One of the more interesting topics in moral philosophy is that of altruism. Can people selflessly give to other people with no expectation of any gifts in return? Being that I believe the world to be a cold, dark place and mankind only motivated by base selfish interests, I suspect the answer is no.

Jonah Lehrer, the neuroscience writer, has a recent book called “How We Decide,” and he describes some experiments related to this topic. One experiment is called the dictator game and involves two participants. One participant is given $10 and is told he can give as much or as little to the other participant as he desires. The other participant can choose to accept the amount, or refuse it, in which case neither participant gets any money. Now, logically speaking, the person with the money ought to be able to get away with offering something low, like $.10, since, from the perspective of the other person, $.10 is better than nothing. But when such lowball offers are made, the other participant usually refuses the offer, thus denying money to either player. More interesting is the fact that is that most players in possession of the original $10 offer something in the range of three or four dollars — they anticipate that the other person will reject anything lower.

So why does the second player reject lowball offers? I think most of us have a sense that there’s something “insulting” about tiny offers. But, again, that’s not really rational — it’s all just free money, who cares what the other guy’s getting? My belief here is that we implicitly understand that any gift comes with strings attached. We presume that at some point in the future, the giver is going to want something in return. If we’re going to expose ourselves to this risk, we want more than $.10.

There’s a couple of related points to this experiment. Autistic players, who have limited empathy, only offer lowball gifts and become frustrated when the gifts are not accepted. They are playing the game purely from a rational viewpoint and can’t foresee the other player being insulted by the offer. Also interesting: when the game involves only one human participant as the owner of the $10 against a computer, the humans also lowball their gift. We understand that a computer has no emotional life and will not be insulted.