Abigail (Abby) Marsh

Maybe I could donate money in a way that would help people like this elsewhere in the world.

And we did find in a study that we conducted of altruists and controls that having a more hopeful appraisal pattern

was associated with being more likely to help people in need.

One of the really interesting things about altruistic kidney donors is even though they do have a lot of time to make their decision, it's not sort of a flash decision they have to make like a heroic rescuer.

They do report that the decision itself was made very quickly and spontaneously.

They discover that it's possible to donate a kidney to a stranger and that there's tens of thousands of Americans in need of a kidney on the waiting list.

And they often think essentially immediately, I'll do it.

I would love to do that.

Lenny Skutnik was a government worker who, in the early 80s, was carpooling home from his job in D.C.

to Virginia.

And while he was in the car, a plane taking off from Reagan National Airport crashed into the Potomac River.

It was a really horrific plane crash.

And, of course, all the traffic backed up on the bridge, and Skutnik ended up getting out and walking to the bridge and seeing...

all of these people who miraculously had survived the crash, but now were slowly freezing to death and or drowning in the icy river.

It was the middle of winter and the de-icing problem had been why the plane had crashed.

And obviously it took crews a long time to get to the scene of the crash, in part because of all the backups.

And Skutnik incredibly decided that he was going to help.

And he walked down to the banks of the Potomac and I think he took off his shoes and his coat and leaped into the river and ended up rescuing a woman who had been clinging, I think, to a piece of ice or a piece of wreckage in the river and bringing her to shore at enormous risk to his own life.

Absolutely not.

No, they almost always report that they didn't even think about anything before they started to act.