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What is so startling about Grafman and Moll’s 2006 study?

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In 1989, economist James Andreoni introduced the concept of “warm glow giving,” which attempts to explain why people give to charity.

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If our brains have evolved to maximize our own survival, why are we motivated to help others despite incurring personal costs?

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It’s an ongoing question that baffles neuroscientists and evolutionists.

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The economist’s answer is that people engage in “impure altruism”: Instead of being motivated solely by an interest in the welfare of the recipients of their largesse, “warm glow givers” receive utility from the act of giving.

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“Utility” is an important concept used by economists to measure the usefulness a consumer obtains from any object or circumstance (for example, how much one enjoys a movie, or the sense of security one gets from buying a dead bolt).

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In the simplest sense, economists consider utility to be revealed in people’s willingness to pay different amounts for different goods.

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The utility in the case of giving is the warm glow — the positive emotional feeling people get from helping others.

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Moll says that their 2006 study “strongly supports the existence of ‘warm glow’ at a biological level.

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It helps convince people that doing good can make them feel good; altruism therefore doesn’t need to be only sacrifice.”

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Their experiment provided the first evidence that the “joy of giving” has a biological basis in the brain — surprisingly, one that is shared with selfish longings and rewards.

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Altruism, the experiment suggests, is not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges; rather, it is hardwired in the brain and pleasurable.