The empathy–altruism hypothesis, by contrast, predicts an elevated mood in all three conditions in which the peer escaped the shocks: perform + no prior relief, perform + prior relief, and not perform + prior relief. [...]
Again, the results confirmed the empathy-altruism hypothesis over the empathy-specific reward hypothesis.
Couldn’t an egoist still answer, “Yes, my mood is elevated from seeing/knowing others escape pain, but that doesn’t mean I place (or should place) a terminal value on other people’s pain in addition to the value I place on my mood. In fact I don’t / shouldn’t.” Scope insensitivity seems incompatible with valuing other people’s lives directly, but perfectly compatible with this egoist position. See Boredom vs. Scope Insensitivity where I point out why this position is not easy to dismiss as a normative (ethical) theory. And given widespread scope insensitivity in people’s actual behavior, I don’t see how it can be dismissed as a positive (psychological) theory.
I don’t think scope insensitivity sheds much light on this topic. People’s attitudes toward their own lives exhibits a similar insensitivity. For example, if you convince me that my life could end now, or extend for another 50 years, depending on what I do, I will gladly work very hard and endure many hardships to get the latter result. If you convince me that my life could extend for 500 more years, I will probably not work ten times as hard and endure ten times as much hardship. (Or if I did, I would have to talk myself into it.) And that’s not because I expect life to get boring. And if you convince me that my life could end now or in 5 years, I will probably work much more than 1/10th as hard for the extra 5 as I would for the extra 50.
Motivation doesn’t scale linearly with payoff. That fact does not distinguish selfish from other-regarding motivation.
Couldn’t an egoist still answer, “Yes, my mood is elevated from seeing/knowing others escape pain, but that doesn’t mean I place (or should place) a terminal value on other people’s pain in addition to the value I place on my mood. In fact I don’t / shouldn’t.” Scope insensitivity seems incompatible with valuing other people’s lives directly, but perfectly compatible with this egoist position. See Boredom vs. Scope Insensitivity where I point out why this position is not easy to dismiss as a normative (ethical) theory. And given widespread scope insensitivity in people’s actual behavior, I don’t see how it can be dismissed as a positive (psychological) theory.
I don’t think scope insensitivity sheds much light on this topic. People’s attitudes toward their own lives exhibits a similar insensitivity. For example, if you convince me that my life could end now, or extend for another 50 years, depending on what I do, I will gladly work very hard and endure many hardships to get the latter result. If you convince me that my life could extend for 500 more years, I will probably not work ten times as hard and endure ten times as much hardship. (Or if I did, I would have to talk myself into it.) And that’s not because I expect life to get boring. And if you convince me that my life could end now or in 5 years, I will probably work much more than 1/10th as hard for the extra 5 as I would for the extra 50.
Motivation doesn’t scale linearly with payoff. That fact does not distinguish selfish from other-regarding motivation.