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It is generally not good to make generalizations about social groups, but it's probably true that young people are more interested in themselves than their elders. This is exemplified by self-centered acts like selfie photography—whether they take the form of overexposed, Myspace bathroom poses or haute, contoured Instagram shots—and by other behaviors, such as selfish spending. A recent study confirmed that such selfish behavior is correlated with age; it found that older people are more likely to act altruistically.In "A General Benevolence Dimension That Links Neural, Psychological, Economic, and Life-Span Data on Altruistic Tendencies," the researchers, led by psychology professor Ulrich Mayr, examined 80 male and female subjects between the ages of 18 and 67 years old. Using a functional MRI (fMRI), Mayr and his team examined the brain waves of 80 test subjects as they made decisions about charitable financial giving. Altruism was identified in three ways: self-reported responses about charitable giving, observed charitable actions, and brain response.Benevolence may be wide-reaching, and Mayr believes these findings should make the cynics of the world feel optimistic about our future. "Our results speak against a fatalistic view about the nature [of] altruism—namely, that it does not exist and people only do good things for self-serving motives and not to actually help," he said.Altruism does exist, the study says—it's just not very prevalent among younger people. One (unsurprisingly generous) explanation for why young people are more interested in spending money on themselves than other people is that for younger people, it is more important "to gather resources for the future," Mayr said. Older people don't have that worry so much. "The less future left, the more one can refocus on what is meaningful in the moment."
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The researchers found that older people were more generous, giving money to charity instead of using it for themselves, and their brains seemed to light up in positive ways when they gave away their money. Not so for young people. According to the study, it didn't matter whether the actions of the participant were anonymous or not; old people were still more charitable and young people still weren't. The researchers observed altruistic behavior that is linked to a "general benevolence dimension," which increases with age and transcends factors like gender or wealth.In an interview with Broadly, Mayr said that people who are selfish can become altruistic, but that change is probably cultivated over time. "The mere fact that it increases with age suggests an experiential factor," Mayr said. Young people probably won't give up their self-interest for nothing, though; rewards for good behavior go a long way in creating the shift. "As reward is experienced with altruistic behavior, such behavior may be strengthened in the future," Mayr explained.Read more: Narcissists and Psychopaths Love to Stay Friends with Their Exes
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Everyone knows that life is objectively unpleasant, that people are all shit, and that hell is—more than a Biblical literary device or a fantastic otherworld of eternal suffering—every day on earth. Yet it is dangerous, Mayr said, to think this way—to imagine the world as a place where general benevolence does not exist. "Such a worldview can have important consequences for how one interacts with others, and one's own happiness," he said. This research could help open people's minds to a more optimistic reality in which some humans are actually good by nature."Our work does suggest that, for many acts of giving, the increase in the wellbeing of the recipient is in fact the primary motive, not the secondary consequences that might come for the giver—such as prestige, trust points, etc.," Mayr said. There's good reason to believe that such generosity has positive effects on both those around us as well as on ourselves. Mayr pointed to prior research which showed that people are happier when they give their money away.