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How Aging Might Encourage Altruism By Gina Rich
"Young people today are so selfish!" It's a common sentiment that might sound harsh. But there is truth behind it: In a 2024 review of literature on altruism, researchers found that compared with younger people, older individuals displayed more prosocial behavior — actions that helped others. Researchers have found that as we age, our brains respond differently to altruistic behavior. And these changes in our brains could be making us more likely to focus on others' well-being. From an evolutionary perspective, prosocial behavior has been key to humanity's survival. "It should be baked into our DNA to be at the very least cooperative," says Jane Piliavin, professor emerita of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But why do older adults tend to be more concerned with others' well-being, from donating money to volunteering? Older individuals may have more disposable income or a desire to leave a positive legacy. But Piliavin chalks it up to something more mundane: If you're older and retired, you no longer have to spend several hours per day working. You might do more for others simply because "you have more time," she says. Could this increased prosocial behavior also have something to do with how our brains react to helping others? To answer this question, researchers first needed to determine what a genuine altruistic response would look like in the brain, says Ulrich Mayr, a University of Oregon neuroscientist.
Our brains contain "a large network of areas that all sort of move in the same direction when something positive happens," says Mayr. "We often call them the reward areas." Mayr and other researchers used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to see how people's reward areas responded when money from an unspecified source was donated either to a charity or to the participants themselves. Because participants were passively watching the charitable transaction, there was nothing in it for them — they received neither social accolades nor the "warm glow" of making a gift. Most participants' brains showed at least some favorable response to the charitable donation. Researchers concluded those people were displaying genuine or pure altruism.
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