The average person is more willing to cause themselves pain in order to receive a monetary reward than they are to cause another person pain even though the other person would never know who caused them pain. The conclusion that flies in the face of what most governments and three of the major world religions claim about human nature was conducted by Dr. Molly Crockett and colleagues at the University College London.
A group of 160 people were paired together into 80 pairs. One person was the decision maker and one was the receiver. Neither participant could see the other person. The incentive was a monetary reward that increased with the number of times an individual received a small electrical shock. The levels of shock were moderated to be tolerable and not inflict serious injury on the recipient.
The results show that a randomly selected set of people was 60 percent more willing to harm themselves than to do harm to others. The same people were 50 percent more willing to cause pain to themselves for less reward than they were to cause pain to other people for a greater reward. The same people were willing to donate 20 percent of their winnings to a charity at the end of the study. The study was designed to examine altruism and empathy in the average person.
The researchers note that governments make decisions based on the concept that people are inherently interested in their own welfare first. The Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths all proclaim that there is no inherent good in man created by man alone. The results of this study indicate that people are much more interested in preventing other people from experiencing pain even at the cost of their own pain. There may be hope for us yet.
