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Observations on Malott and Linger

1992; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 2; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5210/bsi.v2i2.180

2376-6786

P. A. Lamal,

Behavioral and Psychological Studies

Malott (19~3, this issue) and Linger (1993, this issue) have written interesting and informative accounts of some aspects of contemporary Cuban society.Malott's treatment is more balanced than BODle presented by others, who have been uncritical, if not naive about Cuba.Cuba has achieved some success in improving the wen-being of Cubans, but there have also been failtaes.Reportedly, a joke making the rounds says that the three main accomplishments of the Cuban revolution, "are, as Castro says: education, medical treatment and sports.The three main failures are breakfast, lunch and supper" (Farah, 1992).There is another fallure I will address below.I agree with Malott that natural, direct-acting contingencies "often cause people to act in ways that are counter-productive to long-term humanitarian objectives..." (Malott, 1993, p. .108).I also agree that, "often the issue of working for the well-being of humanity gets naively confused with working free of aversive control..." (Malott, 1998, p. 107).That is, people may often be acting so 88 to avoid aversive consequences rather than for the well. . .being of humanity.Those persons may, of course, state that they are working only for the well-being of humanity.This is not to deny that "...many people will act in selfless or altruistic ways for the long-term common good" (Linger, 1993, p. 180).. What is needed is information about the incidence of such altruistic behavior in various societies.What is also needed is a delineation of the variables responsible for the development and maintenance of altruistic behaviors.Greedy self-interest is not limited to market economies.It has long been known that the rulers and nomenklatura of the former Soviet Union (Lamal, 1991).and People's Republic of China enjoyed a range of material incentives not available to the rest of the populations of those countries.Deep and pervasive corruption of many state officla1s has been a fact of life in a wide variety of societies (including socialist), over, perhaps, thousands of years.Malott asserts that Cuba "is one of the greatest cultural experiments in history" (Malott, 1993" p.112).Just what this means is unclear.