Better to give than to receive? Apparently we’re wired to feel that way.
Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Adam Smith all described the power of self-interest in moving the world along. Yet recent brain-based research indicates that our biology also disposes us to be generous.
A new book by science writer Elizabeth Svoboda, who also published an article this week in the Wall Street Journal, highlights findings on the neurology of altruism. We have evolved to be altruistic because giving feels good.
Some scientists have hypothesized that such behavior helps guarantee the survival of family members, contributing to the survival of the species. Others have considered that altruism is a way to ensure a strong social group, which will help guarantee the individual’s survival as part of such a group. But what is the mechanism? How does it work?
According to Svoboda neuroscientist Jordan Gorfman studied veterans with traumatic brain injury, and aided by new technology in the form of fMRI scanning began looking for centers of empathy and generosity in the brain.
Gorfman discovered that when people decide to give to a cause they consider worthy, it activated the same brain areas that respond to food, sex, and getting money. The conclusion: giving is its own reward. It gives us intrinsic pleasure.
Giving also stimulates the area of our brain that is responsible for social bonding, suggesting that giving is strongly related to our desire for social bonding, and that this bonding is one of the things that pushes us to behave unselfishly. Being with, and helping others also makes us feel good.
My colleague Aviva Werner told me about Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, who died in the 1950s, and wrote a famous discourse about loving kindness (translated into English in the book Strive for Truth) in which he explained that the Hebrew word “ahavah” (love) comes from the root “hav,” which means to give. Giving leads to love.
So, Jews are natural neuroscientists. I guess that's what 5774 years of tradition gives you--deep understanding of what really goes on in people's heads.
