This is the most generous time of year.
But did COVID-19 make us even more generous or more selfish?
How do you function in the face of a crisis like the pandemic? What triggers your altruism? What limits your collaboration?
Jamil Zaki, a Stanford psychologist, poses two possible narratives.
The first narrative is asshole. You panic, scoff at social conventions, and act selfishly (which would explain hoarding toilet paper, selling overpriced masks, or stealing the belongings of some patients in hospitals).
The second narrative is prosocial. You donate material, technological, economic, intangible and human resources to help others.
Marc Hauser, in Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and WrongIn short, it says that you are – naturally – a good person.
But which option favored the pandemic? Was the fear that pushed the scarcity mentality stronger? Could more the essence of social beings?
A study by the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, in the United States, showed that the first half of 2020 there was an increase in donations (especially small contributions and new donors).
And a Harris Poll study for the magazine Fast Company found that the main causes receiving aid were the alleviation of hunger and health care.
COVID-19 made us more generous for issues related to the pandemic. More collaborative.
As Zaki commented –and published Vox– “compassion for a catastrophe is consistent and widespread; it follows earthquakes, wars, terrorist attacks, hurricanes, tsunamis and –now– the pandemic ”
However, other causes – such as the ocean, sharks, forests, inclusion or education – lost support. Why?
His generosity has a twist: “either we all get ahead or we all sink together.”
The crisis makes us generous to the extent that we believe that no one is going to take advantage of our willingness to collaborate, says Athena Aktipis, a psychologist at Arizona State University and a researcher at the Human Generosity Project.
The truth is that – beyond the popular wisdom about selfish human nature – science has shown that generosity is part of human biology. As it is in bees, chimpanzees, birds, vampires or rats.
Generosity would be an evolutionary adaptation that helped promote the survival of the species, says the essay ‘The Science of Generosity‘de UC Berkeley.
We survive 2020.
Thanks to the others. (OR)
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