Can kindness be motivated by self-interest?

This blog is taking a long holiday, but a few days ago I thought it might be a good idea to draw attention to some posts that I felt deserved more attention than they have received so far.

The first post I came across that I thought might belong in that category sought to answer the question: How should we encourage kindness?

However, when I read it again, I was not quite so impressed by what I had written.

The line of argument was broadly as follows:

·         Kindness is the greatest of all virtues.
·         There is evidence that kindness is good for those who practice it as well as for those who benefit from the kindness of others.
·         Kindness should also be encouraged because benefits of kindness spread beyond those immediately involved in kindly acts. Kind people tend to be trustworthy and trust facilitates mutually beneficial interactions, even among strangers. (In economic terms, kindness is the opposite of opportunism. It reduces the transactions costs of engaging in economic activities and enables people to enjoy the benefits of specialization and trade to a greater extent that would otherwise be possible.)
·         It isn’t clear whether kindness is increasing or decreasing in western societies. There is evidence of a secular trend toward less violence, but also some evidence of increased incivility in workplaces.
·         It is doubtful whether greater kindness can be encouraged by imposing more rules of conduct. The apparent increase in incivility in workplaces has occurred at a time when there has been increased regulation to enforce politically correct behaviour.
·         The best way to encourage kindness is to make people more aware that kindness is good for those who practice it.

My problem is that the bottom line seems too glib.

How would you respond if someone you had just met told you, “I know I am an arsehole”?  When I met such a person a month or so ago, it didn’t cross my mind to tell him that it was in his interests to be kind because kindness benefits the people who practice it. A person who sees himself as an arsehole is not likely to be receptive to such a message. I just suggested that he was not doing himself any favours by having such a low opinion of himself. He seemed to listen. Perhaps if he heard the message more often it might have some impact on his behaviour. If we want to influence the behaviour of such people it may be more effective to speak to their better selves than to try to appeal to their self-interest in reaping the benefits of kindly behaviour. (There is, of course, also the possibility that such people can be influenced by pointing out any penalties they might suffer as a result of bad behaviour.)

The other reason why I think my bottom line was too glib is that I doubt that the claimed beneficial impacts of acts of kindness apply when a person is just going through the motions of appearing to be kind. I suspect that in order to benefit you need to have your heart in it. Nevertheless, we all have to begin somewhere.  We may never change if we wait for our hearts to lead us. As Aristotle said, people acquire virtues by putting them into action. We become kinder by practicing kindness.  

To answer the question posed at the beginning, I think kindness can be motivated by self-interest if that is understood as the interest every individual has has in becoming more like the person that he or she would like to be. The main problem is that too few people ever give serious serious consideration to the question of what kind of person they would like to become.

Which are the most popular posts on Freedom and Flourishing?

This blog is going into recess for a couple of months.

Meanwhile, you might like to read some of the most popular posts on the blog, listed below:

Is push-pin as good as poetry?

How does income inequality affect happiness?

Once a neurotic always a neurotic?

What are the characteristics of a good society?

What did Milton Friedman have to say about human flourishing?

Was the industrial revolution mainly about the growth of manufacturing industry?

Is enlightenment humanism a coherent world view?

You might also consider spending a dollar and reading my book, Free to Flourish.

Do realistic optimists have more successful lives?

I think realistic optimists probably do have more successful lives than optimists and pessimists, but unfortunately I cannot claim that I have a particularly strong basis for that view.

A couple of months ago I notice a story by Tia Ghose on Huffington Post reporting on research findings by Sophia Chou of the National Taiwan University. The research apparently suggests that realistic optimists – people who combine the positive outlook of optimists with the clear-eyed perspective of pessimists – get the best of both worlds. Their realism enables them to perform better at work because they don’t delude themselves that they can do well without working hard. Their optimism enables them to avoid getting bogged down by unhappiness.

I was particularly interested because of something I wrote on this blog a couple of years ago entitled: Why can’t we have a realistic basis for optimism? My consideration was prompted by a discussion by Martin Seligman of issues relating to possible circumstances where expectations may influence reality.

After reading the article by Tia Ghose, I decided to go looking for the relevant paper by Sophia Chou, which was presented at the American Psychological Association in Hawaii earlier this year. I haven’t been able to find a copy of the paper on the internet. I could write to the author and ask for a copy, but I don’t think I will bother. My qualifications are in economics, so I have reason to be pessimistic about my ability to judge the quality of the research behind these findings.

Sophia Chou’s research findings seem to me to make a lot of sense, but I guess a realistic optimist would wait for her paper to be published in a peer reviewed journal before getting excited about them.

Why seek out the statue of Adam Smith when visiting Edinburgh?

When I visited Britain in August I was pleased to see the image of Adam Smith on £20 notes. I was even more pleased to find a statue of Adam Smith in Edinburgh.

The statue, by Andrew Stoddart, stands in the Royal Mile, in High Street, next to St Giles Cathedral and opposite Edinburgh's City Chambers. It is not difficult to find.

Unfortunately, it seems that the birds are not treating Adam Smith with the respect he deserves, but I doubt that he would care.

I went looking for Adam Smith because he is the father of modern economics and because his views on the benefits of specialization and free trade have contributed to a vast improvement in living standards over much of the world over the last couple of centuries. But I suppose that is the kind of thing that might be said by anyone who views himself as a disciple of Adam Smith.

When asked to be more specific about Adam Smith’s contributions, people who are familiar with his writings tend to emphasize different things. One important contribution lies in fundamental thesis of Wealth of Nations that the extent to which people are able to enjoy ‘the necessaries and conveniences of life’ depends largely on labour productivity – ‘the productive powers of labour’. Economists debate whether Smith told the right story about productivity growth – perhaps he gave too much emphasis to capital accumulation, gains from specialization and scale economies, rather than to technological progress. I think the important point is that Smith understood and emphasized the importance of economic freedom in promoting productive use of resources (including good management) as well as an efficient allocation of resources among industries.

Mention of economic freedom brings me to the contribution that Smith made in pointing out the role of the ‘invisible hand’ of the market in translating the pursuits of individuals into desirable social outcomes. Smith noted:

‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest’.

Smith would not have approved of that oft-quoted sentence from Wealth of Nations being interpreted as implying that butchers, brewers, bakers and other people engaged in business activities pursue only selfish interests.  In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith wrote:

‘How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others and render their happiness necessary to him though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it’.

Smith also made a major contribution in explaining that the visible hand of government is often far from benign. I particularly like a passage in The Theory of Moral Sentiments about the consequences of being governed by ‘the man of system’ – a political leader who is ‘apt to be very wise in his own conceit’. Smith suggests that the ‘man of system’ imagines that ‘he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess board’. He fails to consider that ‘in the great chess board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it’. Smith points out that when the visible hand of government is attempting to regulate the individual members of society, it is likely that ‘the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder’. (See: TMS, VI.ii.2.17).

I think Smith’s greatest contribution was in promoting the idea that a ‘system of natural liberty’ can establish itself ‘of its own accord’, when the role of government is confined to duties of ‘great importance’ that could not otherwise be performed. We should never lose sight of Smith’s vision of natural liberty:

‘Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring forth both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty [for which] no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society’. (See: WN, IV.ix.51).