
People try to do right by each other, no matter the motivation, study finds - pseudolus
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-people.html
======
leto_ii
> "From an evolutionary perspective, it's kind of perplexing that it even
> exists, because you're decreasing your own fitness on behalf of others,"
> Melamed said. "And yet, we see it in bees and ants, and humans and
> throughout all of nature."

I find this concluding remark really amusing. Even after performing the
experiment, the researcher still can't really fathom the possibility that his
views should be reassessed.

If this behavior is present in humans and many other species, couldn't it
simply be that in a more sophisticated way it actually increases fitness?
Faced with these observations, shouldn't you maybe reassess your ideas about
evolution?

~~~
anoplus
Doesn't seem perplexing to me either. Humans are tribal and their survival
depends on teamwork of about ~100 people or so. This is natural on intimate
scale.

What perplexing is to think about how humans can cooperate effectively on a
scale of billion people to solve humanity biggest problems.

As we can see, empathy for humans outside of the tribe is limited and so
different gangs fight each other, let alone different countries.

Maybe we can think about techniques to create empathy among strangers.

~~~
z3t4
I think its in the human nature that we form groups and fight each other, heck
we do it for fun too in games. For all humans on the planet to come together
we would need a common opponent.

~~~
082349872349872
sars-cov-2?

------
mensetmanusman
It depends on who the stranger is.

My grandma grew up on the fjords of Norway on an island with a population of
~100.

The island was split with a very large hill that separate the east from the
west. On the west were the fishers, and on the east were the farmers.

Each side was taught to look down on and distrust the other side...

Humans are very tribal, and for most people, if a stranger looks like they
could join the tribe, they might be offered help.

My black cousin in the military still gets pulled over by police all the time.
When they want to search his vehicle, he is smart enough to ask for a warrant,
after which they use the tactic ‘Lower your voice!’ to escalate.

~~~
jonahbenton
Upvote 1000 times. There's always an "other".

------
corin_
How do you get people into a trial like this without the bias of either
"people kind enough to spend time helping research" or "people who need money
enough that being a paid test subject is worth their time"?

Might not matter for something like a vaccine trial, but for this?

~~~
bonoboTP
My harsh and honest opinion is that this kind of research is useless and is
mostly a waste of resources and most likely serves other motives than we may
think (narratives, signaling etc).

All experiments with virtual money, with artificial lab setups, with people
knowing they are in an experiment are very very biased.

Even if being mean would gain you some money in an artificial experiment,
there are other social factors that can counteract this, including pleasing
the experiment designers, thinking of yourself as a good person. People
probably introspect more in these observed scenarios etc.

You know all those people writing their bachelor and master theses based on
questionnaires filled out by random recruits from social media for the chance
of winning a gift card? I see tons of those. Are they rigorous and valuable
research? Unlikely, but at least they don't get into the press.

We keep falling for this stuff even after the replication crisis, because
science is used by the masses as a replacement of the priesthood. People in
labcoats must say to us with jargon that compassion is good. We are too afraid
of and are still recovering from the shock of the early and crude
interpretation of the Darwinian theory. So we crave the "people are good after
all" message and when there is demand there will be supply.

~~~
inawaytho999
At the same time, billions of people don’t kill the randos they chance upon
most days.

How we annotate reality with numbers matters. I feel like your trying to find
too specific a claim about reality, not the researchers

You’re isolating these headlines to make them useless.

There’s also tons of rhetoric others, outside your filter bubble, encounter
about the end is nigh, send in the troops!

Not every piece of information that we like to share has to be in service of
you, 1 in 7 billion

The study itself is more novel and creates more discourse than your comment.
Which is a bigger waste of resources? People trying to learn data driven
research and habit?

Or your being pedantic about the value as if to dissuade others from such
mechanics unless they’re chasing a result you agree with

Yet we seem to spend little time calling for HN to disable comments to avoid
the descent into entitled whining about others not achieving what you want,
dad

~~~
bonoboTP
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, I'll try to be better in the future. I wanted
to point out how "scientific research proves people are good after all" type
headlines and the foundational problems of psychology as a discipline
(including the replication crisis, the shobby practices and huge leaps of
conclusion) and the societal need for a calming authority interact.

50 years ago it was all about seeing how we all carry evil within and need to
overcome it (Zimbardo, Milgram), today we want to hear "we are fundamentally
good". Of course this research is about one specific thing but people don't
read it for that reason, just like people don't read many special niche
articles usually. This is about us and we seek it out and nod along to these
pop sci articles just like people nodded along to a beautiful preach ("of how
true were the words of the Father Smith this Sunday"). And I'm not saying
science is just another religion, obviously not. But we as a society want it
to take on that role.

The issue is best analyzed from the side of why there is so much demand. The
question of how the researchers conducted the study is secondary. It's way
beyond pedantism on the methodology or trying to say people are bad.

I guess if the above sounds really foreign to you it may take some amount of
reading to get a grip on these ideas, which won't fit in this comment. I'm not
saying I'm definitely right, but it's at least useful to look at it from this
angle.

------
scribu
Title of the paper: "The robustness of reciprocity: Experimental evidence that
each form of reciprocity is robust to the presence of other forms of
reciprocity"

I think the interesting point about this paper isn't the conclusion, which is
unsurprising, but rather the methods used for confirming it (They use linear
mixed models, which I hadn't encountered before).

------
djyaz1200
Human morals/behavior aren't like a fractal that's the same at every level.
Let's see a study like this where much larger amounts are in play.

As a young adult, my dad warned me that people are basically honorable up to
about $10K. In practice, I've found everyone's threshold is different and
fluctuates greatly with their individual situation and the broader economic
situation. For example, right now I'm seeing otherwise successful and decent
folks do really ugly things over 4 figure money.

~~~
jstarfish
> As a young adult, my dad warned me that people are basically honorable up to
> about $10K.

No way. $10k is the lower boundary to litigation being worth anybody's time.
If somebody is going to defraud you, it's going to be for an amount less than
$10k.

Amounts of money higher than that may entice people into doing things they
otherwise wouldn't, sure, but there I'd submit that they were never honorable
in the first place if they can be bought for the right price.

------
marcus_holmes
This matches my experience.

I've practised "paying it forward" and the rewards have been incredible. I've
got way more back than I ever gave. People are always ready to be nice to each
other, but sometimes wary of strangers.

I've seen the other side of it, too. Where people approach situations with a
"what's in it for me" attitude, and get nowhere. Their fear of getting ripped
off, or "losing" in the interaction, stops them from being trusted.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
I wonder if my experiences match yours because I'm white.

~~~
082349872349872
I once lived in a bilingual area in the States. Depending upon how I was
dressed, I would be greeted in either english or spanish[1] when walking into
a shop. My experience was that people were more helpful (to the extent of
addressing me as "paisano") in spanish. I suspect this is because when I was
greeted in english, I was being greeted as an out-group[2] member.

[1] hypothesis: if you have never learned to code-switch, you are probably a
member of a preferred group.

[2] not necessarily due to being classified as anglophone, more likely due to
being classified as tourist.

------
stormdennis
Read something once about the best way to interact with other humans. It
boiled down to, you can scratch someone's back once but you don't scratch it
again until they've scratched yours. If someone does it to you first be sure
to pay them back.

~~~
gowld
It's called "tit-for-tat" in th literature.

~~~
mindcrime
Yep. As I recall, the origin of this idea comes from a series of competitions
arranged by Robert Axelrod[1], where people submitted algorithms to
participate in an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma[2] situation. Tit-for-tat was
one of the simplest algorithms submitted, but yet it won the contest.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Axelrod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Axelrod)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma)

------
stretchwithme
I would say people freely give who feel that they gain from the community far
more than they give. And they do right by others when they feel the community
is doing right by them.

And this is not PER INTERACTION but over the long haul.

People that are not connected to their community strongly, meaning they don't
have mutliple adults protecting, disciplining and sustaining them, aren't as
likely to do right by others or give freely.

Sons without fathers living in the home are far more likely to have behavioral
problems. I think we grow into our social hierarchy or we seek to establish a
new one that competes and clashes with the existing one.

Unfortunately, the trend more and more across most groups is single parent
families.

------
qwertox
There are people who have learned that being kind and generous attracts
people, and once they have got them close to them, they start to use or abuse
them, push them to feed their ego with praise and have them work for them to
live a comfortable life.

The discussions with strangers with their narcissistic self-praises give them
all the kick they desire to feel in their life. Nothing matters more to them.

------
spodek
How do they factor in context and framing?

\- The oceans are filling with plastic so people with perfectly good tap water
can drink bottled water

\- Sea levels rising so people in deserts can cool their homes and offices to
60

\- Aquifers drain for golf courses in the desert

\- Sweatshops, data breaches, 9/11, etc

I'm sure terrorists feel they are doing right by someone when they blow
something up, but even the most zealous must realize not everyone agrees with
them.

~~~
barrkel
Prices don't expose moral costs, so market exchange removes this function
talked about in the article.

~~~
amiga_500
Being priced out is having the choice removed from you. This is about making
the moral choice.

People know plastic bottles pollute, yet westerners continue to buy. Flint
residents have an excuse. Most do not.

~~~
wolfram74
You say including the ethical cost in the price removes the burden of choice,
but I say excluding the cost in the price removes information for the
consumer.

I feel like the lucky 10000[1] also applies to bad things as well. I remember
in high school having a conversation about teen pregnancy with classmates that
wanted to go into medicine and they didn't realize that sex education in some
school districts was so poor that some teenagers literally didn't know that
sex made babies. Not a huge amount, but more than 0%.

[1][https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

~~~
amiga_500
Sure, in many cases. I'd love to see externalities included in the price. But
this is about people "doing the right thing". People know plastic bottles
pollute. They know big cars pollute. Yet they buy them. Because many people do
not do the right thing.

~~~
ardy42
> People know plastic bottles pollute. They know big cars pollute. Yet they
> buy them.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. If you think global warming is a hoax and
your city has no air quality problems, do you know big cars pollute? Do you
know your plastic bottles pollute, if you always put them in a recycle bin
(and never check to see what happens to the contents of those bins)?

~~~
amiga_500
Yes to both questions. Recycling isn't magic. It takes energy. People know big
cars pollute. They don't care.

~~~
ardy42
> Recycling isn't magic. It takes energy.

It does, but the question is do "people" know that. I'd wager a good chunk of
them haven't spent a second thinking about it. It's easier and happier to pat
yourself for dropping your waste into the "right" bin and move on.

> People know big cars pollute. They don't care.

I don't think it's that simple. I think there's a strong consensus that
"pollution" is bad, so resistance morphs into a denial that a particular thing
is a pollutant. Restricting the discussion to CO2 for simplicity: if someone
thinks global warming is a hoax, they'd deny that their car pollutes the air
because they "know" CO2 doesn't cause any harm.

~~~
amiga_500
loads of middle class people have huge cars. they know. they don't believe in
the trash USA global warming as conspiracy thing.

and they don't care.

------
readingnews
These people do not live where I live. Of course, my observation is a singular
data point, but speaking with colleagues through the years, it seems everyone
in this area is of the "I will help you, but what is in it for me" philosophy.
I wonder where they picked these participants from.

~~~
arethuza
Where do you live?

~~~
throwaway0a5e
In my experience people's willingness to be kind is correlated more strongly
with having shared problems that nearly nobody is exempt from. Some
combination of an oppressive climate and limited local wealth seems to be the
ticket for maximizing people's willingness to help each other out.

------
foooobaba
There is a class which is behavioral evolution from stanford which covers
these topics. There are other frameworks to look at it from like individual
selection theory (try to make sure your dna survives) kin selection (your
family shares your dna so try to pass that on as well, even if you sacrifice
yourself). There are even more ways to look but I’m too much of noob to
elaborate on them. But bottom line some behaviors might not help you and your
dna but similar enough dna for you to want to sacrifice yourself. Robert
Sapolsky is the professor and you can find the lectures on youtube, highly
recommend all though i only finished 4 of them so far.

------
fallingfrog
On the other side, if you want to know when people are going to be selfish and
harmful towards one another, look for the situation where they have
unaccountable power over another without consequences. Every time.

There is a reason that the stereotype exists of the mad king or queen yelling
“ off with their heads!” or feeling a pea under 18 mattresses or otherwise
acting like a spoiled toddler. It’s the same reason that police walk around
beating peaceful protesters and acting shocked and indignant that anyone would
object. That’s what power turns a person into.

------
Luc
Lot's of mention of 'in the real world...', only to find they organized a
contrived online game to 'prove' their argument.

------
aaron695
I've just read the 'Media' version of the 'study'

But yes, humans are intrinsically social.

But what's actually matters is how much.

Bending over once a year to pick up rubbish vs spending a day.

What we need it know is how to maximise it in more cases (for good or evil)
these studies are more about clicks. You barely know what's going on when the
cost is so low.

------
have_faith
Is there not a consideration for the act being beneficial for the group
(species) and that considerations have been elevated beyond either of the
individuals concerns subconsciously? Ants are the obvious comparison, being
very quick to sacrifice themselves to maintain a path to food for the group.

------
teekert
Nice book on this subject: [0]

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/12/humankind-a-
ho...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/12/humankind-a-hopeful-
history-by-rutger-bregman-review)

------
LatteLazy
I think an underappreciated factor in the drake equation is whether an
intelligent species is able to form and maintain societies. For all our issues
as a species, we're surprisingly good at forming everything from tribes to
nations...

~~~
neutronicus
One wonders whether the fierce individualism of the Octopus saved us from
being hunted to extinction

~~~
LatteLazy
Humans are interesting because we're one of the few semi-social animals. If
you're tribe/village is whipped out, you'll die soon too. But just because
your group flourishes doesn't mean your genes will even be passed on (like
they would in an ant colony). So we have all these behaviours (like empathy
and cooperation) but they're finely balanced and complex (unlike an ant that
will die for the colony without hesitation). The lack of top down control and
the requirement for cooperation means communication abilities are vital and
have to be complex and suddenly you have a brain that needs to simulate other
brains (empathy) and consciousness is born.

------
collyw
Reminds me of how some newspaper explained that "Covid showed us how unselfish
we were all being" or something to that effect. They conveniently missed the
part when everyone was hoarding toilet paper at the start of the crisis.

~~~
mensetmanusman
Our community has little free libraries on the sidewalks, many of them had
toilet paper in them at the time.

~~~
52-6F-62
Ha. That was also happening here.

We never saw a drastic shortage, though. The store was empty or had limited
supplies for a week or two then they brought in a large shipment and everybody
cooled off.

------
neilwilson
It's a pity they didn't go to the next stage.

Does doing others a favour build up 'social assets' you can call in? Are
people in your debt? For how long?

You could even call it testing the MacGyver Principle. How many favours can
you pull in?

------
question11
They don't outline how they removed culture from the study.

Maybe this applies only to people in Ohio? Or maybe those nice canadians next
door?

------
tw000001
>For this study, which was done online, participants had to decide how much of
a 10-point endowment to give to other people. The points had monetary value to
the participants; giving cost them something.

Totally contrived study which completely ignores culture. Growing up in a
shitty area in NYC for example will teach you that plenty of people are all
too eager to act selfishly even when it is trivial to be considerate.

Soft sciences are a joke and they erode layman credibility in hard sciences.

------
kingkawn
Hilarious how much effort has to go into is realizing how absurd the dogma of
the individual actor is

------
executive
People want to help each other when they shoot each other in the face?

~~~
dathinab
People shooting each other in the face comes normally hand in hand with a form
of dehumanisation.

For example instead of thinking about humans which protests they think about
rioters. Or they see certain kinds of humans depending on skin color or
religion or similar as less "human" as some form of "malformed product of
nature" and other bs*. This circumvents any instinctual natural protections
humans have against harming each other. Oh and for example in case of
companies humans (employees) tend to be reduced to a tool costing some money
and giving something back. Similar thinks often apply to many politicians.

~~~
vitorbaptistaa
This. There is an amazing Black Mirror episode that treads on this subject:
Men Against Fire (S03E05) [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Against_Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Against_Fire)

------
dntbnmpls
What a misleading title.

Apparently there are 4 motivators to benefit others.

One: The recipient of a kindness is inclined to do something nice for the
giver in return.

Two: A person is motivated to do something nice to someone that she saw be
generous to a third person.

Three: A person is likely to do good in the presence of people in their
network who might reward their generosity.

Four: A person is likely to "pay it forward" to someone else if someone has
done something nice for her.

They did a online "study" where they mixed and matched the motivators to see
how it affected people's "giving" ( points tied to money ). It's hard to tell
from the article, but the assumption was that #1 would dominate people's
motivation to give ( return the favor ), but the "study" showed that all 4
motivations and all the permutations still influenced the giving.

So people do "right by each other" given these 4 motivators which ultimately
is selfish because they all imply you have gotten something already or you
hope to gain something by "doing right".

> "From an evolutionary perspective, it's kind of perplexing that it even
> exists, because you're decreasing your own fitness on behalf of others,"
> Melamed said. "And yet, we see it in bees and ants, and humans and
> throughout all of nature."

I can't believe that a "scientist" would even say such nonsense. It isn't
evolutionarily perplexing at all. We see it throughout all of nature because
it doesn't decrease your fitness on behalf of others. Social networking and
cooperation isn't evolutionarily perplexing.

~~~
gwd
> Apparently there are 4 motivators to benefit others.

The article says "Scientists previously had determined that four motivators
influenced people to behave in a way that benefited other people."

But that completely leaves out the fact that, you know, sometimes helping
other people _feels good_. Why do people watch a sunset? Why do they listen to
music? Why do people do exercises or read books, or have sex? The most basic
reason for anything is that it gives people pleasure.

Now, you can come up with some kind of evolutionary reason _why those
activities are pleasurable_ , but given that helping other people can be
pleasurable, you don't need to come up with any deep psychological reason
beyond that.

And really, from a moral point of view, the purpose of social reward / shame
mechanisms is to get you to to act in a caring way towards other people, _so
that_ you experience the pleasure of doing so, and then start doing it for its
own sake.

The best sort of person, after all, isn't the person who helps someone else
for social status, or because they're afraid of retribution, or looking for a
payback later. The best sort of person is the person who genuinely enjoys
seeing someone else happy.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> The article says "Scientists previously had determined that four motivators
> influenced people to behave in a way that benefited other people."

I know. That's why I listed the 4 that was mentioned in the article.

The rest of your comment has nothing to do with my comment or the article so
I'll just ignore it. Pleasure, morality and best person are really
philosophical questions better left to another thread.

------
dirtybirdnj
I completely reject this idea, it's 100% antithetical to the experience I've
had in life. People are inherently bad and lack ethics until educated or
exposed to it in a group setting. Even then a decent majority of people will
continue to adopt a selfish mindset.

I'd posit that as you become wealthier and more successful, your capacity to
practice empathy and "doing the right thing" significantly diminishes quickly
to a zero sum. You cannot manage above N number "other people" you don't see
and interact with in person without mentally converting them into a resource
or a number.

The motivation to do the right thing drops out when you don't need societal /
communal acceptance and validation of yourself and your actions.

When you're rich enough to not give a fuck, fuck em. I got mine.

Pretty sure this is what's destroying America.

