Hey everybody!
Finally I would like to refer to my survey: „Are human beings by nature empathic or egoistic?” Thanks to all of you who have voted! As we can see from the result, only 7 people answered but what I consider as interesting is that those of you, who have voted, said that humans are by nature egoistic. NONE of you has voted for “empathic”. Of course we also have to take into consideration some comments, saying that it is very hard to find an answer.
Well, I have to admit that it was indeed a though question. Many philosophers, psychologists and behavior scientists are asking themselves this question. Nevertheless more and more scientists refuse the idea of egoistic human beings. The reasons for a change of thinking are to be found in the mergence of brain research, evolutionary biology and experimental economy. By combining these disciplines, scientists create a new idea of man, characterizing the Homo sapiens as fair, cooperative and empathic.
You wonder why? Well, remember Frans de Waal? His work has emphasized animal empathy and even the origins of morality. Drawing from fieldwork and laboratory research on chimpanzees, bonobos, and capuchins, de Waal shows that many animals are predisposed to take care of one another, come to one another’s aid, and, in some cases, take life-saving action.
To give you an example I would like to show you a short extract of one of de Waal’s findings:
“In one experiment, we placed two capuchin monkeys side by side: separate, but in full view. One of them needed to barter with us with small plastic tokens. The critical test came when we offered a choice between two differently colored tokens with different meaning: one token was “selfish,” the other “prosocial.” If the bartering monkey picked the selfish token, it received a small piece of apple for returning it, but its partner got nothing. The prosocial token, on the other hand, rewarded both monkeys equally at the same time. The monkeys gradually began to prefer the prosocial token. The procedures were repeated many times with different pairs of monkeys and different sets of tokens, and the monkeys kept picking the prosocial option showing how much they care about each other’s welfare.”
In my opinion this is really interesting! I mean, the capuchin monkey could simply be happy to get some food. Why should he care about the other one if that doesn’t lead to an advantage to himself? Why has he done it? He doesn’t gain anything by doing it!
Another good example is the following:
“After one chimpanzee has been attacked by another, for example, a bystander will go over to gently embrace the victim until he or she stops yelping. The tendency to console is so strong that Nadia Koths, a Russian scientist who raised a juvenile chimpanzee a century ago, said that when her charge escaped to the roof of the house, there was only one way to get him down. Holding out food would not be the trick; the only way would be for her to sit down and sob, as if she were in pain. The young ape would rush down from the roof to put his arm around her. The empathy of our closest evolutionary relatives exceeds even their desire for bananas.”
According to Frans de Waal empathy is a behavior that has evolved in mammals. Therefore empathy is in fact a valuable natural impulse of human beings, a legacy from our primate forebears, built into us.
So now let’s de Waal answer the question whether humans are naturally moral creatures, or whether we learn morality only through hard work! He mostly agrees with Charles Darwin, who called morality an outgrowth of social instincts and viewed it as an evolutionary product. “It’s an old debate within philosophy. And it’s a debate within biology,” de Waal says. “That’s where the interface between my work and philosophy occurs.”
Hmm… maybe there is more empathy into us than we would like to admit?
