A. Clarification of the Behavior

Altruism is defined and used in many different ways. For clarity, it should be broken up into three distinct but related concepts. Sober (1988) and Sober and Wilson (1998) break altruism into two concepts: evolutionary altruism and either vernacular altruism (Sober, 1988) or psychological altruism (Sober and Wilson, 1998) (vernacular altruism and psychological altruism are synonymous). Evolutionary altruism is defined as behavior that increases the fitness of another and decreases the fitness of oneself (Sober and Wilson, 1998; for similar definitions, see Dawkins, 1976; Trivers, 1971; Wilson, 1975). Fitness, in this context, is equivalent to reproductive success. Vernacular or psychological altruism is behavior that is consciously and ultimately intended to increase another's welfare, "regardless of how, or even whether, they think or feel about the action" (Sober and Wilson, 1998, p. 6; for similar definitions, see Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989; Staub, 1978; Cialdini et al., 1981). Though correlated, evolutionary altruism does not necessarily imply vernacular/psychological altruism. For example, a plant in a crowded area could induce its own death are thereby allow its offspring to survive and this would be considered evolutionary altruism. Neither does vernacular/psychological altruism necessarily imply evolutionary altruism. For example, "If I know that you love to play the piano, I may give you a volume of Beethoven sonatas out of the goodness of my heart" (Sober, 1988, p. 76), and this may actually diminish your reproductive success because you may consequently spend more time at the piano than in the bedroom. The problem with leaving the breakdown of altruism at just the distinction between evolutionary and vernacular/psychological forms is that it is not clear what "the goodness of my heart" means. Sober (1988) explicitly chooses not to address this question, but it is essential to do so for the present analysis. The question is, broadly speaking, Is vernacular/psychological altruism ultimately egoistically or non-egoistically motivated? In other words, Do people help each other ultimately because it makes them feel good or ultimately because they care about the welfare of others? There is a long-standing debate on this question (see, e.g., Batson, 1991; Cialdini et al., 1987), but I will not attempt to address it as stated because it is ambiguous. We first need to distinguish between conscious and subconscious motivation. I may say that my ultimate reason for giving my brother a birthday gift is that I care about him, but subconsciously my real motive may be that I am worried that he will be mad at me if I don't. Alternatively, my subconscious ultimate motivation may be that it simply makes me feel good to see him happy.