or sainthood are very remote – only 1 in 2.8 million and 1 in 7.4 million respectively.
I can give an indirect sense of how altruistically demanding it is to be as good a person as someone at one of those off-the-scale levels.
The step up from giving to charity to giving blood is about as big as the step up from giving blood to conscientiously objecting. The step up from conscientious objection to winning the Nobel Peace prize is about the same magnitude. Think of these jumps as relative rather than absolute increases, so the jump up from giving to charity to winning the Nobel is not three times the difference between charity and giving blood but that difference cubed. The saint however is as far above the person donating blood multiple times a year as that person is above an altruistic moron.
Acts of altruism
Mother Theresa’s formula for goodness was daily meditation/prayer and acts of altruism. My formula for sainthood tells you how many acts of altruism you need. You need to maintain an average of about one per week, and for many of those acts you should be generous enough to incur a fair amount of inconvenience or self-sacrifice in the process. It helps a lot if you are an active member of a group that does such things – like a church.
What makes people more, or less, prosocial?
I found some surprises. Some things you would expect to matter do not. Religion does not matter. Whether you believe in God, what religion, theology or denomination you subscribe to or whether you are fundamentalist, orthodox or liberal do not make a difference. Neither does your religious fervour and frequency of prayer. It does matter if you are an active participant in a religious group.
Political preferences do not matter. There are no differences between liberals and conservatives or Democrats and Republicans – though taking the trouble to vote is associated with greater altruism.
The religious and political findings tell us that altruism is not about ideas or belief but some more basic temperament that inspires active social involvement. That temperamental factor is not gender. There are no differences between men and women on the scale. Another surprise is that being law-abiding, at least as measured by traffic violations, does not matter either.
Most religions and traditions put a lot of emphasis on sexual behaviour as a measure of virtue. It is not however related to prosocial behaviour. Extramarital sex, including affairs, is not related to altruistic behaviour. Ironically, paying for or receiving money for sex is associated with greater prosocial behaviour in general. One can be saintly and sexually ‘sinful’ at the same time.
Yet another surprise is what is associated with altruistic behaviour. There are large differences associated with more education, higher social class, higher incomes and youth. This is not simply because they are more able to afford giving to charity. The pattern holds for behaviours that have nothing to do with money, like giving up a seat, volunteering time or donating blood.
Saintly impulse
Intelligence is positively related to education, class and income so it probably plays a role that leads to altruistic behaviour. William James (in his Varieties of Religious Experience) said that when the saintly impulse occurs with a feeble intellect the result is one of two problems; either a loss of all practical interests because contemplating God takes all the subject’s mental resources, or cruel fanaticism because the mind settles on superficial ideas of what it means to honour God.
To produce exceptional altruism from the saintly impulse requires surplus mental resources and intellectual depth.
Having tolerant socially liberal attitudes is associated with greater prosocial behaviour. Those who score higher on the altruism behaviour scale are less likely to regard sex outside of marriage or homosexual sex as always wrong. They tend to favour legal abortion and the legalisation of marijuana and to oppose capital punishment. At the same time, they are also inclined to think government should be doing less and not more. Libertarianism is the political philosophy that encompasses this combination of social liberalism with economic conservatism.
Many think libertarians are selfish but they are likely the most altruistic political group. For those who are interested, in South Africa the Freedom Foundation is one of the staunchest advocates of libertarianism.
[Image: Ramez E. Nassif on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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