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We send money to help famine victims halfway around the world. We campaign to save whales and oceans. We stay up all night to comfort a friend with a broken relationship. People will at times risk - even lose - their lives for others, including strangers. Why do we do these things? What motivates such behavior? Altruism in Humans takes a hard-science look at the possibility that we humans have the capacity to care for others for their sakes rather than simply for our own. Based on an extensive series of theory-testing laboratory experiments conducted over the past 35 years, this book details a theory of altruistic motivation, offers a comprehensive summary of the research designed to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis, and considers the theoretical and practical implications of this conclusion. Authored by the world's preeminent scholar on altruism, this landmark work is an authoritative scholarly resource on the theory surrounding altruism and its potential contribution to better interpersonal relations and a better society.
Are our efforts to help others ever driven solely by altruistic motivation, or is our ultimate goal always some form of self- benefit (egoistic motivation)? This volume reports the development of an empirically-testable theory of altruistic motivation and a series of experiments designed to test that theory. It sets the issue of egoism versus altruism in its larger historical and philosophical context, and brings diverse experiments into a single, integrated argument. Readers will find that this book provides a solid base of information from which questions surrounding the existence of altruistic motivation can be further investigated.
"Empathy has received a lot of attention since the turn of the millennium. Barack Obama championed it as a vital but underutilized national resource-famously saying in a commencement address at Northwestern University in 2006, "There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit." As Obama explained two weeks earlier at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, empathy for him meant "to put yourself in other people's shoes-to see the world from their eyes.""--
This 1990 book provides an examination of research and theory into the role that emotion plays in influencing social behavior. The contributors investigate a number of important domains such as aggression, altruism, romantic attraction, and consumer behavior and the role that affect plays in instigating and regulating these behaviors.
With contributions from well-established scholars as well as young rising stars in the field, this Handbook bridges a wide variety of diverse perspectives, research methodologies, and theory, and provides a foundation for this new and rapidly growing field.
Recent work on empathy theory, research, and applications, by scholars from disciplines ranging from neuroscience to psychoanalysis. There are many reasons for scholars to investigate empathy. Empathy plays a crucial role in human social interaction at all stages of life; it is thought to help motivate positive social behavior, inhibit aggression, and provide the affective and motivational bases for moral development; it is a necessary component of psychotherapy and patient-physician interactions. This volume covers a wide range of topics in empathy theory, research, and applications, helping to integrate perspectives as varied as anthropology and neuroscience. The contributors discuss the e...
Cross-disciplinary, cutting-edge work on human empathy from the perspectives of social, cognitive, developmental and clinical psychology and cognitive/affective neuroscience. In recent decades, empathy research has blossomed into a vibrant and multidisciplinary field of study. The social neuroscience approach to the subject is premised on the idea that studying empathy at multiple levels (biological, cognitive, and social) will lead to a more comprehensive understanding of how other people's thoughts and feelings can affect our own thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In these cutting-edge contributions, leading advocates of the multilevel approach view empathy from the perspectives of social, ...
This book examines the interplay of positive and negative influences on human behavior from a variety of perspectives. It contains contributions from recognized pioneers of research on prosocial behavior. It also includes contributions from widely-recognized experts in their subject areas. It examines several prosocial emotions, such as compassionate love, gratitude, generosity, and forgiveness, showing how these arise in individuals and groups and how they can be fostered.