Prosocial Motives, Emotions, and Behavior: The Better Angels of Our Nature

About 30 years ago, I began conducting research on the motivational repertoire of humans. Specifically, I was interested in motivation for helping. I wanted to know whether when we help others, our motivation is always and exclusively self-interested—universal egoism—or whether we are capable of being altruistically motivated as well. To be honest, I started with a clear bias. I thought altruism was a myth. In the words of the wise and witty Duke de La Rouchefoucauld: "The most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which the dear love of our own selves always proposes to be the gainer some way or other" (1691, Maxim 82). Bernard Mandeville (1714/1732) put it even more graphically:

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