Why Some People Show Extraordinary Altruism and Compassion to Strangers

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There's a man out there somewhere who looks a little bit like the actor Idris Elbeth, or at least he did 20 years ago. I don't know anything else about him except that he once saved my life by putting his own life in danger. This man ran across four lanes of freeway traffic in the middle of the night to bring me back to safety after a car accident that could have killed me. And the whole thing left me really shaken up obviously, but it also left me with this kind of burning, annoying need to understand why he did it. What forces within him caused him to make the choice that I owe my life to, to risk his own life to save the life of a stranger. In other words, what are the causes of his or anybody else's capacity for altruism? But first let me tell you what happened. That night I was 19 years old and driving back to my home in Tacoma, Washington down the interstate 5 freeway when a little dog darted out in front of my car. And I did exactly what you're not supposed to do, which is swerved to avoid it. And I discovered why you're not supposed to do that. I hit the dog anyway. And that sent the car into a fishtail and then a spin across the freeway. And so finally it wound up in the fast lane of the freeway, facing backward into oncoming traffic. And then the engine died. And I was sure in that moment that I was about to die too. But I didn't because of the actions of that one brave man who must have made the decision within a fraction of a second of seeing my stranded car. So he pulled over and ran across four lanes of freeway traffic in the dark to save my life. And then after he got my car working again and got me back to safety and made sure I was going to be all right, he drove off again. Never even told me his name. And I'm pretty sure I forgot to say thank you. So before I go any further, I really want to take a moment to stop and say thank you to that stranger.

I'm telling you all this because the events of that night changed the course of my life to some degree. I became a psychology researcher and I've devoted my work to understanding the human capacity to care for others. Where does it come from and how does it develop and what are the extreme forms that it can take? These questions are really important to understanding basic aspects of human social nature. A lot of people, and this includes everybody from philosophers and economists to ordinary people, believe that human nature is fundamentally selfish. They are only ever really motivated by their own welfare. But if that's true, why do some people, like the stranger who rescued me, do selfless things like helping other people at enormous risk and cost to themselves? This question requires exploring the roots of extraordinary acts of altruism and what might make people who engage in such acts different from others. But until very recently, very little work on this topic had been done. The actions of the man who rescued me meet the most stringent definition of altruism, which is a voluntary, costly behavior motivated by the desire to help another individual. So it's a selfless act intended to benefit only the other. One possible explanation for such actions is compassion, obviously, which is a key driver of altruism. But then the question becomes, why do some people seem to have more of it than others? The answer may be that the brains of highly altruistic people are different in fundamental ways.

To figure out how, I actually started from the opposite end with psychopaths. A common approach to understanding basic aspects of human nature, like the desire to help others, is to study people in whom that desire is missing. Psychopaths are exactly such a group. Psychopathy is a developmental disorder with strong genetic origins, resulting in a personality that's cold and uncaring and a tendency to engage in anti-social and sometimes violent behavior. My colleagues and I at the National Institute of Mental Health conducted some of the first brain imaging research on psychopathic adolescents. Our findings, along with those of other researchers, have shown that people who are psychopathic reliably exhibit three characteristics. First, although they're not generally insensitive to other people's emotions, they are insensitive to signs that others are in distress. In particular, they have difficulty recognizing fearful facial expressions like this one. Fearful expressions convey urgent need and emotional distress, which usually elicit compassion and a desire to help in observers. It makes sense that people who lack compassion also tend to be insensitive to these cues. The part of the brain that's most important for recognizing fearful expressions is called the amygdala. Rare cases of people who lack an amygdala entirely are profoundly impaired in recognizing fearful expressions. While healthy adults and children usually show big spikes in amygdala activity when they look at fearful expressions, psychopaths' amygdala are under-reactive, sometimes not reacting at all, which may explain their difficulty detecting these cues. Finally, psychopaths' amygdala are smaller than average, by about 18 to 20 percent.

These findings are reliable and robust. But remember that my main interest is not understanding why people don't care about others, but why they do. Could extraordinary altruism, which is the opposite of psychopathy in terms of compassion, emerge from a brain that is also the opposite of psychopathy, better able to recognize others' fear? An amygdala that is more reactive to these expressions and may be larger than average. My research has shown all three things to be true. We discovered this by testing truly extraordinary altruists — people who have donated one of their own kidneys to a complete stranger. They volunteer to undergo major surgery so that a healthy kidney can be removed and transplanted into a very ill stranger they may never meet. Why would anyone do this? The answer may lie in the brains of these extraordinary altruists. They are better at recognizing fear in others and detecting distress. This may partly be because their amygdala is more reactive to such expressions — the same part of the brain under-reactive in psychopaths. Their amygdala are also larger than average, by about 8%.

Together, these data suggest a caring continuum in the world, anchored at one end by highly psychopathic people and at the other by very compassionate people driven to extreme altruism. What makes extraordinary altruists different is not just that they're more compassionate than average. What's even more unusual is that their compassion and altruism extend beyond their inner circle of friends and family. Truly extraordinary altruists care for total strangers, just like the man who rescued me. I asked many altruistic kidney donors how they manage to generate such wide circles of compassion. Their answer is simple: nothing special. They don't see themselves at the center of anything. One altruist said donating her kidney made sense because "it's not about me." Another said, "I'm not different. I'm just the same as you." This amazing lack of self-centeredness is humility, making humans like angels, according to St. Augustine. With no center to their circle, there are no inner or outer rings — no one more or less worthy of care.

I also believe this perspective is attainable by many. Societal expansions of altruism and compassion are already occurring worldwide. Research by psychologists like Stephen Pinker shows that people are increasingly less accepting of suffering, leading to reductions in cruelty and increases in altruism. A hundred years ago, donating blood or bone marrow to strangers would have seemed unusual; today it's normal. Perhaps in the future, donating a kidney to a stranger will be equally ordinary.

These changes are partly driven by increased wealth and standards of living, which shift attention outward. Consequently, altruism toward strangers grows, from volunteering to charitable donations and kidney donations. Paradoxically, even as the world becomes more humane, there's a perception it is worse and more cruel, likely because we now know more about distant suffering. Clearly, the roots of altruism and compassion are as intrinsic to human nature as cruelty and violence, perhaps even more so. While some people are naturally more sensitive to others' suffering, the ability to remove oneself from the center and expand compassion to strangers is within reach for almost everyone.