Looking for the Good Samaritan

Meerkats. These adorable, furry animals are well known for their role in the BBC produced animated film, The Meerkats. What’s more, meerkats are also often used as model animals for their altruistic behavior.

These animals are famously known to stand guard while other members of their gang forage for food. If they detect any threats, the sentinels call out to the rest of the meerkats, which then run to nearby hiding places. It seems that they are risking their lives to protect their groups. However, a 1999 report showed that guards are the first to flee after sounding an alarm and that sentinels, in fact, are positioned such that they have the most time to reach safety. Therefore, what does altruism really mean and do meerkats have a hidden agenda?

Altruism is defined by Daniel Batson as “a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare.” This is differs from egoism, the ultimate goal of which is individual benefit. It seems that the meerkats who stand guard as sentinels might therefore be acting with egoistic rather than altruistic motivation. But what about humans? Can they ever be truly altruistic? Does the Good Samaritan, a person who helps others without an expectation of a reward, exist?

There are several theories that explain prosocial and altruistic behavior in humans. One such model is the Empathy-Altruism hypothesis developed by Daniel Batson. According to this theory, when a person sees another person in need, they might help the other person either to reduce their own distress or if they feel they might be rewarded for their service. There is a third possibility, however. They may feel empathetic towards the person in need, and in that state they are willing to help the other person regardless of what they might gain. Reducing the other person’s suffering becomes the most important goal, indicating that it is possible for humans to behave in a truly altruistic manner.

On the other hand, evolutionary theories on altruism suggest that humans do behave selfishly, even when helping another person. For example, according to the Kin Selection hypothesis, humans help others, especially their descendants. Although they may be reducing the chances of their own survival, they are increasing the probability of their genes being passed on to the next generation. Moreover, the degree of helping behavior increases if the concerned individuals are closely related. It is therefore also not surprising that people are more willing to help those whom they perceive to be more similar to rather than different from themselves.

However, humans have behaved altruistically and have helped complete strangers in the past. For example, Patrick Morgan risked his life by jumping down under a stationary train in Sydney, Australia to save an elderly woman who had fallen there. But he said that he was simply doing what he thought anyone else would do. Similarly, Vishnu Zende, the railway announcer at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus saved hundreds of lives by alerting commuters to leave the station during the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

I guess the Good Samaritan does exist. And in any case, helping others is always good, even if you do it to help yourself.

Kahini Shah

Caregivers: Valuable Assets for Society

‘My mother-in-law is suffering from dementia. I have been taking care of her since a long time and I feel very good about it. But I admit that it is exhausting. It has been months since I have gone to meet my relatives or friends, or seen a movie. How can do that? What if something happens when I am away?’     

Imagine someone saying this. Imagine who that person could be. More often than not, you’ve thought of a caregiver.

In our society, each of us knows of at least one person in a similar situation. Caregivers turn into indispensable assets for society. Till a few years ago in India, families refused to send their relatives to geriatric centers, hospices, and centers for children with disabilities. Family members mainly fall under the category of ‘informal caregivers.’ With the development of institutions and long-term stay facilities, the staffs of such institutions are also included in this category, specifically as ‘formal caregivers.’ As health care professionals, it is not only important to deal with the stresses of individuals suffering from physical or psychiatric problems but also with the stresses of caregivers.

A caretaker’s daily life is filled with tension, conflicts, and anxiety, accompanied with a variety of emotions. Long-term impact includes caregiver’s burden, that is, sleep difficulty, depression, anxiety, and loneliness. The experience of caregiving tends to be a chronic stressor  (Bevans & Sternberg, 2012). Daily hassles in a caretaker’s life include providing assistance with transport and mobility, managing schedules for medication, and communicating with medical professionals. It also requires being vigilant about signs of any health scare, motivating the ones they take care of, and facing financial issues. The demands of caring can lead to restrictions on other areas of life including work, social functioning, thus reducing the quality of caregivers’ lives.

Caregivers are impacted psychologically, emotionally and behaviorally. Their thoughts are constantly focused on the health of the patient. This can lead to psychological morbidity which would further lead to poor bereavement outcome (Addignton-Hall & Ramirez, 2006). It is also likely for caregivers to develop depression and anxiety due to constant hypervigilance toward those under their care. Emotions of guilt, fear, and sadness are most common amongst caregivers. Lack of recreation further adds to the development of health complications. Other risk factors include hours spent in caregiving, social isolation, and psychological factors of the patient (Adelman, Tmanova, Delgado, Dion, & Lachs, 2014). When caregivers undergo so many problems, why are they a neglected sector in health care?    

First, it is assumed that caretaking is a responsibility or duty which has to be fulfilled whether the caregiver is a family member or a professional. If they complain, they are ridiculed and reminded about this ‘responsibility.’ Second, caregivers are susceptible to feel guilty when they prioritize their own problems over the patient’s problems. Third, their problems are always compared to what their patients are going through and are brushed off as minor stresses. Their thoughts and emotions are rarely taken into consideration unless they develop psychological symptoms which hamper their caretaking tasks.

Given the stressors outlined above, why do people choose to be caregivers for their relatives or volunteer for a career in caregiving? Caregiving is viewed as a noble deed in society. The motivation may not be monetary benefits, praise or recognition. It is the satisfaction and pleasure they experience that is often highlighted. Although it involves many stressors, the positive responses from the patients is the main reinforcement for caregiving behavior. They can be compared to backstage workers of a play, who silently strive to make the actors look good and the play to become a success. The play can collapse in their absence. In my experience as a Clinical Psychologist, I have often realized how the absence of a ‘caring’ caregiver can hinder the improvement of patients and how resolving caregivers’ stress can accelerate the patient’s progress.

Once in a lifetime, every individual faces the opportunity to be a caregiver – by choice or by design. It is important to make this opportunity less stressful by acknowledging that it is not an easy task, appreciating their effort and involvement in caregiving, and reminding them that their life and health are not to be neglected. It is important to assess them psychologically to prevent burnout  (Coping with Caregiver Stress and Burden, 2015). As professionals, providing them with the appropriate information about the diagnosis as well as a realistic prognosis would be beneficial. For formal caregivers, job satisfaction and job stress must be assessed at frequent intervals. Self help  (Caregiving Support and Help, 2015) and support groups have also been found to be helpful.       

Rupa Kalahasthi

Free Will: Is this the real life… Is this just fantasy?

“You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

When you were getting ready in the morning, did you choose the colour of the shirt you would wear today? Do you arbitrarily choose what dish you want to order at a restaurant? Did you voluntarily choose the subject of your undergraduate degree?

All these questions refer to the choice we have, while making decisions in life. The ability to make that choice is what we call free will. Free will is the ability of an agent to select an option (a behavior, an object, a course etc.) from a set of alternatives (Mick, 2008) .

Most people believe that they have free will, and they control their decisions. However, many psychologists and philosophers refute the idea of free will with the idea of determinism. Philosophy defines determinism as a notion that every event or state of affairs, including every human decision and action, is the inevitable and necessary consequence of the antecedent states of affairs. Putting it in simpler terms- all our actions are pre-determined, and we do not really have the freedom of ‘choosing what we want to do’. Daniel Wegner, in his book The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002), states that free will is just an illusion, and we attribute it to be the cause of events, whose actual causes we don’t really understand.

To test whether people really have free will, Benjamin Libet (1982) conducted an experiment, where he measured cerebral activity, and found out that freely, voluntary acts were preceded by a specific electrical change (readiness potential ‘RP’)  in the brain that began about 550 ms before the act. Human subjects became aware of the intention to act 350–400 ms after the RP began, but 200 ms before the motor act. He therefore concluded that the volitional process was initiated unconsciously (through a set of neurological functions), but the conscious function could still control the outcome. Hence, even though his experiments indicated that the choice made by people was not random, but predetermined, the existence of free will could not be completely eliminated.

Furthermore, even in the field of criminology, there is a long standing argument that we do not have free will; therefore, a person’s criminal behavior is determined by environmental, biological and social factors. Many have used this argument in the court of law to justify transgressions. But arguments of this nature haven’t found many takers in the legal system. For instance, American courts are not likely to warm up to the idea of genetic causes behind crime, and tend to stress on the fact the people have the free will to choose between right and wrong (Jones, 2003). Hence, even within the justice system, there is no clear acceptance or rejection of free will.

But what if we do indeed make choices consciously, and only come to know about them much later? Does that mean free will really exists, but we all have misinterpreted how it exactly  happens?  Holton (2004), in his review Wegner’s book The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002) stated that precursor events might be genuinely mental events of which the subject is not aware about until later. This leads to a whole different set of ideas about how free will operates.

People have argued strongly for and against free will, but none seem to have reached a consensus about it. One of the oldest questions to plague the field of psychology still remains unresolved. When I decided to write about this topic, was it my freedom of choice or was it some predetermined set of biological and neurological functions?

Sampada Karandikar