Historic studies on altruism often failed to account for all costs or benefits of certain actions. This led to results showing a great deal of altruism that la

Historic studies on altruism often failed to account for all costs or benefits of certain actions. This led to results showing a great deal of altruism that later research overturned when scenarios were better crafted to control costs and benefits. It has been a while since I read the specifics but one example involved sales people who appeared to act altruistic and not take advantage of a seemingly oblivious shopper. Once the study was changed so that the specific sales person who took advantage of the shopper wasn't known to the researchers, only how often it happened, the altruism disappeared. There was a social currency of "appearing to be ethical" that was worth more than taking advantage of the shopper. Once that social currency was removed, the sales people reevaluated which options were most optimal. This is all to say that any studies on altruism need to be scrutinized to see if some benefit or cost was missed in the experiment design.