Chris Jarvis likes a thought experiment. At From Day One’s 2023 Seattle conference, the CSO and co-founder of Realized Worth asked the audience to think about this one: Give some members of a group $100 and tell them to spend it on others; give some $100 and tell them to spend it on themselves. Who feels better afterwards? When Harvard professor Michael Norton did this, the group that spent money on others felt better than those who spent it on themselves. He did the experiment with college students, with people in various African countries, with businesspeople in Europe, and with sports teams. Almost universally, the givers group felt better, reported more happiness, and also outperformed their counterparts.

Jarvis says the result is known as the helper’s high. “There are primary behaviors that have good feelings baked into them, so that we want to do them again and again,” he said. “Helping each other is a great way to stay alive, and on an evolutionary basis, Mother Nature has put it right up there with eating and sex.”

When you ask people why they help others, most respond that it’s the right thing to do. “But what we really mean is that it feels good, so it must be the right thing to do,” he said. “The feeling pre-exists. That’s how it has become institutionalized into our systems, our societies, our culture, religious beliefs. It is an ancient system.”

Another thought experiment from Jarvis: Imagine a hand on a table under a spotlight. Now imagine another hand coming into view holding a syringe with a long needle. The unseen person pokes the needle into the spotlighted hand. The hand wants to pull away, but that hurts more. So it stays still and takes the agony. “Most people will flinch a little.” He also points to a popular video of magician David Blaine doing a magic trick involving the insertion of a large pointy object like a knitting needle through his bare forearm in front of others. You can see it go in one side and the point stretching the skin on the other side before it pops through. In one video, comedian Ricky Gervais expresses extreme discomfort before getting up and leaving the room. “Will Smith and his family ran from the room in terror,” Jarvis said. The effect is similar to that of being overwhelmed by disturbing news or social media and having to take a break. “You are feeling too much, so you abstain from it.”

This is an example of the pain matrix, he explained. “There are neurons deep in your brain that can’t tell the difference between seeing someone in pain or experiencing it yourself.” We see this in the reaction people have to natural disasters and the plight of those impacted by war. This is empathy, and the reaction happens in your brain faster than the blink of an eye.

The problem is, we don't help everybody. We tend to help those with whom we share an identity. In research out of the Netherlands, subjects were put into a functional MRI machine and shown pictures. First up were pictures of inanimate objects like tables and chairs. The test subjects’ prefrontal cortex, which decides whether something is human or not, didn’t react. When pictures of people were used, there was a spike of activity – until a picture depicted someone who was homeless. Many participants then reacted in the same way as they had to the objects.

That reaction wasn’t universal. Participants who’d had experience with homelessness or homeless people did not see those people as objects. You can find more information on these experiments here and here.

The in-group/out-group tendency is strong. Jarvis pointed to research that included the needle in the hand experiment. In this version, people wore wristbands that said Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, or atheist. When the needle was inserted, test subjects mostly reacted to the people whose bracelet they identified with. “It’s not surprising,” he said. “Research shows that religion and politics are the easiest ways we dehumanize other groups.”

Well-constructed volunteer opportunities in the community can reduce the us-versus-them mentality, Jarvis said. They help create brain plasticity that allows people who are often seen as outsiders to be viewed as worthy of concern and action.

“Events should be designed in a way that alerts people to something new,” he said. Imagine a volunteer opportunity to serve food at a homeless shelter. “I promise two things: we are not going to make a dent in hunger today, not even a little bit. And we are not here to fix the poor; they are not a problem to be solved.”

Participants may wonder why, then, they should bother. This question should be explored as part of any event. “That is the learning. That helps orient them to what meaning they will bring to the experience. I'm going to give you just enough information to inform your meaning-making process. And if we've done a good job, you'll come back. And if you come back, and we revisit those pathways in your brain, you will grow new neural pathways to think differently.”

Our current neural pathways dictate how we see the world. “If we want to think differently or behave differently, we must grow new neural pathways. There's no exception. We cannot think our way into better behavior, we must think about it, orient to it, and act.”

Without that experience, you can’t achieve neuroplasticity, which is the only way to undo the evolutionary flaw of us-versus-them thinking that leads some people to see a homeless person as an object. “Employee volunteering is very much about building the kind of culture that you want to see in people. Think about the social impact. Not how many people, how many things, how much money. Those are interesting outputs. But the key metric is how people change, and whether they can adjust the us-versus-them [thinking] enough to internalize the social impact. That has promise for the rest of our species and the future of this planet.”

Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Realized Worth, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. 

Lisa Jaffe is a freelance writer who lives in Seattle with her son and a very needy rescue dog named Ellie Bee. She enjoys reading, long walks on the beach, and trying to get better at ceramics.