According to social psychologist Daniel Batson, psychological altruism refers to a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing the well-being of others.
Not all altruistic behaviors have the same psychological motivation (one can act altruistically out of mere social convention at a given moment), but psychologically motivated altruism is undoubtedly the most promising when it comes to quantitatively increasing altruistic acts.
To promote altruistic acts, the best strategy is, logically, to promote psychologically motivated altruism. Batson, in particular, links altruistic motivation to the development of empathy. But empathy, as a basic response to human behavior, has its limitations (as aptly pointed out in a famous book). These limitations disappear almost entirely when we conceive of "principled empathy." In this case, symbolic mechanisms with strong emotional power are used to establish rational criteria for empathy and altruism.
A principled altruistic psychology, unlike altruism based merely on empathy, requires a certain level of cognitive development. In theory, not all altruistic principles are compatible with empathy-based altruism. Consider the Marxists who believed that, to achieve universal justice, the end justified the means (and some speculations about anti-human animalism too). But altruistic psychology (or "principled empathic altruism") can address these issues if it conceives of human development as inseparable from cultural development. An altruistic culture based on empathy, while never without ethical dilemmas, cannot fall prey to utilitarian fallacies.
The goal must be to develop an altruistic culture by using—through trial and error—valid strategies for developing an altruistic personality (altruistic psychology) and controlling human innate agression.
Jeremy Rifkin points out that an outstanding experience in developing empathic connection between individuals as successful as "Alcoholics Anonymous" did not arise from psychological science, but from the individual motivation to focus cooperation for the common good from the point of view of the development of empathy.
Also, starting from the conception of the development of a "dramaturgical consciousness" in human psychology (after humanity has passed through stages of "mythological consciousness," "theological consciousness," "ideological consciousness," and "psychological consciousness"), Jeremy Rifkin considers the possibilities of applying the "deep acting" proposed by Stanislavsky in his method for actors to the altruistic development of personality. To this we can add the possibilities of the "psychological priming" for the development of altruistic empathy, cognitive behavioral therapy strategies (coaching tricks too), the cultivation of the arts (especially literature), and the long tradition of psychological strategies characteristic of compassionate religions. If the objective of the social behavior to be achieved is always clear (non-aggressive social behavior, with the highest possible level of empathy, benevolence and altruism), a trial and error process would select the most productive strategies and discard those that are less so.
We have evidence that today there are already societies that are more altruistic than others, and therefore it seems sensible to explore the limits of the social development of altruism, for which we find a large number of potentially effective instruments.
