Learning About People’s Motivations for Self-Interest and Selfishness

John Voiklis, Ph.D., a cognitive and social psychologist and a researcher at Knology

Selfishness, the behavior challenge, blind spot and often, a rationalization, can be puzzling because while we instantly recognize it in other people, rare is it that we recognize these tendencies or habits in ourselves.

“In general, people need to think of themselves as mostly good and useful and worthy,” John Voiklis, Ph.D. says.

Voiklis is a cognitive and social psychologist and a researcher at Knology. He studies how people think about their social world and how they act through choices, behaviors, and relationships.

Back to people needing to think of themselves as mostly good:

“Psychologists call this self-enhancement motivation,” Voiklis says. “Self-enhancement motives can ebb and flow with circumstances: more in situations that threaten our self-esteem and legitimacy — and less when we feel secure,” he says.

Our hunger for improvement in our life is a strong driver of behavior, positive or negative.

“People in power tend to conflate their personal selves with their roles,” Voiklis says. “In a management context, the role of those in power is to promote the interests of the organization, or mission or cause— and fulfilling that role requires, in part, maintaining their power over others. In other words, a bit of selfishness is built into the role.”

Crisis can magnify this behavior and maybe for some, their habit.

“In professional settings that focus on short-term outcomes, the state of crisis can become constant, opening the tap for a constant flow of self-serving behavior. In other words, the blind move to selfishness can start as simple self-preservation, maybe even self-empowerment, but circumstances can make it go haywire,” Voiklis says.

Is it possible, as a society more so than every individual, to become less selfish and respect the humanity of others in our interactions?

“I don’t know,” Voiklis states. “I mean this as a bit of epistemic humility, and as a recommendation. Let me explain:

“In recent projects, my colleagues and I have been looking at programs intended to increase compassion across racial, ethnic, religious, and regional differences. A first step in the process of building compassion is often to encourage people to take the other’s perspective.

“The problem with perspective-taking is that people tend to rely on two shortcuts. If they see the other person as similar to themselves, then they tend to project their own thoughts and feelings onto the other person. If they see the other person as unlike themselves, then they tend to rely on stereotypes to impute the other’s thoughts and feelings.”

These approaches create thinking errors and subsequent unhelpful reactions or responses.

“Both mechanisms are prone to gross errors,” Voiklis says. “In the past, I have contributed to designing training programs for helping people — mainly military and security personnel — get beyond shortcuts and make better, deeper inferences about other people… In recent programs, we have been pushing people to recognize that perspective-taking is a fool’s errand without first gathering more information.”

Why so?

“They have to see that perspective-taking is prone to error and that the better approach is to start from “I don’t know.” Instead of taking another’s perspective, they need to seek the other’s perspective: ask questions, listen to the answers, and repeat as needed,” Voiklis says.

This approach of curiosity has the potential and power to inform, educate and enlighten.

“Starting with ignorance might also be fruitful in the moral domain. My colleagues and I have studied norm enforcement through moral criticism — blaming, scolding, admonishing — and how criticism can degenerate into a cycle of recriminations,” he says.

“As any advice columnist or couples counselor will tell you, the most effective criticism is delivered directly to the ‘offender,’ as calmly as possible, and without condescension,” he adds, explaining the challenge. “That is hard to do without all the necessary information about what they did, what they thought they were doing, why they did it, etc.

“It might be best to start with ignorance, especially when you are under the offender’s power, and ask them to give their perspective on their intentions, their behavior, the outcome, and the reasons they might have intended to act in a way that brought about that outcome.”

Doing this could produce valuable insight yet it is going to be a very challenging task and ‘ask.’

“Probe their understanding of norms and expectations; share your own perspective on norms and expectations,” Voiklis says.

“This is a lot of hard work,” Voiklis admits, “but it is likely more fruitful than raging in the Twittersverse.”