What is so startling about Grafman and Moll’s 2006 study?
In 1989, economist James Andreoni introduced the concept of “warm glow giving,” which attempts to explain why people give to charity.
If our brains have evolved to maximize our own survival, why are we motivated to help others despite incurring personal costs?
It’s an ongoing question that baffles neuroscientists and evolutionists.
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.
“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).
In the simplest sense, economists consider utility to be revealed in people’s willingness to pay different amounts for different goods.
The utility in the case of giving is the warm glow — the positive emotional feeling people get from helping others.
Moll says that their 2006 study “strongly supports the existence of ‘warm glow’ at a biological level.
It helps convince people that doing good can make them feel good; altruism therefore doesn’t need to be only sacrifice.”
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.
Altruism, the experiment suggests, is not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges; rather, it is hardwired in the brain and pleasurable.