[techiferous]

> With regard to the "giving", I wonder what theories there are about why many people feel good when giving things up to benefit others.

Imagine two cultural scenarios: one where everyone is looking out for themselves and helping no one, and another where people are genuinely concerned with each other and eager to help when needed. Which culture would you want to live in?

I think we tend to by default project our motivations onto others (especially in the absence of data). So if we are primarily selfish in our motivations, we think the people around us are selfish. So my guess is that being generous makes us feel like the world is a generous place.

Also, our parents probably taught us that sharing with others is good. So we get a little psychological "stroke" of affirmation about our inner goodness by being generous.

[sophacles]

Regarding your post and the parent post: humans are primates, and in amost all primate species a social hierarchy exists, suggesting this is more than social accident when it comes to humans. So I see truth in both statements about giving -- helping others is always an act of power, the deepness (or flatness) of the hierarchy, and the perceived motivation and rewards (implied or conferred social status) may differ, but fundamentally helping others is an act of hierarchal positioning, and in most cases one that positively affects your position (or relative position anyway), so of course it makes one feel good - the reward centers of our brains are set up to be happy with better position.

That being said, I would still prefer the society where everyone helped each other out as, and it was a way to maintain status quo in the hierarchy rather than some act of "charity" (with the implications of 'I am your better by helping you out').

[mattgreenrocks]

> fundamentally helping others is an act of hierarchal positioning

So you started with the idea that everything's about power, and then came to the insight that charity is also about power? If this were actually true, we'd have too many people willing to help. As you said, they just want to maximize their position in the hierarchy, right? In the volunteer organizations I've been in, I've never seen too many volunteers. (I'm in the 25-34 age group in a power-hungry East Coast city where people take themselves extremely seriously.)

Charity feels good because in our sacrifice we enter into another's needs on their behalf. This forces us to get over ourselves temporarily. I don't think it to be socialization; there's something more at work here.