Is Goodness Really Our Basic Nature?

There has been a mushrooming growth in positive thinking and affirmation based psychology in recent years. We have been taught to appreciate the goodness both within ourselves and within others. It's all about gratitude. But the question of our true nature is still one that lingers in the mind. It is the question of the ages – maybe even the ultimate question. It goes to the heart of understanding who we are and what lies in our future both on an individual and a societal level.

It was originally addressed by the scriptures. Religious and philosophical discourse over the millennia has pointed to a fundamental goodness that lies at the heart of each of us. Whether referred to in terms of divinity – as in the conventional religions – or in terms of core attributes – as in Buddhism – human kindness has been described as an irreducible part of who we are.

In the least hundred years, however, with the birth and growth of evolutionary biology and Freudian psychology, a different school of thought propagated; namely that, at our basest level, we are all in fact selfish genes, fighting a battle for survival of the fittest. War, famine, intolerance and crime lead all of us to wonder, from time to time, whether this alte
ative view of human nature is perhaps a more accurate one.

In the last decade or so, however, research by some clever academics in psychology departments around the world has begun to piece together a picture that seems to combine both realities and throw up some interesting conclusions as a result. A study at the University of Chicago, Department of Psychology looked into the brains of children aged 7 to 12 using functional MRI scans. fMRIs are sophisticated scanning devices that enable us to observe what’s going on, in terms of activity, within the brain so we have an objective picture of what emotions are being experienced at any particular time. The Chicago academics discovered that children of this age do, in fact, have a natural inclination to experience empathy for the plight of others.

Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of Califo
ia is one of several pioneering professors to have written about the way in which human altruism does appear to have given us an evolutionary advantage. By sticking together as a community, we have effectively succeeded over our predators as a species. Far from it being “the nice guy” who always looses out, it turns out that the exact opposite is true when looking at species survival. The result of this process is that kindness is now actually hard wired into us, hence the findings of the University of Chicago researchers.

No one is saying that selfish and destructive action is absent from the spectrum of human behaviours, but what the latest research and thinking tells us is that kindness toward others does, in fact, represent a core aspect of who we are on a fundamental level.

Now there’s truly something to feel grateful for (and know the reason too).