Download or read book Pathological Altruism written by Barbara Oakley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-19 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The benefits of altruism and empathy are obvious. These qualities are so highly regarded and embedded in both secular and religious societies that it seems almost heretical to suggest they can cause harm. Like most good things, however, altruism can be distorted or taken to an unhealthy extreme. Pathological Altruism presents a number of new, thought-provoking theses that explore a range of hurtful effects of altruism and empathy. Pathologies of empathy, for example, may trigger depression as well as the burnout seen in healthcare professionals. The selflessness of patients with eating abnormalities forms an important aspect of those disorders. Hyperempathy - an excess of concern for what others think and how they feel - helps explain popular but poorly defined concepts such as codependency. In fact, pathological altruism, in the form of an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one's own needs, may underpin some personality disorders. Pathologies of altruism and empathy not only underlie health issues, but also a disparate slew of humankind's most troubled features, including genocide, suicide bombing, self-righteous political partisanship, and ineffective philanthropic and social programs that ultimately worsen the situations they are meant to aid. Pathological Altruism is a groundbreaking new book - the first to explore the negative aspects of altruism and empathy, seemingly uniformly positive traits. The contributing authors provide a scientific, social, and cultural foundation for the subject of pathological altruism, creating a new field of inquiry. Each author's approach points to one disturbing truth: what we value so much, the altruistic "good" side of human nature, can also have a dark side that we ignore at our peril.

Download or read book Selfishness Altruism and Rationality written by Howard Margolis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1984-10-15 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we volunteer time? Why do we contribute money? Why, even, do we vote, if the effect of a single vote is negligible? Rationality-based microeconomic models are hard-pressed to explain such social behavior, but Howard Margolis proposes a solution. He suggests that within each person there are two selves, one selfish and the other group-oriented, and that the individual follows a Darwinian rule for allocating resources between those two selves. "Howard Margolis's intriguing ideas . . . provide an alternative to the crude models of rational choice that have dominated economics and political science for too long."—Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book Selfish Altruism written by Moe Glenner and published by Booklocker.Com Incorporated. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selfish Altruism concisely introduces and elaborates on Personal Return on Investment (PROI), where the investment is the personal time, effort and emotion involved with change initiatives. Using the concept of 'What's In It For Me?', Selfish Altruism explores the change failure chains and change success chains (and its causes) that are present in every change, in both personal and business scenarios.

Download or read book The Good Life written by Graham Music and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are we born selfish or primed to help others? Does stress make people more antisocial? Can we ever be genuinely altruistic? This book explores some of the dilemmas at the heart of being human. Integrating cutting edge studies with in-depth clinical experience, Graham Music synthesizes a wealth of fascinating research into an explanation of altruism, cooperation and generosity and shows how we are primed to turn off the ‘better angels of our nature’ in the face of stress, anxiety and fear. Using fascinating psychological research but rooted in a clinicians understanding of the impact of stress on our moral and pro-social capacities, The Good Life covers topics as diverse as: The role of parenting and family life in shaping how antisocial or pro-social we become How stress, abuse and insecure attachment profoundly undermine empathic and altruistic capacities The relative influence of our genes or environments on becoming big-hearted or coldly psychopathic How our immediate contexts and recent social changes might tilt us towards either selfish or cooperative behaviour This book makes a unique contribution to a subject that is increasingly on people’s minds. It does not shirk complexity, nor suggest easy explanations, but offers a hard look at the evidence in the hope that we can gain some understanding of how a ‘Good Life’ might develop. Often personally challenging, intellectually exhilarating and written with an easily accessible style, The Good Life makes sense of how our moral selves take shape, and shines a light on the roots of goodness and nastiness.

Download or read book Does Altruism Exist written by David Sloan Wilson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that altruism is an inherent factor of group functionality and discusses how studying group function can promote positive changes to the human condition.

Download or read book The Selfish Gene written by Richard Dawkins and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1989 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science

Download or read book The Virtue of Selfishness written by Ayn Rand and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1964-11-01 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays that sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's controversial, groundbreaking philosophy. Since their initial publication, Rand's fictional works—Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged—have had a major impact on the intellectual scene. The underlying theme of her famous novels is her philosophy, a new morality—the ethics of rational self-interest—that offers a robust challenge to altruist-collectivist thought. Known as Objectivism, her divisive philosophy holds human life—the life proper to a rational being—as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with man's nature. In this series of essays, Rand asks why man needs morality in the first place, and arrives at an answer that redefines a new code of ethics based on the virtue of selfishness. More Than 1 Million Copies Sold!

Download or read book The Selfish Altruist written by Tony Vaux and published by Earthscan. This book was released on 2013 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an analysis of some of the most traumatic situations involving famine and war of the last two decades, helping us to understand what it takes to be an aid worker and how important humanitarian action is today. Famine and war evoke strong emotional reactions, and for most people there is a limited amount they can do. But the relief worker has to convert emotional responses into practical action and difficult choices - whom to help and how. Their own feelings have to motivate action for others. But can they separate out their own selfish feelings and prejudices in such an emotive climat.

Download or read book The Price of Altruism George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness written by Oren Harman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-06-20 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the intellectual journey of eccentric American genius George Price, who tried to answer the evolutionary riddle of why people are nice, and eventually gave away all his belongings and took his own life in a squatter's flat.

Download or read book The Altruistic Brain written by Donald W. Pfaff and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Unlike any other study in its field, The Altruistic Brain synthesizes into one theory the most important research into how and why - by purely physical mechanisms - humans empathize with one another and respond altruistically."--Jacket.

Download or read book In Defense of Selfishness written by Peter Schwartz and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From childhood, we're taught one central, non-controversial idea about morality: self-sacrifice is a virtue. It is universally accepted that serving the needs of others, rather than our own, is the essence of morality. To be ethical—it is believed—is to be altruistic. Questioning this belief is regarded as tantamount to questioning the self-evident. Here, Peter Schwartz questions it. In Defense of Selfishness refutes widespread misconceptions about the meaning of selfishness and of altruism. Basing his arguments on Ayn Rand's ethics of rational self-interest, Schwartz demonstrates that genuine selfishness is not exemplified by the brutal plundering of an Attila the Hun or the conniving duplicity of a Bernard Madoff. To the contrary, such people are acting against their actual, long-range interests. The truly selfish individual is committed to moral principles and lives an honest, productive, self-respecting life. He does not feed parasitically off other people. Instead, he renounces the unearned, and deals with others—in both the material and spiritual realms—by offering value for value, to mutual benefit. The selfish individual, Schwartz maintains, lives by reason, not force. He lives by production and trade, not by theft and fraud. He disavows the mindlessness of the do-whatever-you-feel-like emotionalist, and upholds rationality as his primary virtue. He takes pride in his achievements, and does not sacrifice himself to others—nor does he sacrifice others to himself. According to the code of altruism, however, you must embrace self-sacrifice. You must subordinate yourself to others. Altruism calls, not for cooperation and benevolence, but for servitude. It demands that you surrender your interests to the needs of others, that you regard serving others as the moral justification of your existence, that you be willing to suffer so that a non-you might benefit. To this, Schwartz asks simply: Why? Why should the fact that you have achieved any success make you indebted to those who haven't? Why does the fact that someone needs your money create a moral entitlement to it, while the fact that you've earned it, doesn't? Using vivid, real-life examples, In Defense of Selfishness illustrates the iniquity of requiring one man to serve the needs of another. This provocative book challenges readers to re-examine the standard by which they decide what is morally right or wrong.

Download or read book The Solitary Self written by Mary Midgley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that simple, on-sided accounts of human motives, such as the "selfish gene" in neo-Darwinian thought, are always unrealistic and do not derive from Darwin's writings.

Download or read book Unto Others written by Elliott Sober and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1999-10-01 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No matter what we do, however kind or generous our deeds may seem, a hidden motive of selfishness lurks--or so science has claimed for years. This book, whose publication promises to be a major scientific event, tells us differently. In Unto Others philosopher Elliott Sober and biologist David Sloan Wilson demonstrate once and for all that unselfish behavior is in fact an important feature of both biological and human nature. Their book provides a panoramic view of altruism throughout the animal kingdom--from self-sacrificing parasites to insects that subsume themselves in the superorganism of a colony to the human capacity for selflessness--even as it explains the evolutionary sense of such behavior. Explaining how altruistic behavior can evolve by natural selection, this book finally gives credence to the idea of group selection that was originally proposed by Darwin but denounced as heretical in the 1960s. With their account of this controversy, Sober and Wilson offer a detailed case study of scientific change as well as an indisputable argument for group selection as a legitimate theory in evolutionary biology. Unto Others also takes a novel evolutionary approach in explaining the ultimate psychological motives behind unselfish human behavior. Developing a theory of the proximate mechanisms that most likely evolved to motivate adaptive helping behavior, Sober and Wilson show how people and perhaps other species evolved the capacity to care for others as a goal in itself. A truly interdisciplinary work that blends biology, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology, this book will permanently change not just our view of selfless behavior but also our understanding of many issues in evolutionary biology and the social sciences.

Download or read book The Age of Selfish Altruism written by Alan Fairnington and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-05-17 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John A. Quelch Professor Harvard Business School.

Download or read book Altruism Morality and Economic Theory written by Edmund S. Phelps and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1975-05-21 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of papers by economists theorizing on the roles of altruism and morality versus self-interest in the shaping of human behavior and institutions. Specifically, the authors examine why some persons behave in an altruistic way without any apparent reward, thus defying the economist's model of utility maximization. The chapters are accompanied by commentaries from representatives of other disciplines, including law and philosophy.

Download or read book Controlling People written by Richard S. Marken and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We need to strive for a world where people control what is important to themselves while minimizing the controlling of others." We are all controlling people. In fact our feelings of wellbeing depend on staying in control. Just as when we drive a car, we must stay in control in everyday life in order to keep the things we care about going in the right direction. Yet this natural controlling behavior is sometimes the very reason we end up losing control. This happens when we try to control other people as well as when we try to control ourselves. So how do we do better? Based on Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), this entertaining and enlightening book by psychologists Richard S. Marken and Timothy A. Carey explores the paradox of why we often lose control by trying to be in control and why our controlling nature makes it difficult to stop this self-defeating behavior. They show that understanding PCT opens the window to understanding and learning about ourselves as controlling people and equips us to lead more effective and satisfying lives.

Download or read book The Brighter Side Of Human Nature written by Alfie Kohn and published by . This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing from hundreds of studies in half a dozen fields, The Brighter Side of Human Nature makes a powerful case that caring and generosity are just as natural as selfishness and aggression. This lively refutation of cynical assumptions about our species considers the nature of empathy and the causes of war, why we (incorrectly) explain all behavior in terms of self-interest, and how we can teach children to care.