There is the perennial question that even some of the greatest thinkers of history, philosophers and theologians were not able to answer: do good by nature, man? Many have tried to find the answer to this mysterious puzzle, and for many was one depressing the result is that the person is doomed to roam the world in selfish agony, or that only divine intervention can redeem humanity viciousness. However, maybe this question will be answered by science?


A group of scientists from Harvard and Yale psychologist with experience in evolutionary game theory David Rand, a moral philosopher and psychologist Joshua Greene, biologist and mathematician Martin Novak solved this difficult hypothesis according to key assumptions, comparing many studies, the work of thousands of participants. First, where is the boundary between good and bad essence? Researchers have simplified the wording, stating the following statement: first impulse, to act selfishly or in the interests of others, serves as an indicator to determine the moral essence.

Intuition as an indicator of moral nature

The study focuses on two opposite types of decision making, based on intuition and meditation. Decisions based on intuition, are made unconsciously, automatically, before your soul will have time to react. On the other hand, meditation leads to decisions by conscious control of the thoughts, when the soul defines all aspects of the solution, to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages, and displays a rational outcome. Armed with these key assumptions, all of this can be reduced to the fact that we will act selfish or altruistic under the action of the first instinct.

Scientists have conducted a series of experiments aimed at establishing links between processing speed and the two scales in the evaluation of information - egoism and cooperation. They included testing of two well-known paradigms - the dilemma of the prisoner and the concept of the public good, for which both sides gathered 843 participant: students and representatives of the national selection associated with five other studies. Both paradigms consist of risky financial enterprises, in which players can choose to be selfish and get more in damage to the group or to decide to act for the good of the group, losing their benefits. When tested, the reaction time, the results were, at least, very interesting. It was established that the decisions faster or intuitively, were associated with a higher level of cooperation, while consistent decisions were associated with a higher level of egoism.

Still not convinced in the accuracy of their previous results, the researchers conducted two new experiment. So, they gathered 343 participant of the national selection for participation in such financial games, after they were given the task to use intuition or Homoseksuelle reasoning. For the second study 891 party (211 students and 680 participants of the national selection) was asked to play two ways, without transitional basis of any quick decisions in less than 10 seconds, or slow down - that is 10 seconds after the game started. The results of both studies were very similar and described what had assumed researchers all this time, when people were forced to use intuition (acting within a given timeframe or if they just offered to do it (without explanation), they gained much more money for the common good than the participants who relied on reflection, to make your choice.

At least, these seven studies and more than two thousand participants point to the fact that people, as a rule, laid this behavior. Help yourself like that, it seems, our first instinct, evolutionary trick that can help our race to survive and develop. In any case, it is not so difficult, at first sight, to make a statement about the evil in the human heart. May be, in fact in our DNA is encoded by a gene of altruism. In the end, the human race has committed many horrible things during his tiny story that lasts only an instant in infinite time the planet. But, maybe this is the case only of our rulers, and very deep, into the heart of each of us, with few exceptions, lives kindness. At least, so says the science.