Classic psychology warped our view of human nature as cruel and selfish - but new research is more hopeful
web.archive.org
Classic psychological experiments like Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment and the bystander effect theory, which have contributed to a perception of humans as inherently cruel and selfish, are now being reevaluated based on new findings. Contrary to these earlier theories, recent research suggests that humans have a natural inclination towards altruism and heroism.

Psychology has a repeatability problem. Turns out Zimbardo wasn’t completely honest about how hands-off the researchers were. The Stanford Prison Experiment is the latest famous experiment in psychology that is proving difficult to reproduce.

I remember learning about this in school and the point being driven home: humans are selfish, and the only thing holding society together is a fragile veneer of civility, ready to burst free the moment no one is looking.

What does a selfish human species imply about society? It means that any vision of a community-oriented society, any revolution or reformation that purports to progress beyond a free capitalist market system in order to end capitalist exploitation, is naïve — nay, illogical.

Science has long been regarded as a pure discipline, abstracted from any particular society because of its faithful empiricism. Leftists ought to keep in mind that science, as with all knowledge, has a social character which cannot be separated from its time and place, and not therefore from politics. Science is a tool which may be wielded for technological progress within an egalitarian society, but by the same token may be used to lend authority to a ruling class who almost exclusively possess the means by which that science is carried out.

”[T]he human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.” —Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach

  • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]17•7 months ago

    the prisoners dilemna in repeated encounters changes dramatically as well

    also the prisoners dilemna takes two assumed self interested parties and places them in a zero sum situation where cooperation is disincentivised and uses that as proof humans are self centred. It already assumes the thing it is being used to prove

    There are countless times humans have sacrificed themselves and their rational self interest for the benefit of another

    • AernaLingus [any]20•7 months ago

      One time in college (in a freshman bio lab of all places) they split us into groups to do a prisoner's dilemma exercise without actually calling it that, which I think was supposed to demonstrate something about intraspecies competition (I've forgotten tbh). I recognized it for what it was and went to each group, explaining the concept and how we would be best off overall if we cooperated, and just to trust me that my group wouldn't screw them over. And it worked! Granted, a lot of that is probably just due to people thinking, "Man, this guy is being really intense about a dumb participation credit lab, I don't want to make this into a whole thing," but regardless, everyone cooperated through all the rounds and we maximized our reward (in this case, candy). Trivial, sure, but it's something I'm proud of.