The Art of Happiness

people or violent, aggressive people ; the impulsethat gets emphasized is largely a matter oftraining.Contemporary researchers have refuted notonly the idea of humanity’s innate aggression, butthe idea that humans are innately selfish andegoistic has also come under attack. Investigatorssuch as C. Daniel Batson or Nancy Eisenberg atArizona State University have conductednumerous studies over the past few years thatdemonstrate that humans have a tendency towardaltruistic behavior. Some scientists, such as sociologist Dr. Linda Wilson, seek to discover whythis is so. She has theorized that altruism may bepart of our basic survival instinct—the veryopposite to ideas of earlier thinkers whotheorized that hostility and aggression were thehallmark of our survival instinct. Looking at over