A Biological Basis for Altruism?

Our drive to give and to be of help to a neighbor or to a stranger is probably one of the more noble aspects of the human condition. Just why it is that we find ourselves compelled to extend an act of kindness or assistance to someone else has long been an interesting scientific question.

And it will no doubt continue to be a topic of interest to researchers in both the social sciences and the natural sciences, as there seems to be a lack of consensus around whether altruism is innate or conditioned. Tonic recently wrote about University of California Davis researcher Adrian Bell, whose National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research points to the cultural causes of doing good unto others.

The New York Times recently reported on research that supports an alternate view. Developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and author of the recent book Why We Cooperate, finds a decidedly biological basis for altruism, primarily because it appears in humans (as well as in our close relative the chimpanzee) so early in life.

Very young children, even as young as 18 months of age, will display a voluntary drive to assist an adult who has dropped or misplaced an object. According to Tomasello's research, as the Times reports, this helpfulness has appeared in children of this young age across cultures, even ones that have different value systems and expectations regarding social boundaries.

Photo courtesy of *D a r i n k a*, via Flickr