So, I am reading all these articles for one of my classes (Economic Behavior) and some interesting ideas come up once in a while. In particular, one that caught my eye was on the norm of self-seeking. Basically, the concept is this: We have become more self-seeking over time because at some point someone told us that we, as rational economic beings, are always and only looking for ways to maximize our utility, to get the most out of every exchange for ourselves with no thought to the other person other than what is necessary to keep them exchanging with us. This is not a foreign concept to psychology - any long discussions on whether or not true altruism exists will attest to that. But at the same time, psychologists are very aware that people do strange things that don't seem to make rational sense, also in economic behavior. There are countless experiments and studies on the anomolies and "errors" of people's economic behavior. In fact, we are very often not rational, not self-seeking, and do not always maximise our utility. More specifically to this particular article, we, at least some of us, care about fairness. Now, there are different kinds of economic beings: those who care about fairness (prosocials), those who only care about their own outcomes (proselfs). You can actually measure who is which with a test that focuses on attitudes toward social issues. Anyway, some studies seem to indicate that the difference between these two sorts my partly have been enhanced by this self-seeking norm; in fact, we have all been influenced by this norm. Basically, we have been told for so long that we are only and always self-seeking that we believe it; we can easily think of many examples supporting this idea; we are suspicious even, of anyone's seemingly selfless behavior. As such, we are surprisingly (or not surprisingly?) not very willing to admit to being un-self-seeking. People are more likely to give to a charity if they can get something back, even if it is something small like a pen or a t-shirt. The theory is that this isn't because we are so willing to give large amounts of money for pens or t-shirts, it's because we can justify it later: "Yeah, I gave some money to the AIDS foundation, but I just wanted a t-shirt..."; "I walked with the breast-cancer walk cause it seemed fun and I needed to get out...". People who become involved in organizations working for some cause are generally better accepted by the people within the organization and without, if they have been affected by whatever it is they are working for or if they have some sort of personal investment; obviously you couldn't possibly care the cause for single mothers if you yourself are not a single mother or child of a single mother, right?
A major role in all this is played by our expectations of the behavior of others. We believe that everyone, including ourselves though perhaps to a lesser extent, are self-seeking; so we act as if they are all self-seeking. We justify our own un-self-seeking behavior, and we mistrust the apparent un-self-seeking behavior of others. Further, in any sort of exchange situation, we act as if they other is trying to get the most out of it at our cost so we must as well, perhaps in a way protecting ourselves. In experiments where one person is the allocator and the other is the recipient, the allocator divides a sum of money and gives part of it to the recipient, and the recipient accepts (in which case he gets only what he was offered and the allocator keeps the rest) or rejects the offer (in which case no one gets anything). Now, usually the allocator will give 50% or close to it; this could be fairness or it could be fear of rejection if the offer is too low. But in a version of this game where the recipient only has limited power, so if he rejects they both get a lesser percentage each, something strange happens. The less power the recipient has, the less money the allocator offers. But, when the recipient has zero power, the allocator suddenly switches and gives 50% again. Why is that? Some theories say that the powerlessness of the recipient invokes social attitudes, like when taking care of a baby or a helpless old lady. I personally think it has more to do with the other person being completely unable to act in a self-seeking manner and not the allocator is free to also no longer act in a self-seeking manner. Or maybe something combining the two ideas. Interestingly, those who have been highly trained in the economic theories that assume self-seeking nature often act in a more self-seeking manner. Studies comparing economics students to students from various other study subjects shower a large difference in the amount of money offered as allocators. Is this because they suddenly become more selfish? Or does it maybe have something more to do with their expectations of the behaviors and attitudes of others?
This is not to say that people are always and only really self-less under our charade of self-seekingness. There is too much evidence supporting self-seeking behavior. But it is nice to know that we are capable of being self-less, probably more so than we give ourselves credit for.
