Lecture 9 - Altruism and Prejudice

What is the core paradox of altruism?

It involves a personal cost incurred to benefit someone else, which seems irrational from a survival perspective.

What real-world example illustrates self-sacrificial heroism?

Stephen Brown saving an older woman from an elevator malfunction at the cost of his own life.

What is symbolic altruism?

Self-sacrifice for a moral or political cause, e.g., Buddhist monk’s self-immolation in 1960s Vietnam.

What is kin selection?

Helping relatives to increase the spread of shared genes.

What is reciprocity in evolutionary terms?

Helping someone with the expectation they may help you later (“you scratch my back, I scratch yours”).

Why do extreme altruistic acts (like Stephen Brown) challenge evolutionary accounts?

They lack kin ties, mating benefits, or future reciprocity → suggesting limits to pure evolutionary explanations.

What is warm-glow theory?

Define pure altruism.

Helping motivated solely by concern for another’s welfare, independent of self-benefit.

What were the two trial types in the Science (2007) altruism study?

Voluntary transfers and mandatory transfers to a food bank.

What brain region activated during both mandatory and voluntary giving?

The nucleus accumbens (reward center).

Why did voluntary giving produce greater satisfaction than mandatory giving?

Autonomy enhances reward and self-perceived moral value.

What are the two main components of empathy?

Mentalizing (cognitive perspective-taking) and emotion sharing (affective resonance).

What empathy pattern is typical in psychopathy?

High mentalizing ability, low emotion sharing.

What does success on the Sally-Anne task indicate?

Understanding that others can hold false beliefs different from one’s own knowledge.

What is the Temporal Parietal Junction (TPJ)?

Brain region that is critical for mentalizing and false-belief tasks.

What happens to the motor evoked potential (MEP) when someone experiences pain directly?

It is suppressed (inhibition).

What key finding occurs when observing someone else's pain?

Similar location-matched MEP suppression → neural mirroring.

What does pain mirroring suggest about motives for helping?

We may help to reduce our own distress, not purely others’.

How does empathy differ from compassion?

• Empathy = sharing another’s feelings

• Compassion = concern for others’ well-being without sharing distress

Why can empathy be biased?

It favors identifiable, proximal victims and declines sharply with large groups (psychic numbing).

What is psychic numbing?

Decreased emotional sensitivity as the number of victims increases.

What is the identifiable victim effect?

People donate more when a victim has a name/photo vs. being an anonymous statistic.

What pattern is observed in the “Rokia vs. Rokia + Musa” donation study?

People donate more to a single named victim than to a group, even if the group includes the same individual.

Define prejudice.

Negative emotion/attitude toward someone solely because of their group membership.

Define stereotype.

Belief about characteristics of a group’s members; cognitive, not necessarily emotional.

Define discrimination.

Behavior directed at individuals based on group membership.

What is explicit prejudice?

Conscious, verbally reportable negative attitudes.

What is implicit prejudice?

Non-conscious attitudes inferred through tasks like the IAT, not self-report.

How does the IAT indicate bias?

Faster sorting when stereotypes align with societal associations (e.g., “Black + bad”).

What is the “parrot analogy” criticism of the IAT?

It may reflect learned cultural associations, not personal prejudice.

What experimental evidence shows the IAT is context-sensitive?

Brief exposure to counter-stereotypic associations can shift results.

What does the minimal group paradigm demonstrate?

Arbitrary group assignments produce instant in-group favoritism.

What neural markers show in-group bias?

Higher N170 and M170 responses to in-group faces.

What happens to pain mirroring when observing an out-group member?

Reduced MEP suppression → weaker empathic mirroring.

What is infra-humanization?

Attributing fewer secondary (uniquely human) emotions to out-group members.

Why is denial of secondary emotions dangerous?

It contributes to dehumanization and increases risk of inter-group violence.

How do counter-stereotypic exemplars reduce prejudice?

They temporarily weaken negative associations through exposure to positive out-group members.

How does arbitrary re-categorization reduce prejudice?

Creating mixed-group teams overrides original group boundaries and eliminates bias.

What is a superordinate identity strategy?

Emphasizing one large, shared identity (e.g., “humanity”) to reduce inter-group bias.

What does Singer’s drowning child scenario illustrate?

People treat local, visible suffering as more morally urgent than distant suffering, despite equal stakes.

What moral inconsistency does Singer highlight?

People will save a nearby child at personal cost but refuse a small donation to save a distant child.

What three forces shape human altruism?

Evolutionary motives, emotional responses (empathy/compassion), and cognitive mechanisms.

What explains why we help identifiable individuals more than large groups?

Empathy bias + psychic numbing + identifiable victim effect.

Why does creating new arbitrary groups reduce racism?

It exploits the brain’s tendency to treat “my group” preferentially—changing who counts as “us.”

How does empathy contribute to prejudice?

People feel less empathy for out-group pain → easier to dehumanize or ignore.