 My name is Hans van Dijk, I'm an associate professor at the department of organization studies from our university, school of social and behavioral sciences and I'm very happy to moderate, host this session on altruism. We're going to hear great speakers today, so we have three great speakers who will talk about altruism and volunteering from three different perspectives. They will talk each about 20 minutes and after that there's about five minutes for questions and answers from their side. After the first two speakers, we have a break of five minutes, no a break of ten minutes even, and then there will be the third speaker and after that we have four representatives from four student organizations. So we have the Red Cross helpdesk, we have serve the city, we have Vida Fidei and we have, let me briefly check, FruxySum, yes, they are going to explain a bit more about their organization also when they are standing here and then we make it more interactive, we have some statements, some discussion points to discuss with them and with all of you and all of that together will take about 22 hours. In total, two hours, two hours. But we can also make it 20 hours because I think we have enough material to discuss with all of us for so long. This session is also organized by the four student organizations together with Studium Generale here from the university. And of course this session, we have great speakers, great input, fantastic content, so all of that will be good because it will be even better if all of you will also mingle in the whole discussion. So I really hope that you will also actively participate, that would also make my job easier, I may add. Just for a very brief introduction and understanding, who of you here is engaged in voluntary work, does voluntary work? Yeah, okay, more than half I think, yeah. So a big question I think that we're asking today is why are you doing that? And for those of you who are not volunteering, why are you not doing that? Or why are the others doing that? Actually, in preparing for this session, I have also been wondering myself, like, okay, and the stuff that I've done, why did I do it? You know, sometimes it may sound very nice, okay, you know, I'm helping refugees or something like that. But at the same time, am I really doing it for them and does it cost me something or is it actually that it also benefits me? Because it helps me feel good about myself. I feel good like, oh, let me see me be a good person, or maybe I get inspiration from it. Or I repress my guilt of having a good life away from it. So what's actually the reason why I'm doing that? And those feelings, are they actually okay? Those motivations, are they okay? Well, we have some great speakers who hopefully can help us and light a bit more about that topic. Speaking of which, let's first go to the first speaker, Felina van Overbeke. Felina is a researcher, a teacher and a speaker also, obviously. So she works at the Rotterdam School of Management, where she part-time does her PhD on volunteering, with a special interest in volunteer inclusion and third-party volunteering. And she's going to talk about the values that we gain through volunteering. So please give it up for Felina. Okay, thank you. I was just saying that, thank you for already asking two or three of the questions that I was going to ask. And giving away half my presentation, but we're just going to do it all again. Hi everyone. So my name is Felina van Overbeke. I introduced myself, but this time I don't have to do that to start with. And today I'm super excited to be here because this is the first time in years that I'm actually speaking somewhere else than at my own university. So that's really cool. I will talk to you about the value of volunteers, which is the main theme of my whole PhD research. But before we start about the value of volunteers, I wanted to talk to you about what is volunteering, actually. So volunteering is kind of an action that comes together when we have volunteer energy, which comes from the people themselves, the volunteers themselves, when they have the capability, the willingness and the availability to volunteer, and volunteer infrastructure. So that's the opportunities to volunteering. For example, all of the things that volunteer organizations can organize to actually start the volunteering. And I promise to talk a little bit about volunteering in the Netherlands today because you're not all from here. And the Netherlands is a real volunteering country. We have a lot of volunteers here, as you probably read before we started. And we usually describe volunteering along about four different sets. And one of them is, sorry, whether it is mandatory or not mandatory. And in the Netherlands, people really feel that volunteering should be not mandatory. Because the word is volunteering, right? Not volunteering, as some people also say when volunteering is mandatory. They also see it as being definitely unpaid. Getting nothing in return, not even a cup of coffee, maybe. Although in my experience, and I don't know what yours is, most volunteers will expect that cup of coffee at the end of their shift, I think. Some of my friends were doing the counting of the votes yesterday. And one of them said that she was promised pizza and she did not get pizza afterwards. And she was very upset. Another thing is that it needs to be organized. So we see volunteering as something that you kind of know in advance that you're going to do it. You're doing it with an organization and maybe even structured. So for example, every Friday afternoon from three to five, you will go to a certain organization to serve tea to elderly people. And then the last thing is that Dutch people think that volunteering should really benefit others or the broader society. Now some people think about that a little bit different. As you can see here, there's a pure interpretation. That's definitely how the Dutch see volunteering, the very pure interpretation. But there's also a broader interpretation where it's okay if volunteering is a little bit obligated. For example, when we're talking about, I don't know, did anyone do that thing in high school where you were supposed to volunteer for a few hours a week for a couple of years? Yeah? Do you remember where? Okay. And what did you do? Okay. You still call it volunteering, though. Even though it was mandatory, right? Yeah, okay. So that's kind of what obligated volunteering can be. And then in the broader interpretation, you can also get a little bit of a pay. It's funny because in the Netherlands, people perceive volunteering as having no pay at all, but it's actually one of the countries where you can get a stipend for volunteering. So people actually do make money here volunteering. And then the structure can be informal in the broad interpretation, and the volunteering can also benefit the volunteer themselves, which is what we will talk about a little bit more later as well. So these are the numbers about volunteering in the Netherlands. And I think this is pretty impressive. About 40 to 50 percent of the Dutch people volunteer, and they volunteer like four or five hours a week. That's one of the highest numbers in Europe and even in the whole world. Can I see the hands again of everyone that does volunteering? Yeah, so that's even more than 50 percent, which I guess makes sense because a lot of you are here through the volunteering organizations, but still. What we also see here is that the volunteers are on average a little bit older, mostly around the age of people that have kids that go to school. Why? Any ideas? Money. It's a nice thought, but not exactly the one I'm looking for. Someone in the back. Yeah, that's a very altruistic thought. Yeah, also not the one I was going for. Yes. Their kids go to school and then the parents go to the school to pick up their kids, and then the teacher finds them and says, hey, you know what, we have a school outing next week. Will you volunteer? Come with us to the zoo, please. And then they bring their kids to ballet or to the hockey club, and then the people there are like, hey, we need parents to attend the bar and we need someone to drive them to the game. Can you please help us? So that's why that age is really highly represented. So, estimated volunteer hours a year, very, very many, about 700,000 full-time equivalents. So that's really a lot. One of the places where people volunteer a lot is in the food bank. And the only reason I'm saying this is because I want to have the food bank as an example for you during the rest of this presentation. So, so many volunteers. Why do they do it? Well, so many volunteers here. Why do you do it? Contribution to society. Nice. Any other answers? Personal fulfillment, nice one. You can learn something from it. That's a nice one. Sometimes you have to. Okay, so when it comes to reasons why people volunteer, there's usually about seven, no, six, sorry, I miscounted there. So one of them is, for example, by, it's called values. And what they mean by that is that you can really, by volunteering kind of stand up for what you believe in. You can really do something. Another thing is understanding, which means that you want to gain a better understanding of what the world is and what the world means. And then those two are really the more intrinsic or altruistic values, I would say. And then there's the social one. This could be the one where someone is like, hey, can you help me out because, you know, your kid is in this school. So I want you to help me. And you can't really say no because social pressure. There's, but also maybe you want to meet new people. So another reason for social could also be that. There's, I don't know, career where you want to learn some new skills. You want to do some new stuff. You want to put it on your CV so you can get the job that you want. Protective might be a bit out of, like you might not know why it's here. Protective. How could volunteering be protective? Any ideas? Let's say to yourself. Yeah. Yeah? Not exactly what I was looking for. I would say that's more of a skill enhancement thing, for example. I saw another hand in the back, yeah? I would say that counts more of as of the value component here. So protective here is really protecting yourself from maybe bad stuff that is happening in your life. So maybe you feel lonely at home. So you want to go out and volunteer. Or you're in a divorce and you just really want to get away from your almost ex-partner. And you go out and volunteer for a little bit. And then there's just a regular enhancement, which is all kinds of things that will make your life better because you're a volunteer. So so many volunteer hours. How do we value all of those volunteer hours? So if we're looking at that food bank example, the food bank in the Netherlands has a lot of volunteers, almost 13,000. Could you imagine if all of those people were paid staff? That would be a lot of money. A lot of money. And that's one of the ways in which academics, but also practitioners, count for volunteer hours. This is how they value them economically. But there's also a lot of other ways how the, sorry, how academics kind of try to calculate that volunteer value. And one of them, for example, is the opportunity cost method where they look at, okay, this volunteer that's working at the food bank. If they were doing their actual normal job, how much would they get paid for that? And then we check the amount of hours that they worked and then we calculate the opportunity cost value. Does that make sense? There's a lot of ways to do this. And I'm not going to tell you about all of them, because I honestly don't think that volunteering can only be calculated in an economic way. So that's why I would like to move on from that. So with that, I already gave my answer to my own question. I don't think volunteer value can be expressed only in euros. It's a nice way for policymakers, I guess they kind of need it. But how else can we value volunteer hours? One of the things that we do is we look at the value for the beneficiary. So if we look at that food bank example, then we're thinking about the people that go to the food bank. What does it mean for them to have the volunteers help them instead of paid staff? So one of the things that we know is that volunteers are a lot better in creating meaningful relationships with people. And that's partly because there's this kind of equality between them. They don't feel like there's someone always scribbling down what people are saying or thinking. There's also the idea of sincerity. And that's where that altruism that was mentioned already a couple of times comes in. People feel like you are really here for me. You're not doing this for money. You're coming here because you want to help me. So you must be sincere. And that also creates a different level of trust. And then the quality of service is different. And that mainly has to do with the fact that if you're a volunteer, no wait, I'm going to ask the question first. You're all volunteers. You probably got some rules, right? When you started volunteering at the place that you volunteered at. Did you ever break them? You can be honest. Did you ever break the rules that your volunteer manager gave you? No? Because what I've learned in my research is that volunteer managers, they give their volunteers the rules and then the volunteers say, yes of course we will do that and then they will turn around and they will do it anyway. And that can sometimes really improve the quality of service because the beneficiaries really feel like there's a better connection. And then there's a different form of continuity. But if you're interested in that we can talk about it another time. Another form of added value is not so much visible in the food bank. Because in the food bank the volunteers are really working well actually not always. So actually also in the food bank a lot of the volunteers they're not in contact with the visitors of the food bank. But still there's a lot of value in the work that the volunteers do beyond that economic value. And a few of those things for example are, let's start with credibility because the last time I gave a lecture about this was on Tuesday and my students really questioned this. If you feel the same the idea is that volunteers are more credible than paid staff when it comes to for example fundraising. Why? If I am at a birthday party for example and I'm talking to you and I'm telling you you know what I work for the food bank this is such an amazing organization we help so many people we're doing only great stuff it's really really good you know what you should donate and then after that I tell you that the food bank actually pays me my monthly wage. Would you still feel like donating? Or would you feel like donating anymore if I told you that? I work there as a volunteer and I do that in my free time and I don't benefit from it at all. Maybe. You know what? I'm not claiming 100% truth here. But yeah I think I would be more inclined to believe a volunteer over a paid staff especially when they come and ask for my money because I would not feel like I'd be paying their wage. Okay. I just saw that I only have two more minutes so I have two. I always think that I have all the time in the world and then I don't. I think one of the most important things here is talking about the added value of the individual volunteer. So for most of you and in my belief oh I messed something up in my slides in my perception these are very much linked to those voluntary motivations that we talked about earlier because if you volunteer one of the values that you gain from that for example is that you can enhance your social life that you can enhance your curriculum your CV that you can, I don't know do things for your career. So I think those are very important individual values but of course since most of you are students I also wanted to focus a little bit on individual student volunteer value and just very quickly because you are all volunteers can you just shout at me some of the values that you create for yourself when you're volunteering? Friends? Nice one? Other stuff? Experiences? That's it? Purpose? What about giving back? CV? It's an important one so here are some specific student values that were found in volunteering research so it's basically the things that you already you didn't really shout at me you told me but that's kind of nice so it's a lot based on skill development personal growth things that you can add to your CV but also social awareness building and of course always altruism and those kinds of values that was it for me thank you Great, thank you very much Felene we have room for one or two questions as I said you being active is an important part for the content of this program Just a second Let's do it like this I saw the last slide some things but you said there's also altruism because that's not on the slide so is there also something like pure helping somebody else or isn't that on the list? This is a difficult question for me to answer because yes, in research this does always come up but it's also always questioned if pure altruism is actually a thing and I'm not going to give the answer to that No, this just seems like somebody is doing this for himself or herself, right? It's never just for themselves though it's always a combination of this with helping others but if we're looking at individual volunteer value then yes Thank you Could you tell us why you decided to research this or put your career to this? If I'm going to be 100% honest I kind of rolled into it I studied business administration which maybe you wouldn't really connect to this topic but I did a really fun minor in Rotterdam about social entrepreneurship and consultancy and then the professor was a professor in philanthropy and volunteering and I started as a research assistant for him after that and we started doing some really cool projects on volunteering and then I stayed because I really liked it So do you focus on the individual or what exactly does your research focus on or specify it? Right now in my research I'm focusing on all of it which sounds a bit broad but yeah I'm now doing a literature review to see really systemically what has systematically has been the research about this in the past So there we focus on individual volunteer value, organizational value beneficiary value societal value all of the values yeah but I find individual value maybe the least interesting to be honest for me value for beneficiaries and the non-profit organizations is most interesting because I think it's most important I'm afraid we have to move on so thank you once again Felin and hold on to those questions we may come back to them later So Felin gave us the management perspective we are now going to switch to a more philosophers perspective maybe it will also help in addressing the first question So our next speaker is Willem van der Daal-Kloeg He did his PhD in economics and philosophy at Erasmus University so we have a connection there apparently but at the moment he teaches philosophy here at our university and conducts research among others to the value of work and he will provide us with a more philosophical perspective on altruism and volunteering So Willem without further ado please give a hand to him and good luck Can you hear me? Is this okay? Can I have the clicker? Thank you so much I think this is really great that so many of you are coming to this event about altruism because I think altruism is really important and I also agree that maybe when people talk about altruism it's often people often talk about this idea about whether or not pure altruism could exist and I think that's very interesting because I think we do things for other people all the time and I think that's really great it's one of the most important things I think we can do but I want to start today with a little bit of a personal story and I hope there's no hypochondriacs in here because this story is a personal story it's something that happens to me it's not a great story and it's something that happens to me in May 2020 and I think yeah, so maybe this was roughly seven or eight weeks into the pandemic and by this time I think I caught Covid while teaching in Tilburg right after Carnival in 2020 and I was recovering from this and I wasn't feeling all too well but at this point I had no idea that anything at all could be seriously going wrong with me so it was a Friday afternoon and I started I wanted to go for a jog as I would sometimes do and after that I don't remember anything anyway what I do remember is that I woke up in the hospital and there were tubes in my in my nostrils and I was learning that I had been resuscitated because it's barely while jogging I had fallen somebody had seen this but right after that moment the reason I had fallen was because I was going for a cardiac arrest so I didn't know anything would be wrong with me but as it turned out something was really quite wrong with me I had a genetic heart condition and there's a lot known about this heart condition and in fact a lot has been developed we have learned a lot about this heart condition and in fact one of the organizations that we have for this is the Dutch Hartstichting for instance so the Dutch Hartstichting the hard funds or something along those lines is doing a lot of great work and one of the things is that it saves lives by putting AEDs defibrillators in different spots for instance if you're there's one that's very visible at the Tilburg University train station if you're going into the direction of Breda and these things save lives so I think they cost about 1500 euros or something but for every 15 or so eventually one life will be saved and it's due to things like this that people like me can live to tell this story so in my case I was lucky enough that I was running close to the Erasmus University but many people are saved through this way and I think the Dutch Hartstichting is also an organization that like I said it does a lot of great work and it collects a fair amount of donation money but I want to talk a little bit about donation money and the way how we donate so this is not so much about volunteering but I think volunteering also is an important so it's applicable to volunteering in an important sense I think so what happens in practice is that a lot of people give exactly to those charities that they have some emotional connection to so I also notice this people who know me well they also follow is there something we can do can we give to this fund perhaps and if you look at what this kind of like looks like in practice so if you look at what do people give to how do people donate in the Netherlands the biggest funds that people donate to and the biggest ones by far is a cancer fund that does this type of thing exactly for cancer and I think it's easy to understand why because many of us have lost loved ones way too early to cancer and cancer is a tragic disease and it's in many ways of course really good that people do that so there's a couple of organizations also that do work abroad so often to fulfill direct needs of things that we see on television for instance so doctors without borders also UNICEF Red Cross but there is the hard fund as well an organization that takes care of the national parks in the Netherlands and the worldwide fund as well so those are the type of organizations and I think people often do altruism in this way they follow their heart and I think in many ways of course that's a good thing people want to do the right thing they do what they do what feels right and it turns out that the result is also great there's a lot of money available that goes through things that do good things so if you talk about altruism altruism is something along the lines of doing something for the benefit of others but I think if we think about this about the fact that we also want to benefit others we should also think a little bit critically about the way how we do it and whether doing this emotionally so doing this through what feels right is always the best way to do that so let me first start off by outlining just two I think ethical principles that almost I think everybody will accept and the first one is that people's lives in the world are equally valuable so it doesn't matter why you're born it's always a tragedy when something terrible happens to you so if you die when you're 30 like I always did that's a really bad thing that almost happened to me but it's of course also a really bad thing if that happens to somebody who lives somewhere else it's in general just a bad thing and we shouldn't value the lives of some people over others I think most people would agree with that especially if we talk about altruism it seems to go very strongly against that idea and another one is this one so that the people who are maybe the worst off we have some reason to prioritize I'm curious what you think about this but it seems to be that it seems to me that people who are particularly struggling in life are the people who we have the most reason to also help if we have the opportunity but that also gives us if we take these ideas seriously then we sometimes want to especially in the context of giving when we donate money we want to do something that's good and we also abide by these two principles but some of the results of our strategy of just giving emotionally don't always seem to show that very well and there are some really hard facts that I'm going to show and some people might not like that but for instance the idea of giving money to an organization that's fun seeing eye dogs I think nobody here will disagree that seeing eye dogs are a really great thing they're a great help to people who are suffering for no fault of their own who can't maneuver themselves sometimes for no fault of their own and dogs can really help with this but it costs a fair amount of money to do that there's also a way how you can help blind people so you can there's an infectious disease called trachoma I also have to look at how you pronounce it because you never really hear about this and it's something that causes blindness in developing countries it's one of the most common preventable ways in which people get blind but a surgery that people can do that prevents blindness so maybe a little bit more but something along those lines but still there is a lot of so in both cases there's not enough money available so there's not enough money available to give everybody a seeing eye dog who might benefit from one but the same goes for the trachoma surgery I think what strikes me with these kinds of things is that there's something odd about the fact that if we want to do something good we then choose this option because with the same amount of money you can actually help 1,500 more people and remember we thought that at least there's an ethical type of baseline we think that every life is equally valuable so blindness is equally bad for everyone but then it seems that you can only justify if you're faced with this choice it seems that you can only justify if you think that somehow people who are suffering in countries where people get seeing eye dogs are somehow more important which I think we don't and in fact you can only merely help them deal with their blindness but you can actually prevent it but of course the problem is that a lot of it happens in countries that we don't really have a particular emotional connection to at least not as direct as losing a family member or something happening to yourself Dracoma doesn't seem to be a threat to us or to our loved ones and if you and if you follow this strategy well I'm going to kind of like do what feels right to me then this is I think what happens we will not really fund these types of diseases that play a role here but we will fund other things so remember this is kind of if we take these ideas seriously it seems that we're almost not being really consistent with ourselves because we think that all lives are equally viable and in fact if anything we should perhaps prioritize those people who are already suffering more than us and those are typically not people who live in wealthy countries and so there's of course some rationale to this so why does follow your heart why will it not always do the most good so people in wealthy countries are typically other people in wealthy countries who are and so wealthy nations have already more funds at their disposal right so there is already a lot more money here and people in poor countries also face more more problems so it makes sense that then in the end helping people in poorer countries is going to be cheaper you can do more good with the same amount of money now people tend to find this very uncomfortable thinking about these types of questions and I think there's good reason to feel a little bit uncomfortable sometimes about these things because we don't want to weigh people we don't want to say we think all lives are equally valuable and it seems that when I'm comparing them perhaps I'm not treating them so I actually seem to be kind of pointing out seem to be almost saying that we should help some people rather than others and that seems to be comparing them but in fact our imply choice to what feels right our imply choice will actually kind of result in unfairness right so it will result in us our actions valuing people who are doing pretty poorly as valuing their issues as less important and I think of course one of the reasons I think why this is uncomfortable is that we think that altruism is not something that everybody necessarily has to do all the time and maybe some people disagree but a lot of people think that altruism is something that philosophers call super-arrogatory and super-arrogatory essentially means it's something that goes beyond the call of duty there are certain things like when somebody here with feints we all have a clear duty to help that person but we don't have the same type of duty maybe to I don't know donate a lot of money now if you are honest it might be a bit different some people think that actually we do have some duty but it's not necessarily to do but it's something that's really good to do something that's better to do than not to do so why then criticize it surely like I talked about how great the work of the Hartstichting in the Netherlands how great that is and I think it is really great and it saves lives so why would you criticize it and I don't really want to criticize that at all but I do think that when we are making choices it's good not always to fix on our emotional connection to things but to take a little bit of a calculating stand sometimes as well and say well so what truly are my values and how can I best serve those and here is another comparison for instance about the AEDs so the AEDs are things that the Hartstichting funds that can save people's lives when their when their heart stops working essentially but you can also here is a comparison so doing that essentially because these things are quite expensive and not all of them will be used to save one life but there is of course a statistical calculation you'll have to do so you have to buy a number of them and put them in particular places and ultimately some of them will save lives but the cost of doing so is about 24,000 euros so you can save a life so if you donate 24,000 euros to the Hartstichting the Hartstichting will fund put all of that money into buying AEDs you will have saved a life which I think is really great something somebody like me maybe doesn't know their sake and all of a sudden they need to be rescued and the AEDs do that and surely this is a lot of beers but those beers you'll be willing to forego if you can save a life but the same you can also say about something as simple as malaria what I'm saying is not very surprising because people already know a little bit about effective altruism but it's just so much cheaper you can just save 21 more lives sorry you can save 7 times more lives sorry 8 times more lives by by by malaria and I think we do have to take these things into account we're thinking about what is the best thing to do to save time and our money so what do I really want to say so I think giving is really great and I think giving to every cause is a good thing but that doesn't mean we should also not think a little bit critically about exactly who we are giving to so what are questions we should be asking so when you're thinking about your euro that you're giving away or maybe 100 euros one thing is the size of the problem so how many people can you help with that money but it's also how much money is there already going towards that thing and I think this is an issue with cardiovascular disease it's one of the it's not only funded by donations but it's also funded by governments and in particular the pharmaceutical industry they're putting so much money into research already how much money how much difference will your euro really make there and who are the people that are affected and are doing quite well already get to live to the age of 50 most of the time already people who might be dying in very early ages or going blind for instance even when they're still very young for no fault of their own so I want to enter here and I'm very curious what you think about think about this but the point that I want to get across is that donating is a tremendous amount of good and I think it's really excellent not only donating money but also donating your time and I think that is something you should be doing and it's really great if you do it but also don't just make decisions on the basis of who comes at your door or the problems that you are emotionally connected to Thank you very much very thought provoking there are at the moment many discussions about the Afghan refugees in Europe but why didn't we do that towards Afghan refugees or Syrian refugees and I think your talk already addressed that question at least in part Any questions? Yes, over there Thank you for the talk, it's really interesting I'm a big fan of this movement of effective altruism but I personally feel like that there's only a certain point of comparison and for instance there's one study suggesting that donors think that the receivers they have lower psychological needs than physical needs but actually the receiver think they're equally important so my question really is who got to decide what is more important for them it's usually us who are making this comparison as a donor so maybe this is more important but actually it might not actually be the case and I think that's also something that needs to be addressed Yes, I think that's absolutely right it's really difficult to make decisions and I think people sometimes are also quite disappointed by how much money it's still like you think so there is a serious money issue in Africa a serious shortage of economic value which is why some people's lives are lost but people still are quite I think disappointed rightly that this is also still quite expensive you still need to invest a lot of money and there's a lot of uncertainty involved in those cases as well and even there we're comparing saving a life and I think saving a life is maybe not something that's so hard to measure but I think maybe you are also hinting at some other things like perhaps blindness for some people isn't as bad as we think it is so some people, blind people are actually not that bothered by it while other people No, I think that is right and I think that's a challenge so I think we always have to do things on what we have most reason to believe and we don't always know we don't always have proof we always have to deal with uncertainty in our lives but I think this is not really an issue for just to be clear I don't think this is an issue that's specific to comparing issues here but it's an issue whenever you want to do something for other people whenever you want to help somebody if you have a choice about how you want to help them you're kind of judging it from your perspective you might not be making enough to a choice I guess that's one of the problems I think there's not a lot of voice from the receivers what do you truly need for example from their perspective and you're kind of like trying to quantify the impact that you can make with the money but still you're judging it from what you see as a donor or the person with the money in a way I mean of course one way to solve that it's true that we're all necessarily tied to our perspective so whenever we want to do something good we do the thing that we think is the best and that might not be correct but if you want to put more power in the hands of people who are not as economically empowered as we are you can always give directly you put the economic power in their hands any other question yeah here if you wait a minute for the microphone from this presentation feeling like you were saying with the same amount of money you can save more lives so take that in consideration right and caught me thinking because I feel like but then you're prioritizing the group that's easier to help with less money so maybe we should look at how many people from every group you can help but maybe that does cost a lot more money right so yeah what do you think about that yeah that's interesting so I don't know the question of course is how do you define a group right so you can for instance I don't know if you're having in mind countries like we maybe not countries but like a group of people with a disease so disease groups like for example the A D that costs a lot of money but then the illness for your eyes way less money but then maybe you want equal amount of people to benefit from something so how many people can you save by actually donating to the EAD so yeah I mean that's a good question but of course one of the things you also have to realize is that nobody is really in charge of the distribution of all of the money that's being donated right so it's only it's only you and you're making your choice about your money and it's good of course to have this this idea in mind so you want to have maybe some equal opportunity and not this because you happen to be born with some disease that is very cheap then all of the money will go there but that's also not really the reality that we're facing right that's a good thing to think about well thank you very much Willem and thank you for the questions maybe you already started some more discussions on altruism and volunteering so we first heard the management perspective on what is volunteering and why do people volunteer and then more the philosophical and ethical perspective further going into what exactly is altruism and how can we be altruistic and now we go to a more psychological perspective so another Willem Willem Slegers the assistant professor in social psychology here at our university and now he became the senior behavioral researcher or scientist for rethink for rethink priorities which is a non-profit organization that conducts research on how to best help humans and animals so he's also going to help us more with the question how can we be effective altruists that's right Willem, good luck please give it up for him alright hey everyone yeah I'll briefly talk about effective altruism I suppose I'll definitely mention it a few times but I actually want to mostly just focus on the psychology of altruism and just get a better grasp of why we are altruistic now I also realize that I'll take the psychological perspective here but you know what I actually want to begin with the philosophy and I want to talk about moral realism as sort of this position that there are these like true and false things about morality like some things are good and some things are bad just like certain facts are true or false and I think this is often how we talk about altruism like certain behavior is really good or really bad like we should promote volunteering because it's really good it's the right thing to do but in realism it doesn't make any sense like there's no reason to suppose it's true I'm actually a little bit of a moral nihilist like I just don't think there's any right or wrong I just think there is and I want to kind of take you on board with that so I'm going to see if I can convince you so let's see I'll also have a few stories they're also not good but they are informative so here for example we have a bird it's a pretty cute bird I think it looks so innocent but it's a cowbird and what they do is they lay the eggs of their own in the nests of others and then they have the other birds take care of their offspring and you might think like oh well I guess that's how nature works it's fine but actually it's not so fine because what happens is that if the other bird knocks out the egg of this bird then this bird will go back to that nest and kill everyone so basically they just blackmail other birds into taking care of their offspring well that's nature or take this little critter it's an insect and it paralyzes caterpillars and then deposits their eggs inside the caterpillar waits for them to hatch so it gets eaten from the inside while it's still alive I told you these are great stories well so this is this is how nature works this is the stuff that we see in nature and what I find so funny about this is that we don't label these things as good or bad we just label them as they are this is what these animals do but you know what the same applies to humans so humans they do these good things they do these bad things they donate each other great things but then they also you know do bad things they betray friendships they cheat on people they start wars so lots of bad things happen with that as well and sort of the perspective I take here is like this stuff yeah this happens this is what it is and I don't see it as right or wrong I just see it as the things that happen I don't know why or how does this work then and we actually have a theory that can explain all of this like the same as what humans do as what we see with the other animals and that is evolution so evolution is this change inheritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations now that's a description I kind of like the description because it seems so dispassionate like it is what it is it's just change and it's blind like it's just change it's not like towards a good direction like towards greater good no it's just stuff that happens and that's what I like about this description that it reveals that it is a blind process and that also explains so much then because if it doesn't care about what happens then anything can happen so or at least potentially it can happen and so it explains all these different life forms all these different species that we see and all of these different kinds of behaviors that they perform and also that it just doesn't care if something is good or bad it just cares about whether something leads to an increase in reproduction so more generations that's the only thing that matters now why would I even like start talking about this because it seems so depressing but I actually think there's an insane amount of value here because it offers us better explanations and I think there are like it makes sense to talk about different types of explanations so the first one is proximate which are the ones that I think we most often talk about so these are explanations on the level of the individual so why does a person perform a particular behavior and I see that in previous talks today or when we ask why do you volunteer we tend to see these kinds of explanations as a psychologist we might also use these types of explanations so here's an example we label somebody as having a altruistic personality and therefore she volunteers that's an explanation she's the type that volunteers or perhaps somebody whose parents taught him to be kind and altruistic and therefore he donates money so that's also a particular explanation but it's not satisfying to me at all because I can still ask well why does she have an altruistic personality and why did the parents teach them to be altruistic so to me these are not ultimate like I want the ultimate explanations so that I do not have to ask a follow up why question is the evolutionary explanation because when we know how something evolved then that is the reason why it happened so those are the ultimate explanations and I think we can also apply those to altruism so I want to talk next about looking at altruism with a lens of evolution to see can this explain why we do these nice things but we at least label it as nice evolution doesn't care so there's a nice paper a very recent paper by Bastian Jäger and von Wurth and they actually describe three reasons, three ultimate explanations for why altruism evolved these are parochialism status and conformity so let's briefly go over these so the first one parochialism it's something very common you probably have heard of this before it's that we seem to have evolved to care about certain people more than others so we care more about kin which is basically another word for family so we care definitely a lot more about our own children for example or our parents or grandparents or nephews we care more about them compared to just any random other person but not just family, also interdependent others like friends we definitely care about our friends and so we care more about them than just the stranger but also just generally those who are more similar to us we care more about so those who share the same color of our skin the ones who speak the same language have the same values we just seem to care more about them than we care about others so this we can also label as we care more about those who are more like us compared to them and yeah we see this it was already briefly mentioned today that we see it with the current war in Ukraine we see for example these tweets here that all of a sudden now we care more about Ukraine because it's no longer in those impoverished and remote populations no this is close by or these are white people so we must care more because they're more similar to us now I strongly disagree on a personal level and it does reveal that we at least some of us they seem to think along these lines of us versus them and we care more about those who are similar and we also see this in research on exactly the topic of moral concern so when we vary systematically the social distance between people then people actually rates those who are closer to them as deserving of more moral concern and this is not because of distance distance doesn't mean anything but it tends to be confounded with certain attributes like group membership so the ones who are closer to you tend to be part of your own group while those very far away they are probably not in your group so then you don't have to care as much so if you control for those things then indeed you see that it's factors like group membership that affect what other people think that someone deserves moral concern we also see it in a way we donate we donate more to local charities than we do to international charities and that's a bit of a bummer because we can actually do more good as was also seen in the previous talk by actually donating to international causes like for example not to seeing iDoc support but actually to the Tacoma operations and also a nice example is give directly which also shows on their website that they can actually do more good with your money in particular countries because give directly you can just donate money and then that money will directly go to the donors so that the donors can decide what to do with it and you can actually do that better if you donate to those who are really poor compared to those who are less poor but that is not a tendency that we seem to have you just care more about us than them so that's the first proclism now the second is status and I have to admit I was a little bit surprised by some of the reasons some of you gave for volunteering like it seemed to reek of status to me like you do it for personal reasons to get certain benefits yourself to be liked and stuff like that and you know that is indeed what humans are like humans respond to reputational incentives like they have a particular reputation meaning people think of a certain way about them and we want that to be positive we want people to like us and this is usually relevant in a particular group because that means that you will become the leader or in a particular group there are other people and you want to be a friend with certain people and if you are indeed better in like nicer then you will be selected more as like a friend or a leader or even a date so we care about that for all of various benefits like resources like getting favors from people or even protection or like I mentioned mates which is actually just romantic partners you are actually more attractive if you are nicer compared to when you are a dick then people just don't like that and again supported by research so we see that if you ask people like a bunch of traits and then ask them like okay how much do you value that trait in a person being altruistic is very much regarded as a very positive trait to have they are also preferred as social partners so if you get them into the lab design is like game where people have to like pick partners then you actually see that if you were nice then actually your increase the chances of being picked to work together in subsequent tasks and you actually reap the benefits of being included even when you were initially altruistic but you would then reap the benefits later this can even lead to something called competitive altruism which is this funny notion like here we are talking about something nice but now it is all of a sudden a competition of being nice which is a very weird notion but it basically means you try to be nicer than somebody else so that you will be like more than the other person so you are just competing in being nice which is hilarious to me now going a little bit back to this status issue so let's take this very concrete example suppose that Laura donates $100 to the malaria consortium now what do we think of this and there are two main factors that we can look at the first one is the sacrifice so Laura sacrificed $100 so that was the personal cost so that's great, that seems admirable but what about the effect so this donation then resulted in four children not getting malaria so that seems pretty great too so maybe we should really like Laura because of that the social benefit not the cost so what do people pay more attention to the fact that she sacrificed the money or the effect turns out it's the costs, not the benefits so if you systematically vary like a particular situation and then the effects are better or worse or it costs more or less then we see that people track the costs more than the actual benefits of the act which is insane if you are concerned about doing good but it makes a lot of sense in other words you also see it here like as an example of another tweet this was Jeff Bezos donating $100 million to help the homeless so that's great but then somebody comments yeah great that this person donated 0.04% of his income as if then all of a sudden it doesn't like produce these insane amounts of good now of course he might be a jerk for other reasons but I would say that this is great now this idea is actually called costly signaling like the fact that you sacrifice something and then reap certain benefits it's not even unique to humans definitely not we also see it in the peacock like the tail it's insane it's a completely useless thing almost like it's huge and it's very unwieldy to move around in but it indicates that you're able to actually still survive while having this annoying tail and that is very attractive in a mate so that's actually why peacocks still survive same with humans we can sacrifice to indicate actually how strong we really are and that's called costly signaling and then something we value now finally there's conformity so we have also evolved to just copy people's behaviors which makes a lot of sense of course and we do it for definitely two big reasons and one is that it helps us figure out complex situations if we can just copy what other people are doing and we don't have to think great or it also helps us to be liked like if we just do what others are doing then of course they must like that which means they'll like us now we see this also with donations we see that people don't actually think a lot about how to do good they tend to go for the things that are personally connected to them but they're not really delving into like on the internet and comparing all of the different charities and see which ones are the most effective we actually don't seem to do that we also see that they donate more when they see that other people are donating so there's like some nice studies where they have these empty boxes and then they vary how much money is in there and then you see in these conditions where there already is some money people actually end up donating more because they see like oh apparently I'm supposed to donate so I'll donate and they even match the money that's in the boxes so they donate more coins here and more bills here so it's like very funny how they are sensitive to these social cues to donate rather than just you know decide what if this is something that they care about so I think these examples show us that we're not driven to be like super effective altruists I think instead that these results support that we're mostly driven by other fundamental motives so and then I should say like not that we are not motivated by altruistic motivations clearly we are but apparently it's not fundamental really because if we really care about altruism we should be effective and like we should have way more tendencies that also promote being very effective altruists but instead we seem to be a bit more lax in that regard and we seem to be focused on other aspects instead and I cover three of them the parochialism instead of conformity now I think this is important to realize like it's I think it's important to take this perspective that there might be these fundamental motives that underlie our behavior because then we can optimize it so I think one to talk about like realistic moralism makes no sense like I don't think we can expect people to just do the right thing as if there is this right thing that we all agree on because I don't think we do now I think it's better that we take into account these other motives and then play into them so perhaps we should emphasize the similarities between people and like really try to get everybody to see others that are similar to them so that they care more and here I want to pitch something like sentientism which is the view that for something to be morally relevant the only thing you need is to be sentient you just need to be able to feel pain and pleasure and then you're morally relevant because apparently you can feel bad and that sucks so we should care a rock doesn't tend to feel anything so do whatever you want with a rock but everything else that can feel things seems to be very important and morally relevant perhaps also we should just reward people more if that is clearly why they are being altruistic and we already do this in some capacity like donations are tax deductible but you know that's not super sexy as a reward it's sort of nice but I think we can do a lot more to reward people for their super kind behavior and also to make it easy like we should make it easy because it is hard like we are still lazy in some capacity and some things are difficult to figure out so we should make it as easy as possible so that they donate to the right causes particularly the effective ones and now I want to end with just one important final thought because I realize that this whole evolutionary talk by me is like super depressing and as if I had this like super negative view of people that's not true or sort of it is but it is what it is I'm just motivated to give you the correct answer and not a particular view of the world so that's the first motive but then I do want to stress that we should be very lucky because evolution doesn't care anything can happen but now it turns out that evolution has stumbled upon us humans that give a shit like we actually care about other things like we have the capacity for empathy and sympathy and that's amazing like it didn't have to happen and that's why it's just so cool that it did happen just why I find humans still so amazing and not negative like I don't think they're great but I do want to say that we have to get better at being nice alright that's what I had alright thank you very much William questions now that I have a question isn't it a bit of contradiction that if it's just evolutionary and it is what it is then why should we get better? yes very good question that's true so my response to that is a little bit Decartian if I may there's no doubt that good feelings feel good and bad feelings feel bad so at least on an individual level I'm definitely motivated to do the things that end up feeling good rather than bad and then I think all else being equal if I can do something that feels good like if I get rewarded for my good and I produce good at elsewhere then it seems better to have that rather than something else and I think you should talk with William because this is actually plea for pursuing the things that do feel good yeah definitely what is good right oh yeah no it has to feel good like I don't think there's any denying that like we simply cannot expect people to be super sacrificial like they should do things that come easy to them or at least we should make it as easy as possible we have to make sure that they indeed care about it that they feel passionate about it but like those are all nice bonuses like the whole idea the whole thing why humans are amazing is that they actually care like empathy is just a trick to get you to do nice things and as a result you feel good about it if we don't have that empathy then actually it's not going to happen so this alignment is what we need and is what we need to promote as well okay William you do have a reaction I think moral realism is true so I think you're wrong but I don't really want to talk to you about that at all you just want me to know I have a question about the idea that altruism so you said it's one of the things that motivates us but isn't particularly fundamental and I'm kind of curious on what grounds you can really make that basis so I remember this episode from Friends where everybody knows Phoebe and then Phoebe lets a bee sting her but it turns out that a bee dies and it's very hard to observe altruism kind of like in the purest form or whatever but it's also in general just very difficult to really know what truly motivates people and it seems to me that altruism is always kind of mixed in there people do want to do things that are good for others it seems and then it seems to me like and surely status is always involved as well but so why do you say that status is somehow more fundamental than altruism because it seems to me a bit puzzling yeah okay first thing I think this is funny coming from the effect of altruism because it's also obvious that we clearly are not fundamentally driven by like pure altruism in any sense like true altruism I know but that's sort of my point though like the fact that we are not super effective altruists means there are other motives at play rather than the altruism itself that's one the second thing I want to say about that is that the distinction between proximate and ultimate explanations you can very easily confuse them like status could be just a proximate explanation as well like oh I want to volunteer because I know I'll be liked or I know there's a girl that also does it I'm going to do it and get these benefits as well and then we're actually talking about the proximate level but then to me that's still not really satisfying because then I'm like okay but why is this then appealing to you like why do you want this status and then we do get eventually to the evolutionary story and then that's why it's ultimate because then I will not ask the why anymore because evolutionary explanations are just like oh this thing randomly happened it gets selected for and that is the answer to the question I think we can have a Willem versus Willem debate for the rest of the day but time's up I want to move on so thank you very much Willem alright and I want to ask the four persons from the four Shunde organizations to come forward you know what I very much like is that sometimes we have these sessions and then we have speakers and they're all like oh I agree with you yes I agree with you and they basically say the same and now we really have three really different speakers so I think that was already great and much food for thought so in the end we're curious to hear your input but first we're going to turn to these four persons so they all represent a different student organization they all volunteer themselves but also make an appeal on other students as in you to volunteer with them I guess so we're briefly going to hear from them who they are what organization they represent and my question is why should they volunteer with you and then we have a few statements that we're going to discuss first with them but then also with you on this topic so Johan can I start with you sure I'm Johan I'm a master student here at the University and I'm here for VFED Christian Student Association here in the city yeah why you should volunteer with us well because it's it's so huge so because it's useful for the society and because it's great fun yeah I'm Lois I'm a bachelor student sociology and also I'm volunteering at Cirque du City Tilburg yeah it's Cirque du City Tilburg does various activities for people in Tilburg I think it's a lot of fun to meet other students but also other people in Tilburg I'm in a group that does activities for elderly so it also feels really good to do something for society yeah and it's a lot of fun also hi my name is Tessa I'm a student of liberal arts and sciences and this year also vice chairman of the student party SAM where we represent the over 20,000 students of Tilburg University in the university council and of course you should volunteer with us because you're most likely a student yourself and by working with us and you can help us find initiatives to actually improve the study climate and improve the university to your own benefit I didn't know we had to promote ourselves but hi I'm Malou I will be representing the Red Cross today I'm the chairman of the student desk and it's a charity organization let my students it's a branch of the Red Cross yeah I love humans just as Willem says if you do as well join the Red Cross or something all right thank you very much did you already keep track of the reasons why you should help volunteering so it started off with it's fun so that definitely taps into your own feeling argument so you can learn more and do good for society so depending on what you're interested in and where on the level of altruism you are I think you know now which organization to join let me go to the clicker thing so we have four statements but it may be a bit too much to discuss all of them so I want to move to the second because one of the big debates is does pure altruism exist and the whole discussion on like okay yeah you can be altruistic with us because it's also fun already taps into the question is it really altruistic so imagine here's a case for all of you imagine that you are taking care of someone close to you who has serious addiction problems and is looking for the next fix and damages everyone around them in the process could continuing to care for such a person be valid evidence of real altruism somehow I have to think of the Red Cross I don't know why what do you think okay there are multiple factors because it's a friend right yeah someone who is close to you so I think that kind of altruism is different than for example if you apply this case on a group of addicts for example is this evidence of altruism in a way it is I think it is if you continue caring for someone but I don't know maybe someone else can start off because I didn't have time to think no problem maybe serve the city you are also trying to help homeless people among others and addicts well first of all I think it's to debate what care for means because you can care for someone by doing what they want but also what they really need and maybe they don't know themselves what they need so yeah it's quite a difficult question also because what care for means and also if you are altruistic if that means just for one person for this friend or for the other ones so yeah we can notice that we are at the university when we don't start to answer the question what are the definitions what do we exactly mean why is it important whenever you talk about something you want to know what you are talking about in the first place because if I am talking about you care for someone that means I just care about them I think about them from time to time and care for means taking care of them like giving them medicine being next to them all the time that's two different things thank you very much I was a bit skeptical but of course my professorship is really happy now that all of you are such good students let's just do a raise of hands then who of you thinks that if you continue to care for such a person that really is pure altruism pure altruism true altruism yeah oh okay yeah great thanks could you briefly elaborate or explain why? yeah I think because the intention is there like maybe it's not effective altruism and maybe they don't go the extra mile to find out what's good assuming that we are not speaking about tough love but then the intention was there to do good so I think it speaks of altruism thank you the intention matters anyone who really disagreed who wants to explain why so it doesn't have to be pure altruism it could be duty or avoiding shame or some kind of overarching benefit that they're getting from it it doesn't have to be altruistic at all okay thank you that's a more nihilistic perspective that we're getting back again I think Willem will be proud let's go to the next question because we have here Fraction Sam as well and when you get into volunteering one of the things we discussed in the several in the different talks was that we tend to sometimes want to volunteer and help other people but then also we want to help some people more than others some people are more worthy of taking care of and of course as a more political organization if I may position you a little bit like that you may also sometimes perhaps look more after some people than towards others so I guess so because of course as a student organization we look more towards what's beneficial for students and sometimes we may forget to look at what's beneficial for professors or staff of the university so yeah of course there's always some sort of perspective you're representing a group of people you're thinking about what do they want what do they want to achieve what can be bad for them so yeah I mean if you want to do the best for everyone of course it's important to not be too political you have to look at what's the view for everyone and it was also the case I think in the former case where we said about helping a friend was actually sort of demolishing everything around them because of their addiction you have to ask yourself is what you're doing truly helping them or are you doing this because they are that person I mean yeah it's all the question has many different aspects as well but I think it's important to not be too political but of course it's also important that you do have a stance and that there's representation on behalf of every group I mean we can't represent both the student and the maybe the staff perspective so I guess in a sense it is great that there are parties who represent these certain people because they're in close contact maybe because they have these same beliefs so yeah all right well and then if I can link it again a bit to the war that we at the moment have and then to the Red Cross let me this time give you a little bit more time to think for the Red Cross should they be political should they make a decision on whether or not to support Ukraine or should they be open to both Ukraine and Russia no matter what with the Russian example that's more difficult but as speaking of the Red Cross the organization itself one of its fundamental principles is that it's impartial and it's neutral and also if we look into our history I think it's very important that the Red Cross remains this neutral party this impartial party organization to help everyone and to not choose a side because if you choose a side for example the political side you automatically leave out others and I yeah now they had a campaign where they raised money for Ukraine and to help Ukrainian refugees really important but I do think if we strive for this impartiality and this neutrality that we also need to help all parties so Russia and this example as well in certain ways I don't know yet how but the conclusion is the beauty of the organization is to help everyone and to not exclude someone or groups of people yeah all right thank you Johan and I'm turning to you because representing a Christian organization wouldn't you say that you are primarily serving those who are Christian and have the same identity and therefore are also quite political yeah in a way we cater to Christian students and people who are interested in Christian religion and Christianity so in that sense we are kind of political if you want to call it like that but we are in that sense not per se charity organization like the Red Cross so I don't think that in our case that is a problem I think as long as you respect other parties that that can be an addition and can be an added value to for example university life in this case and overall I think that a charity organization like you said will always have some kind of political value or angle because you are operating from an ideology and that ideology can be neutrality so every life matters as much as anyone else even if it is Russian or Ukrainian for that example but you are still working from a perspective a framework so you are always having some kind of political or ideological way of thinking that is fundamental to your organization so in my opinion is it important for charity not to be political I think it depends on what you want to do but you always will be in some sense okay thank you very much anyone here who has very strong thoughts on this statement wants to yeah there in the back let me go towards you yeah I think it can be idealistic you should never have a political ideology for charity because at the end of the day humans are motivated by specific intrinsic drives and for a lot of people that is going to be a political cause if it is for fellow Christians or for fellow any religion or any race whether you are helping people because you are similar to them or because you know someone who is impacted by that I think politics are always going to drive people and that is a bit idealistic to claim to ever be completely neutral because it would be impossible to justify why you are doing things so if I understand you correctly you say it is actually your identity and your politics that can drive you to become altruistic right it is time to go completely to the back it is good for my exercise there we go sorry about that depending on what kind of charity it is it is a little bit what you said also I think it is about the cause the goals you have with your charity whatever politics or non-politics you have I think so I think that is also important okay thank you very much I suggest that we then move on to the next statement and it has to do with a recent report by the United Nations Volunteers Program Feline you may be familiar with this one I don't know if you even wrote it yourself but it shows that in Europe women take on most of the volunteer work at around 66% why is that I guess well Lois I mean I have some connection with Servicity and so I sometimes see what you are doing and what strikes me is that it is always women over there it is not for men to also volunteer but then it is not altruistic I guess anymore but why do you think that is the case that there are so many women who take part in Servicity well yeah I think that is quite a difficult question I see at Servicity most of them are women there are men of course yeah maybe for me on a personal note maybe historically women did more part-time work and men more full-time work now it is not that black and white anymore but I think maybe sometimes when you daughters look more towards their mothers and sons more towards their fathers I think maybe that can be an explanation I don't know for sure yeah but it is always interesting to see why this is and yeah I don't know Milu you raise your hand do you want to weigh in yeah because I think it is a shame that a lot of men do volunteer work and indeed we also see it in our organization so men come on but I think it is also maybe in a sense that it is kind of a stereotype that women are caregiving persons and maybe as well and that is this stigma around women volunteering work that maybe leave men outside that but I don't know I am not the perfect person for a panel because my mind goes so yeah yeah it is Felin you also focus in your research on volunteering inclusion is there anything you have to say about this or can say well I am kind of surprised by this actually because if we look at the numbers in the Netherlands we see that it is kind of similar but and I think it is interesting that you all see it in your organizations or at least you said so and you said so I think might depend on the kind of volunteering work that you are offering because what we are seeing for example is that in the Netherlands men do a lot of volunteering in boards and in sports and women do a lot of volunteering in schools and in healthcare for example so those are big differences and here with the UN I am wondering what they count as volunteering hours because sometimes what also is included in volunteer hours is voluntary care and voluntary housework and if we of course took care and housework then we still see a very big imbalance and we see that women take most care of that I don't think the UN will actually do that I hope not so we go from questions about definitions about questions about methods and operationalizations I don't hear who have any thoughts on the matter I think it's quite interesting also there is research on how men are especially resistant to adapt to eat vegetarian cuisine for example and I think in this paper they suggest that it's because this signaling of being vegetarian or signaling of helping it's considered to be warm or gentle or feminine and a lot of men don't want them to be associated with this kind of like stereotypes or so on and I think it's particularly something we can work on because helping is not supposed to be feminine it's gender neutral it should be I hear some people applauding quietly so I think people agree I think that was also the point that you were trying to make right yes so thank you I think this case has been dealt with so we have a last one it has been perfectly addressed right so the last one is that nowadays we are used to receiving financial compensation for our work which may prevent many people from starting to volunteer however one thing that I learned from today is that actually you can get paid while volunteering great when you're a student especially but as we also know from research is that the moment you start to pay people for something they don't want to do it for free anymore so that means that it can also cause volunteering to become not so attractive so how can we make sure that volunteering still remains attractive to as large a group of possible even if we don't pay them is there anyone in the audience who has any ideas on this matter yes I first go there and then I go there I think that as much as we want true altruism you can get more volunteers by playing up all the other reasons people volunteer so emphasising that you're going to feel good about yourself and you can build up your CV you can make friends that all the other reasons that we're already used to volunteer if we emphasise it will encourage more people to volunteer because true altruism evidently doesn't do enough if we're just saying help because it's the right thing needs to be something in it for them right alright I think it has a big connection with seeing the results by yourself like working on something and giving all your power involvement and time and emotions and then being able to see the results that you're actually you've achieved I think that's really really important at least in my case also looking back and seeing like what has it brought you and what has it given to you to the others as well okay Johan you have a I think it's also the other way around we are now used to receiving financial compensation people also have to survive have to work for the money I think that's also partially why senior research that people who are volunteering are mostly university educated and rich because they have more time they have more opportunity to volunteer so I think if you want to make volunteering more attractive I would say that supporting the lower side society from governmental standpoint will make also more time available for volunteering because people don't have it on their minds because they're busy with paying rent and surviving so that was something I wanted to add and at some you do get paid right when you are part of the school council among others right how important is that part what do you think among your volunteers our council members do indeed get paid we have a lot of very ambitious and hardworking committee members that do in fact not get paid who are still very much willing to do a lot of work for us how important is it that we get paid I don't think it matters that much honestly when I was recruited for doing a board year I didn't know I was going to get paid and I think I said it but you really have to target things to the specific group that you want to volunteer I think students generally are not a group that have a lot of money to maybe donate but they are a group that may be willing to provide help in other ways to give to the community so instead of giving money they'll volunteer and I think you can play on these intrinsic factors the fact that humans are naturally inclined to help others and also provide extrinsic factors so students are very busy with preparing themselves for the labour market nowadays we have to make ourselves look more and more unique to be attractive to companies and I think actually providing things that give a status such as a better CV building up a network at these organizations is something that can motivate this specific group of students very much so if we implement the effective altruism in it let me ask you a question are you prepared to for example donate the money you get for your board year to charity I must say the thing is we do get money for our board year indeed and I don't use it for a lot of my personal things of course I use it to buy food because otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here right now but yeah I think we put a lot of the money that we get from the university into the work that we do so in a sense we put the money we get from the university back into representing those students and doing that well so I guess sort of yeah I am very happy that you buy food for yourself yes very altruistic maybe not pure altruistic but it's very good it's about time to wrap up so first let me thank very much the four students standing here please give them a very big ovation I want to thank the three speakers Feline and Willem and Willem so among other things that I learned today is that there are many different types of volunteering many different reasons why people volunteer you can even get paid for volunteering as mentioned and then it's still called volunteering as long as you get paid less but I guess it's all the same as doing an internship I still do have some questions there I learned that we tend to be altruistic towards what feels good and what we have an emotional connection to but that also prevents us from being very effective volunteers and making the world a better place so we can maybe sometimes think a bit harder about how can we really be effective volunteers I also learned today that apparently altruism may be the result of evolution it helps us surviving and as a consequence we can even compete in being the best altruists how cool is that for all of us who are somewhat competitive thank you all for being here, thank you so much for your participation and for weighing in into the discussion I hope you will continue the conversation when you go away from here and we very much look forward to seeing you at the next event from Studio Emergen Rade thank you very much