Social brain 7

Cooperation vs competition

Cooperation compromises must benefit my genes/traits to survive (better to receive cooperation)

Depends on trust

Previous history (have memory of person and reputation) Social norms for exchange (+ their reinforcement e.g. not paying taxes). An intrinsic bias (basic need) for fairness and kindness

Altruism

Stimulus: someone in need or distress

response: helping

Selfless act

No personal reward but entails some degree of cost (e.g. danger, time effort) but could have psychological reward

4 reasons why altruism help survive evolution

Kin selection, reciprocal altruism/direct reciprocity, sexual selection and indirect reciprocity

Kin selection

Survival chances of some same trait you have. If an individual helps their kin then there is a greater chance that the helping trait will survive, because there is a greater chance that their kin also carry this same trait. Only if helping outweighs the cost

C < r * B (r = probability kin will inherit trait) (e.g. squirrels sharing nuts)

Reciprocal altruism/direct reciprocity

Principles of trade and exchange (I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine) They have to be able to distinguish between their cospecifics and remember previous behavior of specific individuals. If you can’t remember they may free-load (aka optimal solution)

Sexual selection

Those who are generous with their time and resources deem to be more attractive (e.g. sign of wealth) has to outweigh costs (e.g. peacocks huge feather not handy but best to find partner)

Indirect reciprocity

Helping after being helped or helping others who are good helpers (even when we’ve never met or see them again) helping others increases reputation and that other will help you

Computational modeling, direct reciprocity

Agents, freeload, cooperate, or other and pairs interactions result in fitness changes. Freeloaders +3 then cooperator -1, people who cooperated didn’t do so in next rounds, cooperation dies out

Two cooperators receive both +2 or both freeloaders less or no points

Population with freeloaders and cooperation (cooperation always dies out). But in population of selective corporators (tit-for-tat) won’t die out

Batons empathy-altruism model

Researchers describe in detail particular scenario to the participants (e.g. Relating to an eviction) and asked to write level of help they would offer. Empathetic concern, predicts, helping behavior but not selfish motives (e.g. guilt, shame, personal distress, fear of social disapproval)

Altruism in humans

often unconscious. But we should not say bats want/like helping because do they have a mental state? We should also not conclude that all human altruistic behavior reflects a conscious motivation to help.

Unconscious implicit altruism

Study 1: voluntary and anonymous donations to office milk fund, influenced by picture on donation box with one week a picture of flowers and another week a picture of eyes

Study 2: donations to charity increased after their mannerisms have been slightly imitated

Empathy and altruism

We help others because we care about their welfare not to spread our genes

Study: empathic motivations come from personal distress (selfish rather than selfless) decision based on costs of helping/not helping

Criticism Batsons empathy-altruism model

Assumes a clear distinction between self and other in empathy not supported by many neuroscientific findings

FMRI charity donation

choosing to donate activates ventral and dorsal striatum even if it costs more (joy of giving), before actually donating mPFC activates and when not donating LOFC