Lecture 1 Introduction
Why is this the best time for this course?
Solidarity and social justice are now (corona) even more important than before. Corona pandemic
may provide an excellent case study.
Articles: asking whether the cure maybe worse than the disease? Why we have to weigh the
consequences of the disease against the damage that the lockdowns are doing to our economy.
Arguing that we are facing a global crisis: perhaps biggest in our generation. Finding the common
good in a pandemic. In new york times article corona crisis is being approached as being a social
dilemma where short term individual interests are being weighed against long term societal
interests.
So you already see that there is quite some overlap between the questions that are posed/urgent in
the corona crisis and the topics that we are discussing in this course.
Why is this the worst time for this course?
At the same time this course couldn’t have come at the worse time because we can only teach at a
distance which means groups discussions are much more difficult to host and those are the so
important when we are learning about contested topics as solidarity and social justice.
Worldcat search machine
Solidarity
Sociological and philosophical roots:
Shared aims and interests (macrolevel)
Shared life experiences (work, community)
Fraternity (brotherhood)
Community: a willingness to share resources
A moral principle underlying society & the welfare state
It is a contested concept within sociology and it is not agreed on how we should view it. Sociological
concept is more macrolevel (sharing or resources, feelings, fraternity = these last two are more
individual level concepts). Another important part of the sociological approach to solidarity is a
strong moral aspects to it.
Psychological roots:
The concept of solidarity is not mentioned that often in psychology, but there are three
concepts related:
Cooperation/altruism/prosocial behavior (helping) – today’s theme
Belongingness/affiliation (between individuals, liking, need to belong – one of 3 basic human
needs)
Social identity/inclusion & exclusion (who is part of your in-group?)
So solidarity is the willingness to share and cooperate with each other. Social justice can provide the
rules by which we should do this (solidarity)
Social justice
Sociological and philosophical roots:
, Redistribution of resources (who should be burdened, who should benefit? Who should be
helped and how much help should they receive to create a fair and just society?)
Division of divide fundamental rights and obligations (so it is not only about material goods)
An underlying moral principle/ set of principles in society (so it is related to solidarity in this
aspect)
Psychological roots:
Distributive fairness (the fairness of outcomes)
Procedural fairness (fairness of processes, how decisions of dividing outcomes are made)
Self-transcending (vs. self-enhancing/self-interest) value/motive
Study of social justice is much more interdisciplinary than the study of solidarity.
Interdisciplinarity in this course:
Sociology
(political) philosophy
Psychology
And where these perspectives contrast and meet (during tutorials)
Do we have a social justice motive? Do we feel solidaristic towards others?
How psychologists and sociologists come with arguments to argue for either sides of this debate.
Fundamental to multiple debates that center around solidarity & social justice. Fundamental
questions: is there a sense of justice hardwired in our brains? Can we be purely altruistic?
Do we have self-transcending motives of justice and solidarity or is all behaviour ultimately driven
by self-interest?
Important question because it is not only about how we act but also our motives/motivations behind
it. So why do we act the way we do? There are arguments for both sides:
Homo economicus (=assumption that people are self-interested beings)
Rational choice theory
o People are rational beings, they weigh costs and benefits and strive for maximum net
benefit
o So when people are confronted with a choice, They will consider all available
alternatives and they will prefer to make a choice that results in maximum outcome
for themselves
o This theory is often used to model behavior in economics and social science more
broadly
o It is a generally accepted theory with some additional assumptions incorporated in it
Theory of evolution
o Darwin’s origin of species
o Theory from biology (how functions in species evolved over time), now applied in
social sciences
o Natural selection: there are hereditary traits with blind variation and differences in
fitness of the variants of these traits descent with modification/survival of the
fittest
Heredity traits = passed through reproduction
, Blind variation = mutation, heredity traits vary over generations with no
specific cause
Fitness = this different variances of heredity traits have different levels of
adaptivity to the environment
Survival of the fittest = genes with most fit have more chance to strive, non-
adaptive traits become extinct over time
o Through natural selection we lost our tales, walked straight etc and we developed
relatively larger brain compared to other species and the main reason we did this is
because it was adaptive for us to thrive in social environment
Both theories (rational choice theory and theory of evolution) assume that humans are self-
interested.
Rational choice theory
o Prisoner’s dilemma
o Imagine that you have committed a crime
(bank robbery) with a partner. You are
both caught by the police and you both
have an interrogation. You have no time to
discuss what you and your partner in crime
are going to tell/confess. In the interrogation room you have to decide whether or
not you will cooperate with your partner (cooperation means that you will not
confess/staying true to your partner).if both of you cooperate (you both do not
confess to the crime) you both get 3 years in prison. However, if one of you defects
and speaks up/confesses to the crime that you have committed together then the
one who confesses and works together with the police gets a reduced sentence
while the other gets a longer sentence than when you both don’t confess. But: if
both of you defect (confess) you get the same sentence higher than when you both
don’t confess.
o 3/3 option is the most solidaristic.
o The rational choice in this dilemma is to confess/defect/ to not cooperate with your
partner – to act selfish, because that will minimize the chance to go to jail for a very
long time.
Theory of evolution
o Natural selection
favors selfishness:
these models cannot
adequately account
for human
cooperation.
o Every population of
co-operators (c) = sharers, solidaristic people will through the process of random
variation/mutation at one time encompass at least one defector. In this population
defectors will have more fit to survive than co-operators, because co-operators will
always have to make some sort of costs in order to share resources in order to
cooperate with others and these costs don’t have to be made by the defectors. So
the defectors will have less costs and more benefits: making them fitter to survive.
, So as soon as there is a defector in this population through natural selection this
defectors will haver a higher chance of survival over the co-operators.
o So in the end you will always end up with the population of only defectors = so
natural selection favors selfish behavior.
Counterargument Rational Choice theory and Theory of evolution
o There are many more social dilemmas, you see that around 70% of individuals would
be classified as prosocials (cooperatives) while other 30% are individualists and
competitors = searching for maximum benefit for themselves. So relatively more
people choose to cooperate even though it is not the most beneficial thing to do.
o Self-transcending motives in everyday life, social justice motives are not only seen in
humans but also in animals = so the justice motive has to be quite instinctive. You
don’t have to be rational to act in just manners. Monkeys have justice motives:
fairness study. Monkeys reject unequal pays. The feeling of injustice frustrates them.
Justice motive is very instinctual! So there is no specific human capacity necessary for
being sensitive to justice information. So there is some support for the existence of
the justice motive in humans as it is in other animals.
o Additional studies on empathy also show this effect of justice motive or pure
empathy hardwired in the brain (it can be shown in brain imaging studies).
Batson and colleagues (famous researcher on empathy) did this kind of study
on self-transcending motivations where they manipulated the experiment in
the way that people could feel empathy towards others.
They wrote a scenario about victimization case and they asked the
participants to be:
a) To be objective (O), view the situation from distant perspective = ‘’try to
be as objective as possible about what had happened to the person
interviewed and how it had affected his or her life’’
b) To imagine-other (I-O)= ‘’try to imagine how the person being
interviewed feels about that has happened and how this affected his or
her life’’
c) To imagine-self (I-S) = ‘’try to imagine
how yourself would feel if you were
experiencing what has happened to the
person being interviewed and how this
experience would affect your life’’
They measured the level of empathy and
distress. The imagine other and imagine-
self condition had more empathy than the objective condition. And when the
participant was asked to feel with this person the level of distress grew as
they were asked to really imagine what the consequences could be for her or
him. So less distress in the objective condition and more in I-O and I-S.
Conclusion: So we are able to feel empathy without this self-interested
motivation of trying to reduce distress for yourself.
From the brain scans you can really see a difference between the imagine-
other and imagine-self condition: in the primitive, older parts of the brain
(brainstem) additional evidence that we can feel pure empathy without
distress when being confronted with another person in need.
It’s up to you to form your own opinion about the nature of humans: self-transcending or
self-interested. Self-interest is the only rational option but on the other hand we often see
Why is this the best time for this course?
Solidarity and social justice are now (corona) even more important than before. Corona pandemic
may provide an excellent case study.
Articles: asking whether the cure maybe worse than the disease? Why we have to weigh the
consequences of the disease against the damage that the lockdowns are doing to our economy.
Arguing that we are facing a global crisis: perhaps biggest in our generation. Finding the common
good in a pandemic. In new york times article corona crisis is being approached as being a social
dilemma where short term individual interests are being weighed against long term societal
interests.
So you already see that there is quite some overlap between the questions that are posed/urgent in
the corona crisis and the topics that we are discussing in this course.
Why is this the worst time for this course?
At the same time this course couldn’t have come at the worse time because we can only teach at a
distance which means groups discussions are much more difficult to host and those are the so
important when we are learning about contested topics as solidarity and social justice.
Worldcat search machine
Solidarity
Sociological and philosophical roots:
Shared aims and interests (macrolevel)
Shared life experiences (work, community)
Fraternity (brotherhood)
Community: a willingness to share resources
A moral principle underlying society & the welfare state
It is a contested concept within sociology and it is not agreed on how we should view it. Sociological
concept is more macrolevel (sharing or resources, feelings, fraternity = these last two are more
individual level concepts). Another important part of the sociological approach to solidarity is a
strong moral aspects to it.
Psychological roots:
The concept of solidarity is not mentioned that often in psychology, but there are three
concepts related:
Cooperation/altruism/prosocial behavior (helping) – today’s theme
Belongingness/affiliation (between individuals, liking, need to belong – one of 3 basic human
needs)
Social identity/inclusion & exclusion (who is part of your in-group?)
So solidarity is the willingness to share and cooperate with each other. Social justice can provide the
rules by which we should do this (solidarity)
Social justice
Sociological and philosophical roots:
, Redistribution of resources (who should be burdened, who should benefit? Who should be
helped and how much help should they receive to create a fair and just society?)
Division of divide fundamental rights and obligations (so it is not only about material goods)
An underlying moral principle/ set of principles in society (so it is related to solidarity in this
aspect)
Psychological roots:
Distributive fairness (the fairness of outcomes)
Procedural fairness (fairness of processes, how decisions of dividing outcomes are made)
Self-transcending (vs. self-enhancing/self-interest) value/motive
Study of social justice is much more interdisciplinary than the study of solidarity.
Interdisciplinarity in this course:
Sociology
(political) philosophy
Psychology
And where these perspectives contrast and meet (during tutorials)
Do we have a social justice motive? Do we feel solidaristic towards others?
How psychologists and sociologists come with arguments to argue for either sides of this debate.
Fundamental to multiple debates that center around solidarity & social justice. Fundamental
questions: is there a sense of justice hardwired in our brains? Can we be purely altruistic?
Do we have self-transcending motives of justice and solidarity or is all behaviour ultimately driven
by self-interest?
Important question because it is not only about how we act but also our motives/motivations behind
it. So why do we act the way we do? There are arguments for both sides:
Homo economicus (=assumption that people are self-interested beings)
Rational choice theory
o People are rational beings, they weigh costs and benefits and strive for maximum net
benefit
o So when people are confronted with a choice, They will consider all available
alternatives and they will prefer to make a choice that results in maximum outcome
for themselves
o This theory is often used to model behavior in economics and social science more
broadly
o It is a generally accepted theory with some additional assumptions incorporated in it
Theory of evolution
o Darwin’s origin of species
o Theory from biology (how functions in species evolved over time), now applied in
social sciences
o Natural selection: there are hereditary traits with blind variation and differences in
fitness of the variants of these traits descent with modification/survival of the
fittest
Heredity traits = passed through reproduction
, Blind variation = mutation, heredity traits vary over generations with no
specific cause
Fitness = this different variances of heredity traits have different levels of
adaptivity to the environment
Survival of the fittest = genes with most fit have more chance to strive, non-
adaptive traits become extinct over time
o Through natural selection we lost our tales, walked straight etc and we developed
relatively larger brain compared to other species and the main reason we did this is
because it was adaptive for us to thrive in social environment
Both theories (rational choice theory and theory of evolution) assume that humans are self-
interested.
Rational choice theory
o Prisoner’s dilemma
o Imagine that you have committed a crime
(bank robbery) with a partner. You are
both caught by the police and you both
have an interrogation. You have no time to
discuss what you and your partner in crime
are going to tell/confess. In the interrogation room you have to decide whether or
not you will cooperate with your partner (cooperation means that you will not
confess/staying true to your partner).if both of you cooperate (you both do not
confess to the crime) you both get 3 years in prison. However, if one of you defects
and speaks up/confesses to the crime that you have committed together then the
one who confesses and works together with the police gets a reduced sentence
while the other gets a longer sentence than when you both don’t confess. But: if
both of you defect (confess) you get the same sentence higher than when you both
don’t confess.
o 3/3 option is the most solidaristic.
o The rational choice in this dilemma is to confess/defect/ to not cooperate with your
partner – to act selfish, because that will minimize the chance to go to jail for a very
long time.
Theory of evolution
o Natural selection
favors selfishness:
these models cannot
adequately account
for human
cooperation.
o Every population of
co-operators (c) = sharers, solidaristic people will through the process of random
variation/mutation at one time encompass at least one defector. In this population
defectors will have more fit to survive than co-operators, because co-operators will
always have to make some sort of costs in order to share resources in order to
cooperate with others and these costs don’t have to be made by the defectors. So
the defectors will have less costs and more benefits: making them fitter to survive.
, So as soon as there is a defector in this population through natural selection this
defectors will haver a higher chance of survival over the co-operators.
o So in the end you will always end up with the population of only defectors = so
natural selection favors selfish behavior.
Counterargument Rational Choice theory and Theory of evolution
o There are many more social dilemmas, you see that around 70% of individuals would
be classified as prosocials (cooperatives) while other 30% are individualists and
competitors = searching for maximum benefit for themselves. So relatively more
people choose to cooperate even though it is not the most beneficial thing to do.
o Self-transcending motives in everyday life, social justice motives are not only seen in
humans but also in animals = so the justice motive has to be quite instinctive. You
don’t have to be rational to act in just manners. Monkeys have justice motives:
fairness study. Monkeys reject unequal pays. The feeling of injustice frustrates them.
Justice motive is very instinctual! So there is no specific human capacity necessary for
being sensitive to justice information. So there is some support for the existence of
the justice motive in humans as it is in other animals.
o Additional studies on empathy also show this effect of justice motive or pure
empathy hardwired in the brain (it can be shown in brain imaging studies).
Batson and colleagues (famous researcher on empathy) did this kind of study
on self-transcending motivations where they manipulated the experiment in
the way that people could feel empathy towards others.
They wrote a scenario about victimization case and they asked the
participants to be:
a) To be objective (O), view the situation from distant perspective = ‘’try to
be as objective as possible about what had happened to the person
interviewed and how it had affected his or her life’’
b) To imagine-other (I-O)= ‘’try to imagine how the person being
interviewed feels about that has happened and how this affected his or
her life’’
c) To imagine-self (I-S) = ‘’try to imagine
how yourself would feel if you were
experiencing what has happened to the
person being interviewed and how this
experience would affect your life’’
They measured the level of empathy and
distress. The imagine other and imagine-
self condition had more empathy than the objective condition. And when the
participant was asked to feel with this person the level of distress grew as
they were asked to really imagine what the consequences could be for her or
him. So less distress in the objective condition and more in I-O and I-S.
Conclusion: So we are able to feel empathy without this self-interested
motivation of trying to reduce distress for yourself.
From the brain scans you can really see a difference between the imagine-
other and imagine-self condition: in the primitive, older parts of the brain
(brainstem) additional evidence that we can feel pure empathy without
distress when being confronted with another person in need.
It’s up to you to form your own opinion about the nature of humans: self-transcending or
self-interested. Self-interest is the only rational option but on the other hand we often see
