When you act altruistically, are you motivated more by the greater good you’re achieving, or by the ego boost you get from your munificent actions? While you may be prompted to do good for both reasons, they are in fact distinct. Interestingly, the two separate catalysts are embodied by two new books.
This week marks the release of former President Clinton’s new book, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, in which he uses real-world anecdotes to outline six ways of giving: giving time, giving things, giving skills, giving new beginnings (aka reconciliation), giving good ideas, and gifts that keep on giving.
In May, we saw the publication of Why Good Things Happen to Good People: The Exciting New Research that Proves the Link Between Doing Good and Living a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life, which purports a causal connection between altruism and improved physical and mental health.
While both books urge people to do good deeds, they stress different reasons for doing so. Giving is a call to action, encouraging a political movement of sorts with the goal of achieving a greater global good. Why Good Things Happen to Good People is more focused on doing good in order to make yourself feel better (literally). So. What exactly is the difference, and does it matter?
It matters to columnist Meghan Daum, who writes weekly for the LA Times. In a recent essay she examines Why Good Things Happen to Good People and talks about the connection between goodness and smugness:
By viewing magnanimity as a personal goal (like getting tighter abs) rather than simple civility (like not spitting at people), we turn goodness into a form of self-help. We give to others not because it’s the right thing to do but because, as with yoga or meditation or high colonics, it helps us feel better.
Her quibble is that “too many people seem to see goodness as the kind of tree that doesn’t exist unless someone is around to hear it fall.” But if good deeds result either way, does the motivation behind them really matter? Sure, boasting about your goodness is unsightly, but does it taint the goodness itself? Tell us, why do you do good?
I used to belong to a group that camped, and this phrase was repeated until it was etched into our brains: Leave the place in better shape than you found it. [It centered around picking up trash and having minimal environmental impact.] It works pretty good as a philosopy of life, too. Check out the “Time” magazine article on “The Case for National Service” (Sept. 10)for more interesting ideas about “doing good.”
Why not talk about the good you are doing? Seems like a more useful thing to talk about than a lot of other things…
I think there’s a distinction between talking about the good you’re doing and boasting. Talking about the good you may be doing in the context of your life story is a fine — in fact you may invite needed criticism to refine your efforts or inspire others to think outside the ego-only bun. But boasting is more like exaggerating (if not totally inventing) the good you’re probably not even doing.
You have a good point, but it seems like there’s such a knee jerk reaction about how “unsightly” simply talking about doing good is (which it seems like Megan Daum expressing). Maybe it’s just part of the whole cynicism/negativity thing…
“achieving a greater global good” is not *why* someone does good… that’s just skimming over the surface motivation. The connection between doing good and being smug is something to be weary of, but I think someone who says “I do this to make the whole world a better place!” is at least as likely to be smug about it as someone who says “I do this because it makes me feel good”, if not more so.
“it’s the right thing to do” is merely a superficial conscious motivation. What is the real unconscious reason underlying that? The only difference between those who “do good” in order to “achieve a global goal”/”do what’s right” and those who do it to feel good/boost their ego, is the latter group are aware of the real reasons they do things.
Neither motivation is right or wrong… I really don’t think people’s conscious motivations matter on this one. All that matters is the outcome (part of which would be measured against the smugness scale).
If you do something good and it makes you feel good, well, then good.
Why do I do good things or “the right thing” in a given situation? If I were being honest, I’d have to credit an upbringing infused with a heavy emphasis on politeness and consideration for others, mainly enforced by giant heaping doses of shame. It is not uncommon for me to do something which I believe to be the right thing with a sigh of exasperation, as though I could hear my Mom’s voice telling me I have no choice.
Smugness is what happens when people use their charity contributions (even when it amounts to a trivial portion of their time and/or money) to not just portray themselves as good people, but as leverage to feel that they are better than ordinary people. If you’ve worked in non-profits for any length of time you learn to recognize this attitude from across a crowded room and, generally, to smile politely and ignore it. The bank will still cash the check no matter how smug the signatory is.
I think enlightened self-interest is probably the reason most people do good (or try to do good).
The idea of the non-zero-sum game is a codification of this. In a zero-sum game (according to classic game theory) if I do something for you, you get “+1″ and I get “-1,” leaving the total for both parties at “Zero.” Many people who consider themselves hard-headed pragmatists, or realists, act on this principle. “If you win, I lose.”
However, if you begin to assign “point values” to actions or gifts based on their usefulness at a given time, you get possible outcomes of more than zero for each transaction. An example: If I hold the door for you, call it “-1″ for me, based on effort and time. But let’s say you’ve got an armful of groceries, you’re late for work, there’s a murderer chasing after you, etc. You gain “+5″ (again, my arbitrary and arguable assignment, but you get the point) because of the advantages conferred on you, and the end total of the transaction is “+4.”
So now you have a system in which increasing surplus “points” can be stored up, or used to carry out more complex transactions, leading to further complexity, further altruistic endeavors, and so on. The moral of the story is that any time it’s even minutely easier for you to do something for someone than for them to do it for themselves, you should, because you’re adding to the sum total of “+’s” in the world, which you could also call “Good.”
I didn’t make this up (really!), it’s mostly cribbed and paraphrased from “Non-Zero” by Robert Wright, which is in turn a popularization of some of R.L. Trivers,’ Robert Axelrod’s, and others’ investigations into the evolution of cooperation (for further information, look up “reciprocal altruism” on Wikipedia).