Are Humans Naturally Selfish?

A stranger finds a wallet full of cash and returns it. Someone quietly gives up their weekend to help another person. A parent makes enormous sacrifices for their child. Are these acts genuinely selfless? Or is there always something in it for us — satisfaction, meaning, belonging, reciprocity, love, reputation, or simply the feeling that we have done the right thing?

Humans seem capable of remarkably different behaviours: self-interest and sacrifice, competition and cooperation, aggression and compassion. Yet we often speak about “human nature” as though somewhere beneath culture, upbringing and circumstance there is an answer to what human beings are really like.

Perhaps self-interest is fundamental. Perhaps cooperation is equally natural to us. Perhaps both are part of us, with different circumstances bringing different tendencies to the surface. Or perhaps human behaviour depends so much on biology, upbringing, culture and institutions that asking what humans are “naturally” like is itself misleading.

What we believe about human nature matters. It influences how we raise children, organise workplaces, design markets and institutions — and increasingly, how we build technologies that influence human behaviour.

Some tensions to keep in mind:
Egoism vs altruism — Do we ultimately act for ourselves, or can we genuinely act for another person’s sake?

Nature vs nurture — How much of our behaviour comes from biology, and how much from upbringing, culture and environment?

Competition vs cooperation — Are both fundamental human tendencies, with different circumstances bringing each to the surface?

Fixed vs malleable — Is there a stable human nature underneath everything, or can human tendencies themselves develop and change?

Questions we may explore

1. Is there such a thing as human nature at all?
2. Two people give the same amount to charity: one gives gladly, while the other gives reluctantly because of guilt and social pressure. Is one more altruistic — or a better person — than the other?
3. If we mainly cooperate with people who cooperate with us, is that altruism, reciprocity — or self-interest?
4. Could a society made up entirely of self-interested people nevertheless become highly cooperative?
5. If the same people become competitive under one set of incentives and cooperative under another, which behaviour is more “natural”?
6. Are humans naturally cooperative with those we consider “us”, but competitive with those we consider “them”?
7. Should workplaces, markets and institutions be designed around competition, cooperation — or some balance of both?
8. If technology could reliably make people less aggressive or more empathetic, should we use it — and what, if anything, should remain beyond our control?

Further reading

• Empirical Approaches to Altruism — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-empirical/
• Human Nature Matters — Skye C. Cleary & Massimo Pigliucci, Aeon - https://aeon.co/essays/theres-no-philosophy-of-life-without-a-theory-of-human-nature
• Are People Naturally Inclined to Cooperate or Be Selfish? — Scientific American - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-people-naturally-inclined-to-cooperate-or-be-selfish/
• The Real Lord of the Flies: What Happened When Six Boys Were Shipwrecked for 15 Months — Rutger Bregman, The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
• Choosing Partners or Rivals — Harvard Gazette - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/study-examines-how-partners-and-rivals-strategies-can-foster-or-destroy-cooperation/