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Electric Shock Study Suggests We'd Rather Hurt Ourselves Than Others
sciencehabit writes: If you had the choice between hurting yourself or someone else in exchange for money, how altruistic do you think you'd be? In one infamous experiment, people were quite willing to deliver painful shocks to anonymous victims when asked by a scientist. But a new study that forced people into the dilemma of choosing between pain and profit finds that participants cared more about other people's well-being than their own. It is hailed as the first hard evidence of altruism for the young field of behavioral economics.
Shocking.
Really I am not going to shock some for fifteen cents. There's also no way I can take 15$ as worthwhile for being shocked.
My guess is these were all volunteers participating in the study "for science?"
My guess is that introduces a selection bias towards altruism. Test any of the several thousand people I've worked for, with, or very near over the past 20 years and I would guess that most of them wouldn't hesitate to shock the other person as much as was allowed, especially if they could be relatively certain the other person could not shock them back as a direct response.
I just hurts me so much to hurt you. I'd rather hurt myself. I feel so bad about hurting you first.
Oh! woe is me. You're such a jerk for being my victim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_No_Disgrace_Like_Home
Did Peter Venkman come up with this test?
If they'd included the option to zap Bennett Haselton, I'm sure it would have swamped all the other possibilities.
Unattractive hipster girls?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Despite capitalist pop-philosophy, humans are not inherently selfish. Nor are they inherently altriustic.
Some are selfish, some are not. It also depends on the situation and the stakes / risks.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Have gnu, will travel.
Le Jeu de la Mort (The Game of Death)
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I think I saw a similar electric shock experiment on PornHub.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
Obvious to me. I work on computers so I've been shocked so many times I think I've built up an immunity.
“You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.”
Men also would rather shock themselves than not shock themselves, if there's nothing else to do for 15 minutes.
1) Compose your team entirely of specialists who are focused on one small piece of the puzzle
2) Find a psychopath who will make ethical compromises in the name of efficiency that well adjusted people would consider morally reprehensible to coordinate your team
3) Keep your team from seeing the big picture so they don't revolt
4) Keep outsiders from realizing how your efficiency is achieved so they don't shun you
5) Profit!
You get bonus points for setting all this up, making yourself the recipient of the inevitable rewards, keeping yourself ignorant of the particulars and sleeping like a baby.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
A lot of lonely empty people in this world, and they are so afraid of being feeling left alone they would _anything_ to attract attention
In fact, many of those who committed suicide are did what they did, in the vain hope that their death would attract some attention
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The problem is defining and measuring "selfishness" or "altruism". The words sound solid, but these aren't things you can measure directly like height or weight, but these are fuzzy, abstract qualities we can only infer indirectly from behavior. So we create scenarios -- in the lab if we are research psychologists, in our imagination if we are philosophers -- that try to put people in one category or another.
The problem with these reductive scenarios is that they ARE reductive. Real situations are multi-facted, multi-layered, contradictory and ambiguous. How we deal with that complexity is what really defines who we are.
I'm not saying experiments like this aren't interesting or useful, the problem is that they're much harder to interpret than they look. It's jumping to conclusions to say it shows that people sometimes care more about other than themselves. Maybe some of them did, but I can think of a half dozen other explanations.
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people shock themselves because they dont want to be viewed as someone who would shock someone else... its an attempt to save face and acquire resources by pretending to be nice, which can have the same results as being nice, as long as the facade is kept.
The ways you modify your behavior because of what other people will think is still part of who you are. In fact I think it's a major part of your personality.
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"`Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger."
The toilets in public restrooms in America are generally covered in urine and/or destroyed. Fuck over everyone else is alive and well in American culture.
The study, in case you don't want to read the article, paired people off (so they didn't see each other but knew the other person was there), then one was offered a choice of various "shock bundles" (like 10 for 7$, or 15 for 10$ or the like) along with the choice who should get the shocks while this "decider" always got the money, no matter who he dealt the shocks.
People now taking shocks for the money they take doesn't say anything about altruism. It says something about what people perceive as fair. I get the money, so I should do the "work" for it. If you want altruism, check out how many will take the shocks while giving away the money!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So how many of you, when in a restauraunt in a strange town that you know you're not likely to ever go again, will stiff the waitperson? And if any of you have once worked on a wait staff-- how often were you stiffed on the tip?
"It is hailed as the first hard evidence of altruism for the young field of behavioral economics."
Altruism is one of those things that, according to how strongly you define it - weakly, merely something with no obvious reward, or strongly, as something that has genuinely no benefit - either MUST, or CANNOT (as a general trait), exist.
The bottom line is that man has evolved as a social species. In that word "social" is the numb of the whole thing, because it describes a type of behaviour in which individuals sometimes behave in ways that forego immediate personal benefit for the benefit of their social grouping (and what is that but altruism, in its weaker definition?). And it's also clear that such social behaviour doesn't have to take place at the reasoned, "if I do this then..." level; social behaviour is found in very many animal species, most of whom are certainly not capable of thinking through the future consequences of the choices facing them. They simply behave in the way they've evolved to behave - which includes the weak "altruistic" behaviour that benefits the group as a whole.
Altruism in its stronger definition, by contrast, has to be behaviour that not only doesn't benefit the individual but doesn't benefit the larger social grouping either (because benefits to the group are likely to benefit to the individual too, if only indirectly - an obvious example would be a sterile bee stinging, and dying, to defend the hive that is its own, indirect genetic future). Such acts may occur from time to time in individuals, but the tendency to perform them is unlikely to hang around, let alone spread, as general behaviour within the group, because (by definition) it has no benefit to either the group or the individual - they serve no purpose. Other, more profitable modes of behaviour will win out instead.
The sort of behaviour in the experiment described is social behaviour. If it's suggested that it's also evidence of altruism if the weaker type - well, well done for finding an example, but no big deal. It had to be there to find.
In both the Millgram study and the Zambarano Prison Experiment.
But the other thing that comes out of both studies is that the vast majority of us will follow those we believe are in authority. Then there are people like me who think authority is stupid.
Because I would shock the hell out of a stranger for money. And laugh all the way to the bank.
A better experiment would be to have participants choose to shock themselves or shock other people "for the greater good".
People are primed for all kinds of oppressive behavior as long as it doesn't hit them and if it makes them feel morally superior: true or false? Let's find out.
Obviously the study didn't include cops.
... to study if the results might be affected by characterizing the third person, to the subject, as holding different views than the subject. Say, for instance, portraying the third party as a liberal when the subject has identified themself as a conservative.
Altruism has nothing to do with hurting oneself needlessly. It has to do with putting another's needs above one's own. In this study people were more willing to hurt themselves for money than they are willing to hurt other people for money. If money were not involved, there would not necessarily be any motivation to do either.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So many Enlightening Experiments: * Get 10 people * Attach 5 of them up to electrodes. * Attach the other 5 up to electrodes, with 6 buttons - 5 will deliver shocks to each of the people without buttons, 1 will deliver a shock to themselves. * Apply financial incentives * Observe result. Variant 1: * Make sure participants have no way of knowing who shocked them - use some kind of automated system to pay them. * Observe Result Variant 2: * Use 10 people with 10 buttons * Observe Result Hypothesis: People are a lot less altruistic when they think they are not being watched / can get away with it!
In that case the choice should be to either shock someone and get money for it or refuse to do it and let the other person get the money instead (while nobody gets a shock). THAT would be a test of altruism vs. selfishness. What's easier for you, cause someone pain to get money or letting the money go, knowing that the person you didn't put into pain gets it instead.
Also an interesting tidbit that isn't quite clear is whether the person had only the choice to give himself or the other person the shocks, or to refuse it altogether.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Mine was kind enough to help me punch myself before giving him my lunch money.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Just gimme a cattle prod and an opportunity to shock the fuck out of people without legal consequences!
-- 29A the number of the Beast