re"Self-interest and ethics don't have any problems living together. In fact, ethics are great for self-interest. That's what makes humans humans instead of chimpoid."
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Through a series of experiments, Bateson found that when subjects encountered someone in need, they typically reported experiencing two distinct kinds of emotions: personal distress (alarm, worry, or grief) or empathy (sympathy, compassion, or tenderness). While subjects experiencing either of the emotions helped the person in need, the underlying motivations differed according to which emotion was present. When escape was made easy, 67% of subjects reporting feelings of distress escaped rather than helped. However, only 17% of the subjects reporting feelings of empathy escaped; the overwhelming majority of them stayed to help the person in need, even though they could have easily escaped. Feelings of empathy, Bateson claims, appear to arouse a genuinely altruistic motivation to help that is not derived from self interest, a finding contrary to the Hobbesian point of view.
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