Quanta Corporate Citizenship Altruism, empathy & relational orientation 15/07/2010
The Third Sector Magazine has recently published an article saying that ‘People can be nudged into altruism’. The article then goes on to say that a recent research has shown that “people are more likely to do good work if encouraged by door-to-door canvassing, for example, or the public display of donors’ names”. This reflects a common misunderstanding of what altruism means.
As altruism is becoming a very fashionable word, it might help to go back to the basics and check what it really means before going down the wrong path. Accordingly to the Oxford Dictionary, for instance, it means “disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others”. The Merriam-Webster defines it as “1: unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. 2: behaviour by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species”.
Notice that both sources focus on the word selfless, i.e., the importance that an altruistic action is a selfless one, where the actor does not benefit from his or her action, and sometimes suffers from it.
It would be great for CSR consultants to be able to knock at a company’s door and say ‘we can make your staff more altruistic’. Consultants would make money, companies would have amazing people putting the company’s interest before their own, the employee would be extremely happy because all other colleagues would be putting his or her interest before their own, and the world would be a much better place.
Unfortunately, reality is very, very different. There is no magic formula to make people altruistic. It is very rare for us to see cases of altruism and it is even rarer in a corporate environment. Google saying it would close down its Chinese operations because of alleged privacy concerns would have been a case in point. But rarely one will see companies or their staff choosing to put someone else’s interest before their own.
As a matter of fact, no one really knows how people become altruistic. We put two children through similar experiences and one could become a kind and altruistic individual and the other a resented serial killer.
Having said that, the majority of psychologists agree on when people become altruistic: during their childhood and early adolescence. Other than that, it seems that only major traumas (and I mean really life-and-death events) are able to transform altruism levels in adults. This is because altruism is a personality trait, not a social one, and personality is fundamentally shaped earlier on in our lives.
What people generally misread as altruism is empathy. Empathy is the social ability that individuals have to be sensitive to someone else’s situation, i.e., the ability we have to wear someone else’s shoes. Empathy, in short, is our ability to emotionally connect to someone else and ask ourselves “what would I feel if I were in his or her situation?”, “what is that person feeling and why?”.
Like altruism, our ability to empathise is fundamentally shaped during our early years. But, differently from altruism, this is a social skill and we seem to be able to learn it later on in life and without major traumas. As other social skills, empathy becomes stronger the more we practice it, and given the chance to practice, adults will get better at it. Think about a call centre attendant: the more he is taught to be cold towards customers, the better he will be in emotionally disengaging himself from the customer’s perspective when the next call comes. On the other hand, the more he practices trying to understand his angry customer’s perspective, the more likely he is to do even better when the next caller rings.
As a parenthesis, our experience with empathy has been showing us some very interesting results, and one of them is that workforces with greater empathy levels tend to have lower levels of conflict internally, present lower turnover and be less disgruntled about their pay package. So, in short, increasing empathy in the workforce has a direct top and bottom line impact. This is not just bla-bla-bla: it can be financially quantified.
Going back to the article, the problem with it is not even about empathy. Notice that it states that individuals can be nudged to do something good when they are expected to receive something back. That is not empathy, let alone altruism. This is what we call a relational orientation, and is something extremely common and easy to achieve. As a matter of fact, this is what the majority of companies have been doing for hundreds of years: “I pay you bonus if you do X”, “You get promoted if you achieve Z” etc.
Our experience has been showing us that among the three types of orientations – individualistic, relational and collectivist – the relational one is actually the most common one within the work environment and in our daily social lives. Relational orientations are what make me “invite you to my party if you’ve treated me well”, “grant you access to our airline lounge if you fly with us frequently”, “pay my taxes if I think the government will do something for me” or “give back to my university if I believe my university opened doors for me”. Universities, museums and galleries, by the way, have mastered relational orientation long ago using exactly the same formula described by the article: it is rare to see one that does not have a public list naming its high value donors, rooms or buildings named after them, especial gatherings reserved for them etc.
In an environment where CSR itself is still being interpreted in some unhealthily flexible ways, it would be ill advised to start inferring different meanings from other concepts as well.
As altruism is becoming a very fashionable word, it might help to go back to the basics and check what it really means before going down the wrong path. Accordingly to the Oxford Dictionary, for instance, it means “disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others”. The Merriam-Webster defines it as “1: unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. 2: behaviour by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species”.
Notice that both sources focus on the word selfless, i.e., the importance that an altruistic action is a selfless one, where the actor does not benefit from his or her action, and sometimes suffers from it.
It would be great for CSR consultants to be able to knock at a company’s door and say ‘we can make your staff more altruistic’. Consultants would make money, companies would have amazing people putting the company’s interest before their own, the employee would be extremely happy because all other colleagues would be putting his or her interest before their own, and the world would be a much better place.
Unfortunately, reality is very, very different. There is no magic formula to make people altruistic. It is very rare for us to see cases of altruism and it is even rarer in a corporate environment. Google saying it would close down its Chinese operations because of alleged privacy concerns would have been a case in point. But rarely one will see companies or their staff choosing to put someone else’s interest before their own.
As a matter of fact, no one really knows how people become altruistic. We put two children through similar experiences and one could become a kind and altruistic individual and the other a resented serial killer.
Having said that, the majority of psychologists agree on when people become altruistic: during their childhood and early adolescence. Other than that, it seems that only major traumas (and I mean really life-and-death events) are able to transform altruism levels in adults. This is because altruism is a personality trait, not a social one, and personality is fundamentally shaped earlier on in our lives.
What people generally misread as altruism is empathy. Empathy is the social ability that individuals have to be sensitive to someone else’s situation, i.e., the ability we have to wear someone else’s shoes. Empathy, in short, is our ability to emotionally connect to someone else and ask ourselves “what would I feel if I were in his or her situation?”, “what is that person feeling and why?”.
Like altruism, our ability to empathise is fundamentally shaped during our early years. But, differently from altruism, this is a social skill and we seem to be able to learn it later on in life and without major traumas. As other social skills, empathy becomes stronger the more we practice it, and given the chance to practice, adults will get better at it. Think about a call centre attendant: the more he is taught to be cold towards customers, the better he will be in emotionally disengaging himself from the customer’s perspective when the next call comes. On the other hand, the more he practices trying to understand his angry customer’s perspective, the more likely he is to do even better when the next caller rings.
As a parenthesis, our experience with empathy has been showing us some very interesting results, and one of them is that workforces with greater empathy levels tend to have lower levels of conflict internally, present lower turnover and be less disgruntled about their pay package. So, in short, increasing empathy in the workforce has a direct top and bottom line impact. This is not just bla-bla-bla: it can be financially quantified.
Going back to the article, the problem with it is not even about empathy. Notice that it states that individuals can be nudged to do something good when they are expected to receive something back. That is not empathy, let alone altruism. This is what we call a relational orientation, and is something extremely common and easy to achieve. As a matter of fact, this is what the majority of companies have been doing for hundreds of years: “I pay you bonus if you do X”, “You get promoted if you achieve Z” etc.
Our experience has been showing us that among the three types of orientations – individualistic, relational and collectivist – the relational one is actually the most common one within the work environment and in our daily social lives. Relational orientations are what make me “invite you to my party if you’ve treated me well”, “grant you access to our airline lounge if you fly with us frequently”, “pay my taxes if I think the government will do something for me” or “give back to my university if I believe my university opened doors for me”. Universities, museums and galleries, by the way, have mastered relational orientation long ago using exactly the same formula described by the article: it is rare to see one that does not have a public list naming its high value donors, rooms or buildings named after them, especial gatherings reserved for them etc.
In an environment where CSR itself is still being interpreted in some unhealthily flexible ways, it would be ill advised to start inferring different meanings from other concepts as well.
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The Third Sector Magazine has recently published an article saying that ‘People can be nudged into altruism’. The article then goes on to say that recent research has shown that “people are more likely to do good work if encouraged by door-to-door canvassing, for example, or the public display of donors’ names”. This reflects a common misunderstanding of what altruism means.
As altruism is becoming a very fashionable word, it might help to go back to the basics and check what it really means before going down the wrong path. Accordingly to the Oxford Dictionary, for instance, it means “disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others”. The Merriam-Webster defines it as “1: unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. 2: behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species”.
Notice that both sources focus on the word selfless, i.e., the importance that an altruistic action is a selfless one, where the actor does not benefit from his or her action, and sometimes suffers from it.
It would be great for CSR consultants to be able to knock at a company’s door and say ‘we can make your staff more altruistic’. Consultants would make money, companies would have amazing people – saints and martyrs – working for them (and putting the company’s interest before their own), the employee would be extremely happy because all other colleagues would be putting his or her interest before their own, and the world would be a much better place.
Unfortunately, reality is very, very different. There is no magic formula to make people altruistic. It is very rare for us to see cases of altruism and it is even rarer in a corporate environment. Google saying it would close down its Chinese operations because alleged privacy concerns would have been a case in point. But rarely will one see companies or their staff choosing to put someone else’s interest before their own.
As a matter of fact, no one really knows how people become altruistic. We put two children through similar experiences and one could become a kind and altruistic individual and the other a resented serial killer.
Having said that, the majority of psychologists agree on when people become altruistic: during their childhood and early adolescence. Other than that, it seems that only major traumas (and I mean really life-and-death events) are able to transform altruism levels in adults. This is because altruism is a personality trait, not a social one, and personality is fundamentally shaped earlier on in our lives.
What people generally misread as altruism is empathy. Empathy is the social ability that individuals have to be sensitive to someone else’s situation, i.e., the ability we have to wear someone else’s shoes. Empathy, in short, is our ability to emotionally connect to someone else and ask ourselves “what would I feel if I were in his or her situation?”, “what is that person feeling and why?”.
Like altruism, our ability to empathise is fundamentally shaped during our early years. But, differently from altruism, this is a social skill and we seem to be able to learn it later on in life as well without major traumas. As other social skills, empathy becomes stronger the more we practice it, and given the chance to practice, adults will get better at it. Think about a call center attendant: the more he is taught to be cold towards customers, the better he will be in emotionally disengaging himself from the customer’s perspective when the next call comes. On the other hand, the more he practices trying to understand his angry customer’s perspective, the more likely he is to do it even better when the next caller rings.
As a parenthesis, our experience with empathy has been showing us some very interesting results, and one of them is that workforces with greater empathy levels tend to have lower levels of conflict internally, present lower turnover and be less disgruntled about their pay package. So, in short, increasing empathy in the workforce has a direct top and bottom line impact. This is not just bla-bla-bla: it can be financially quantified.
Going back to the article, the problem with it is not even about empathy. Notice that it states that individuals can be nudged to do something good when they are expected to receive something back. That is not empathy, let alone altruism. This is what we call a relational orientation, and is something extremely common and easy to achieve. As a matter of fact, this is what the majority of companies have been doing for hundreds of years: “I pay you bonus if you do X”, “You get promoted if you achieve Z” etc.
Our experience has been showing us that among the three types of orientations – individualistic, relational and collectivist – the relational one is actually the most common one within the work environment and in our daily social lives. Relational orientation is what makes me “invite you to my party if you’ve treated me well”, “grant you access to our airline lounge if you fly with us frequently”, “pay my taxes if I think the government will do something for me” or “give back to my university if I believe my university opened doors for me”. Universities, museums and galleries, by the way, have mastered relational orientation long ago using exactly the same formula described by the article: it is rare to see one that does not have a public lists naming its high value donors, rooms or buildings named after them, especial gatherings reserved for them etc.
As altruism is becoming a very fashionable word, it might help to go back to the basics and check what it really means before going down the wrong path. Accordingly to the Oxford Dictionary, for instance, it means “disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others”. The Merriam-Webster defines it as “1: unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. 2: behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species”.
Notice that both sources focus on the word selfless, i.e., the importance that an altruistic action is a selfless one, where the actor does not benefit from his or her action, and sometimes suffers from it.
It would be great for CSR consultants to be able to knock at a company’s door and say ‘we can make your staff more altruistic’. Consultants would make money, companies would have amazing people – saints and martyrs – working for them (and putting the company’s interest before their own), the employee would be extremely happy because all other colleagues would be putting his or her interest before their own, and the world would be a much better place.
Unfortunately, reality is very, very different. There is no magic formula to make people altruistic. It is very rare for us to see cases of altruism and it is even rarer in a corporate environment. Google saying it would close down its Chinese operations because alleged privacy concerns would have been a case in point. But rarely will one see companies or their staff choosing to put someone else’s interest before their own.
As a matter of fact, no one really knows how people become altruistic. We put two children through similar experiences and one could become a kind and altruistic individual and the other a resented serial killer.
Having said that, the majority of psychologists agree on when people become altruistic: during their childhood and early adolescence. Other than that, it seems that only major traumas (and I mean really life-and-death events) are able to transform altruism levels in adults. This is because altruism is a personality trait, not a social one, and personality is fundamentally shaped earlier on in our lives.
What people generally misread as altruism is empathy. Empathy is the social ability that individuals have to be sensitive to someone else’s situation, i.e., the ability we have to wear someone else’s shoes. Empathy, in short, is our ability to emotionally connect to someone else and ask ourselves “what would I feel if I were in his or her situation?”, “what is that person feeling and why?”.
Like altruism, our ability to empathise is fundamentally shaped during our early years. But, differently from altruism, this is a social skill and we seem to be able to learn it later on in life as well without major traumas. As other social skills, empathy becomes stronger the more we practice it, and given the chance to practice, adults will get better at it. Think about a call center attendant: the more he is taught to be cold towards customers, the better he will be in emotionally disengaging himself from the customer’s perspective when the next call comes. On the other hand, the more he practices trying to understand his angry customer’s perspective, the more likely he is to do it even better when the next caller rings.
As a parenthesis, our experience with empathy has been showing us some very interesting results, and one of them is that workforces with greater empathy levels tend to have lower levels of conflict internally, present lower turnover and be less disgruntled about their pay package. So, in short, increasing empathy in the workforce has a direct top and bottom line impact. This is not just bla-bla-bla: it can be financially quantified.
Going back to the article, the problem with it is not even about empathy. Notice that it states that individuals can be nudged to do something good when they are expected to receive something back. That is not empathy, let alone altruism. This is what we call a relational orientation, and is something extremely common and easy to achieve. As a matter of fact, this is what the majority of companies have been doing for hundreds of years: “I pay you bonus if you do X”, “You get promoted if you achieve Z” etc.
Our experience has been showing us that among the three types of orientations – individualistic, relational and collectivist – the relational one is actually the most common one within the work environment and in our daily social lives. Relational orientation is what makes me “invite you to my party if you’ve treated me well”, “grant you access to our airline lounge if you fly with us frequently”, “pay my taxes if I think the government will do something for me” or “give back to my university if I believe my university opened doors for me”. Universities, museums and galleries, by the way, have mastered relational orientation long ago using exactly the same formula described by the article: it is rare to see one that does not have a public lists naming its high value donors, rooms or buildings named after them, especial gatherings reserved for them etc.
The Third Sector Magazine has recently published an article saying that ‘People can be nudged into altruism’. The article then goes on to say that a recent research has shown that “people are more likely to do good work if encouraged by door-to-door canvassing, for example, or the public display of donors’ names”. This reflects a common misunderstanding of what altruism means.
As altruism is becoming a very fashionable word, it might help to go back to the basics and check what it really means before we go down the wrong path. Accordingly to the Oxford Dictionary, for instance, it means “disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others”. The Merriam-Webster defines it as “1: unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. 2: behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species”.
Notice that both sources focus on the word selfless, i.e., the importance that an altruistic action is a selfless one, where the actor does not benefit from his or her action, and sometimes suffers from it.
It would be great for CSR consultants to be able to knock at a company’s door and say ‘we can make your staff more altruistic’. Consultants would make money, companies would have amazing people – saints and martyrs – working for them (and putting the company’s interest before their own), the employee would be extremely happy because all other colleagues would be putting her interest before their own, and the world would be a much better place.
Unfortunately, reality is very, very different. There is no magic formula to make people altruistic. It is very rare for us to see cases of altruism and it is even rarer in a corporate environment. Google saying it would close down its Chinese operations because alleged privacy concerns would have been a case in point. But rarely will one see companies or their staff choosing to put someone else’s interest before their own.
As a matter of fact, no one really knows how people become altruistic. We put two children through similar experiences and one could become a kind and altruistic individual and the other a resented serial killer.
Having said that, the majority of psychologists agree on when people become altruistic: during their childhood and early adolescence. Other than that, it seems that only major traumas (and I mean really life-and-death events) are able to transform altruism levels in adults. This is because altruism is a personality trait, not a social one, and personality is fundamentally shaped earlier on in our lives.
What people generally misread as altruism is empathy. Empathy is the social ability that individuals have to be sensitive to someone else’s situation, i.e., the ability we have to wear someone else’s shoes. Empathy, in short, is our ability to emotionally connect to someone else and ask ourselves “what would I feel if I were in his or her situation?”, “what is that person feeling and why?”.
Like altruism, our ability empathise is fundamentally shaped during our early years. But, differently from altruism, this is a social skill and we seem to be able to learn it later on in life and without major traumas. As other social skills, empathy becomes stronger the more we practice it, and given the chance to practice, adults will get better at it. Think about a call center attendant: the more he is taught to be cold towards customers, the better he will be in emotionally disengaging himself from the customer’s perspective when the next call comes. On the other hand, the more he practices trying to understand his angry customer’s perspective, the more likely he is to do it even better when the next caller rings.
As a parenthesis, our experience with empathy has been showing us some very interesting results and one of them is that workforces with greater empathy levels tend to have lower levels of conflict internally, present lower turnover and be less disgruntled about their pay package. So, in short, increasing empathy in the workforce has a direct top and bottom line impact. This is not just bla-bla-bla: it can be financially quantified.
Going back to the article, the problem with it is not even about empathy. Notice that it states that individuals can be nudged to do something good when they are expected to receive something back. That is not empathy, let alone altruism. This is what we call a relational orientation, and is something extremely common and easy to achieve. As a matter of fact, this is what the majority of companies have been doing for hundreds of years: “I pay you bonus if you do X”, “You get promoted if you achieve Z” etc.
Our experience has been showing us that among the three types of orientations – individualistic, relational and collectivist – the relational one is actually the most common one within the work environment and in our daily social lives. Relational orientation is what makes me “invite you to my party if you’ve treated me well”, “grant you access to our airline lounge if you fly with us frequently”, “pay my taxes if I think the government will do something for me” or “give back to my university if I believe my university opened doors for me”. Universities, museums and galleries, by the way, have mastered relational orientation long ago using exactly the same formula described by the article: it is rare to see one that does not have a public list naming its high value donors, rooms or buildings named after them, especial gatherings reserved for them etc.
In a time when building and rebuilding trust in organisations is so important we need to be careful about the terminology we use.
-Gus
As altruism is becoming a very fashionable word, it might help to go back to the basics and check what it really means before we go down the wrong path. Accordingly to the Oxford Dictionary, for instance, it means “disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others”. The Merriam-Webster defines it as “1: unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. 2: behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species”.
Notice that both sources focus on the word selfless, i.e., the importance that an altruistic action is a selfless one, where the actor does not benefit from his or her action, and sometimes suffers from it.
It would be great for CSR consultants to be able to knock at a company’s door and say ‘we can make your staff more altruistic’. Consultants would make money, companies would have amazing people – saints and martyrs – working for them (and putting the company’s interest before their own), the employee would be extremely happy because all other colleagues would be putting her interest before their own, and the world would be a much better place.
Unfortunately, reality is very, very different. There is no magic formula to make people altruistic. It is very rare for us to see cases of altruism and it is even rarer in a corporate environment. Google saying it would close down its Chinese operations because alleged privacy concerns would have been a case in point. But rarely will one see companies or their staff choosing to put someone else’s interest before their own.
As a matter of fact, no one really knows how people become altruistic. We put two children through similar experiences and one could become a kind and altruistic individual and the other a resented serial killer.
Having said that, the majority of psychologists agree on when people become altruistic: during their childhood and early adolescence. Other than that, it seems that only major traumas (and I mean really life-and-death events) are able to transform altruism levels in adults. This is because altruism is a personality trait, not a social one, and personality is fundamentally shaped earlier on in our lives.
What people generally misread as altruism is empathy. Empathy is the social ability that individuals have to be sensitive to someone else’s situation, i.e., the ability we have to wear someone else’s shoes. Empathy, in short, is our ability to emotionally connect to someone else and ask ourselves “what would I feel if I were in his or her situation?”, “what is that person feeling and why?”.
Like altruism, our ability empathise is fundamentally shaped during our early years. But, differently from altruism, this is a social skill and we seem to be able to learn it later on in life and without major traumas. As other social skills, empathy becomes stronger the more we practice it, and given the chance to practice, adults will get better at it. Think about a call center attendant: the more he is taught to be cold towards customers, the better he will be in emotionally disengaging himself from the customer’s perspective when the next call comes. On the other hand, the more he practices trying to understand his angry customer’s perspective, the more likely he is to do it even better when the next caller rings.
As a parenthesis, our experience with empathy has been showing us some very interesting results and one of them is that workforces with greater empathy levels tend to have lower levels of conflict internally, present lower turnover and be less disgruntled about their pay package. So, in short, increasing empathy in the workforce has a direct top and bottom line impact. This is not just bla-bla-bla: it can be financially quantified.
Going back to the article, the problem with it is not even about empathy. Notice that it states that individuals can be nudged to do something good when they are expected to receive something back. That is not empathy, let alone altruism. This is what we call a relational orientation, and is something extremely common and easy to achieve. As a matter of fact, this is what the majority of companies have been doing for hundreds of years: “I pay you bonus if you do X”, “You get promoted if you achieve Z” etc.
Our experience has been showing us that among the three types of orientations – individualistic, relational and collectivist – the relational one is actually the most common one within the work environment and in our daily social lives. Relational orientation is what makes me “invite you to my party if you’ve treated me well”, “grant you access to our airline lounge if you fly with us frequently”, “pay my taxes if I think the government will do something for me” or “give back to my university if I believe my university opened doors for me”. Universities, museums and galleries, by the way, have mastered relational orientation long ago using exactly the same formula described by the article: it is rare to see one that does not have a public list naming its high value donors, rooms or buildings named after them, especial gatherings reserved for them etc.
In a time when building and rebuilding trust in organisations is so important we need to be careful about the terminology we use.
-Gus
