We humans devote much time and energy to helping others. We send money to famine victims halfway around the world—or to save whales. We stay up all night to comfort a friend with a broken relationship. We stop on a busy highway to help a stranded motorist change a flat tire. Why do we do these things? What is our motive? The dominant answer in Western thought is well expressed by the wise and witty Duke de la Rouchefoucauld, 2001 : “The most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which the dear love of our own selves always proposes to be the gainer some way or other” (...