Lecture 9 - prosocial behaviour and altruism

comparative psychology and development

-compare ourselves to other great apes

-timing of developments in prosociality might be crucial in explaining differences between species

-source of new traits is changes in timing and manner in which existing genes are expressed and interact with the environment

prosocial behaviour

-voluntary behaviour intended to benefit another

-children engage in more prosocial behaviours with age

altruism

-prosocial behaviour that is performed for unselfish motives

-studies demonstrate altruism in infancy is not uncommon

types of prosociality

• comforting → addressing negative emotional state

• helping → addressing instrumental need

• sharing → addressing material need/desire

comforting

-rate at which children comfort others whoa re in pain or distress increases over the second year of life

individual differences - comforting

-compared monozygotic and dizygotic twins

-genetic factors have a modest role in explaining toddlers’ prosocial actions and concerns

-genes might influence neurohormonal systems, which influences affective responses to others’ distress

holmegren (individual differences - comforting)

-those who are not overwhelmed by the emotions they experience are more likely to feel sympathy

-those who are not overly inhibited are more likely to act on their sympathetic feelings

-child may struggle to process or act on emotions → so seemingly show no concern or comforting

chimpanzees and comforting

-chimpanzees do comfort/reassure others

-but at later development than humans

-understanding human prosociality may be when certain abilities emerge in development rather than ‘if’

assisting others

-prosocial response to an instrumental need

-selectively in helping

-comparing humans with non-human apes

informing others

-12 month olds help others by informatively

-communication helps others achieve instrumental goals

active assistance

-18 month olds help others in simple tasks → adult feigns needing help to reach peg or open door

chimpanzees and bonobos - helping

-chimpanzees also help in similar situations where it is easy for them to infer what the person’s goal is

-there are some debates over chimpanzee prosociality, with the majority view being chimps and bonobos do display prosocial helping

-less common among young chimps

-e.g., cannot reach rubber so chimp grabs it for her

promoting helping - method

-toddlers who were 18 months or 30 months helped their mother clean up

-maternal helping promotion behaviours were recorded

-children then had the chance to help another adult

promoting helping - results

-certain styles of caregiver behaviour predicted infants’ likelihood of helping another adult - with differences depending on age

-18 month olds:

• directives → commands or requests

• scaffolding → providing support such as emotional regulation, making child’s actions relevant in the activity

-30 month olds:

• scaffolding

• negotiation → finding a compromise

promoting helping - what doesn’t work

• reasoning/explaining the need → don’t yet have reasoning skills required

• praise/positive comments → too open ended/generic, though may promote self-esteem

• character attribution → comments on child characteristics → may promote self-esteem but not helping

sharing

-addressing other’s material needs/desires even at a personal cost

-affiliative sharing

-resource sharing

-fairness and reciprocity

-cultural variation in these tendencies

-sharing by non-human apes

affiliative sharing

-infants share attention and interest from around 6 months

-actively give objects around 9-10 months

early resource sharing - 18 months

-start to share resources

-this requires heavy scaffolding from adults

-at 18 months this behaviour is:

• not very common

• rarely spontaneous

• not very generous

early resource sharing - 24 months

-start to share more quickly, more often, with less prompting, more generously

-driven by increased social understanding

-infants first start to say ‘mine!’

fairness and reciprocity (sharing)

-around 3 years, children start to become more discerning about who should benefit from their acts of kindness

-children think people should prefer to share resources with:

• family and friends

• people who have shared with them - reciprocity

• people who have shared with others - indirect reciprocity

-show strong reciprocity

-sacrificing resources to punish and reward that children could trade for small prizes

blake - method (fairness and reciprocity)

-inequity when someone gets more sweets than someone else

• advantageous equity → get more sweets than someone else

• disadvantageous equity → get less sweets than someone else

-child has access to two levers and other child does not

• green lever → everyone gets some sweets

• red lever → tips sweets into central bowl and nobody gets sweets

blake - result (fairness and reciprocity)

-pulling red lever is less likely with equal distribution

-more likely to pull red lever with uneven distribution

-as children reach middle childhood disadvantageous inequity more likely to reject and give no one sweets

-with advantageous inequity will see cultural differences with age → more variable in later development

great apes - sharing

-female chimps have been known to share food

-much more common in bonobos

-bonobos voluntarily hand food to others but not toys or tools

self-maximisation (sharing)

-advantageous inequity aversion and strong reciprocity more culturally variable

dahl - altruism

-acts motivated by the welfare of others

evidence for altruism

-toddlers help others even anonymously

-help whether the adult is there to watch or not, even if adult is unfamiliar

-2 year olds remedy unnoticed accidents

-proactive rather than solely reactive prosociality → even when engaged in an interesting task of their own

motivational sources of prosociality

-empathic concern → sincere concern for others’ wellbeing

-gratitude and guilt → gratitude sustains prosocial interactions and reinforces reciprocity, guilt motivates repair of ruptured social relations

-obligation → commitments create a sense of social obligation, norms create an expectation of altruistic behaviour

-reward

impact of material reward - method (altruism)

-20 month olds had chance to help adult

-if they did the adult provided a response:

• gave them a material reward

• praised them

• responded neutrally

-in 2nd phase children again given the opportunity to help the adult

impact of material reward - results (altruism)

-less likely in reward condition- extrinsic motivator

-praise did not function as a ‘verbal reward’ focuses on intrinsic motivation

0improtant of intrinsic motivation to altruistic action → undermined by extrinsic motivation

altruism - innate tendency

-infants display helping from early in development and extrinsic motivation inhibits helping behaviour

-chimpanzees help others when it is easy to infer the goal

-but early helping can be explained by a motivation for social interaction rather than altruism