Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

To set the stage for his empirical studies, Batson argues that any noble or altruistic act can have multiple motives. Seemingly altruistic actions—donations to charity, staying late to help a colleague, climbing a tree to rescue a child’s kitten, helping an elderly woman cross an icy street—are often driven by selfish motives. One such selfish motivation is to reduce the distress we ourselves feel at the sight of another person suffering (it is still quite remarkable that we suffer at the sight of another suffering). A second is the allure of social praise—we help those in need to win those gold stars in the classroom, the Boy Scout badges, public service awards, approving head nods of parents, and to burnish our reputations in the eyes of our peers.

Batson also maintains, in theorizing that would have warmed Darwin’s heart or more precisely his vagus nerve, that there is an other-oriented state that can be the wellspring of altruistic behavior: compassion. The question is how to document that this selfless state of compassion produces altruism. Batson’s solution to this challenge is to put people in experiments where they are confronted with someone in need, and their experience of compassion and selfish motives—for example, to slip out of helping with little notice—clash. If one observes altruistic action in this clash of selfish motives and compassion, we can infer that compassion won the day and motivated the altruistic action. It’s a bit like testing a new lover by allowing him or her possibilities of intimate affection from others. If in this clash of competing affections he or she returns, faithful, doughy-eyed and devoted, one has learned about commitment.

In a first study, Batson had participants watch another participant (actually a confederate) complete several trials of a memory task. After each mistake, this individual received—of course—a wince-producing, shoulder-jolting shock. In one condition, the easy-escape condition, the participant was only required to watch the confederate receive two of the ten shocks. At that moment, the participant was free to leave. Here the participant should be guided by the selfish inclination to reduce personal distress in witnessing the other person suffer; all the participant had to do was leave. In the difficult-to-escape condition, the participant had to watch the other person take all ten shocks.

After the first two trials, the individual receiving the shocks began to look a little pale. He mumbled for a glass of water. He mentioned feelings of discomfort and recounted a traumatic shock experience from childhood. While the experimenter figured out how to respond to this complex turn of events, the participant reported on how distressed and compassionate he or she was feeling at that moment. Then the experimenter hit upon an idea: Would the participant take some of the shocks on behalf of the other individual, clearly dreading the prospects of more shocks? The critical test for our present interests was in the condition in which participants were feeling compassion but were allowed to leave. Which branch of their nervous system prevailed—the selfish or the compassionate? The compassionate. These participants, feeling the swell of compassion in their chest but hearing the voice of pure self-interest—they could just pick up and leave—volunteered to take several more shocks on behalf of the other participant.

One worry you might have is that participants who took more shocks did so simply to impress the experimenter. Fair enough, a reasonable critique. Does compassion drive altruistic action even in purely anonymous settings? Does the absence of the opportunity to gain social rewards—the esteem of others—dampen our nobler inclinations? This age-old question motivated Batson’s next study. In this study, female participants conversed with another participant (a confederate) through an exchange of notes while seated in separate cubicles. Some participants were told to be as objective as possible when reading the notes, to concentrate on the facts at hand. Other participants were asked to imagine as vividly as possible how the communicator—the other person—felt; they were led to feel compassion.