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Altruism is a primary impulse, not a discipline

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2003

George Ainslie  and
Nick Haslam
George Ainslie
Affiliation:
Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Coatesville, PA 19320 George.Ainslie@med.va.gov www.picoeconomics.com
Nick Haslam
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia
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Abstract

Intertemporal bargaining theory based on the hyperbolic discounting of expected rewards accounts for how choosing in categories increases self-control, without postulating, as Rachlin does, the additional rewardingness of patterns per se. However, altruism does not seem to be based on self-control, but on the primary rewardingness of vicarious experience. We describe a mechanism that integrates vicarious experience with other goods of limited availability.

Information

Type
Brief Report
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , April 2002 , pp. 251
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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