Marsh et al (2014)

Aim

 to study “extraordinary altruism”

Research method

Quasi experiment

Procedure

• Researchers used a sample of people who had donated a kidney to a stranger

• Donations were not made to a member of their own family

• Sample consisted of 19 altruistic kidney (12 men and 7 women), recruited nationally through mailings and electronic advertisements through local and national transplant organisations

• 20 controls who matched for IQ, income, education, psychological history and medication use. Age range was from 23-56 yrs old

• First stage was an emotion recognition task in an fMRI, participants were shown images of faces showing one of the 6 basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, or surprise). 

  • Each emotion was shown at a low or moderate intensity

  • 5 males and 5 female images shown for each emotion, in total 120 images 

  • When shown the image, they had to press a button to indicate which emotion was shown, and the time taken to decide was also measured

• Second stage was an MRI scan to determine the structure of their brains

• Final stage was tests participants took to measure their level of psychopathy and empathy

Findings

• Extraordinary altruists had a greater average volume in the right amygdala than in the controls

• Right hemisphere is associated with negative emotions and plays a role in the expression of fear and processing fear-inducing stimuli

• Faster response time in right amygdala to fearful facial expressions than in the control group

• Findings are opposite of what had been shown in research studying psychopaths, meaning there might be a biological basis for altruistic behaviour

Strengths

Nation-wide

Limitations

• Reductionist argument for altruistic behaviour → acts of altruism reflect mix of biological, psychological and social factors

• Quasi experiment- cause and effect relationship cannot be determined

• Using averages is problematic when drawing conclusion from small sample size of MRI scans

• fMRI may lead to artifacts, eg anxiety from being in the tunnel which could affect the activity shown in the brain

• Kidney donors make a well-reasoned, thoughtful and conscious decision, therefore is not representative of altruistic behaviour