At 2:50 PM on Monday, April 15, I was sitting in my Cambridge office, separated from the finish line of the Boston Marathon by 2.5 miles of parks, city streets, and the iconic Charles River. Around 3:00 PM, I started receiving what would soon become a flood of messagestexts, emails, and Facebook chats, from friends, family members, and high-school classmates: Are you ok? Are you safe? Youre not at the marathon, are you? This is how I learnedat 2:50 PM. This is how I learned that mere miles away, two home-made bombs had detonated, killing three people and wounding . And this is what led me to pace the halls of my building, knocking on every door; to contact, in any way possible, friends I knew were there, at that finish line; to make sure that these peoplemy peoplewere safe. In times of distress and uneaseof apparent attackits easy to think in us-vs-them terms: to care only about our people, our city, our country. But if these attacks were perpetrated against any us, it was the us of humankind. Theof marathon participants includes more than 23,000 athletes: males and females ranging in age from 18 to 83; runners, handcyclists, and wheelchair operators; citizens of 96 different countries and 6 of 7 continents (only Antarcticawas not represented). They were us. And they were diverse. The bombs exploded at a site celebrating this magnificent diversityalong the home stretch of the Marathon, a section of Boylston Street lined with the flags of each participants native country. This diversity was also displayed by the injured, and the an 8-year-old boy, a 29-year-old restaurant manager, a 23-year-old Chinese graduate student. This was, and is, a tragedy. There is no denying it. But in the midst of this tragedy, there also wasand isan unmistakable beauty. In the immediate aftermath of the explosionseven as debris continued to fly through the aircountless people ran not away from the blasts, but . These people had no way of knowing whether or not there would be more explosions, no way of knowing whether or not they were putting their own lives in danger; they simply saw others in need and immediately rushed to help. At the same time, more peoplemany of them marathoners who had just completed a draining 26.2 mile test of endurancebegan to rush en masse to nearby Massachusetts General Hospital, seeking to give their own blood for the hundreds of wounded that would soon follow. In fact, so many people showed up that the hospital was forced, multiple times, ; there were simply too many people trying to help. These overwhelming displays of helpingof selflessness and what psychologists call are beautiful in and of themselves. But they are even more beautiful because they transcend us-vs-them ways of thinking. These actions were not reserved for members of one group, one city, or one country; they were enacted without preference or prejudice, directed at victims of every color, creed, age, and gender. And they are still more beautiful because of their immediacy. These actions were not the result of carefully considered decisions, of weighing the pros and cons of each possible behavior; they were virtually instantaneous, seemingly born of a raw, instinctive urge to help those in need. In the face of overwhelming tragedy, people sought to help the us of humankindimmediately, prodigiously, and with little regard for their own safety. A long tradition of research in social and evolutionary psychology tells us that this behavior doesnt make sense. That , and that these selfish instincts can be found in every organism, every cell, and . According to this tradition, thinking of any us at all can be explained as a means to the end of preserving ones own physical and psychological well-being, living to see another day, and producing children that have a reasonable chance of doing the same. Ostensibly altruistic behaviorseverything from sharing resources to laying down ones life to save otherscan be explained by fundamentally selfish motives like(the desire to be seen in a positive light),(the desire to preserve ones genetic material, sometimes even at the cost of ones own life), or simply a desire tothat comes along with viewing others in distress. In short, people help others to help themselves. But other research tells a different story. When people find lost letters on the sidewalk, , even though this good deed will receive no recognition or reward, does nothing to further their own genetic legacy, and probably does not relieve much personal distress. People make anonymous financial donations, and as many as 32% are even while still livingto complete strangers. Evenwith no apparent concern for approval from friends and/or authority figures, personal benefits, or moral (good/bad) imperatives. Examples such as these provide a counterargument to the selfish view of human nature that has long dominated psychological research. They suggest that people may help others with little or no thought for their own well-being; people may help others simply because they need to be helped. Of course, it could be that these heartwarming actions can also be explained by selfish motives, ones that are simply more difficult to pin down. Or it could be that these actions represent the outcome of hard-fought battles pitting conscious control against selfish core impulsesvictories for virtue, yes, but ones that require continuous effort and are likely to be surrendered as soon as people are unable or unwilling to continue overriding their selfish impulses. It could be that when caring for others threatens peoples own welfare, they will retreat into increasingly smaller from caring for the us of humankind to the us of their families, friends, and ; from caring about this restricted us to only caring about themselves. It could be that, when people are put to the ultimate test, self-preservation will always win out. The Boston Marathon bombings put people to this test. The attack created chaos, pain, and destruction; it destroyed lives and landscapes. It destroyed pretense. Those on the scene were immediately forced to face the jarring reality of those who had already been injureda reality that represented both these victims need for help and the possibility that providing help could result in personal injury from further explosions. In this situation, people had neither the time nor the resources to override impulses or think strategically; they could only react, . It is in these reactions that I see beauty. In the initial movements of the helpersthe first responders, the blood donators, the countless men and women who rushed in to do anything and everything they could to fix the gaping hole left by those Monday afternoon explosionsI see an extreme example of the human capacity for selflessness. I see evidence that people tend to intuitively, instinctively, and perhaps automatically reach out to others in times of need. I see that extreme situations can cause people to transcend us-vs-them thinking, uniting diverse peoples into the us of humankind. In the few days since the bombings, the , a night filled with , a day spent in , , and the heartfelt displays of have threatened to prematurely relegate the explosions on Boylston Street to the past. Similarly, the delayed reactions of some a to set up in opposition to ushave threatened to overshadow the immediate and selfless reactions shown by those at the scene. Taken together, these actions and reactions show that people are complex, confusing, and often self-contradictory. However, they also highlight the immense capacity for human goodness present in the midst of this complexity. They offer the hope, at least, that . Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter . 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