Alturism and Moral Emotions Flashcards
Alturism
Challenge
- Natural selection tells us that species evolve because genetic mutations give rise to different traits, and traits that benefit survival will spread. If only mutations that aid the survival of the phenotype will spread, how could a mutation resulting in behaviors that benefit others at a costs to oneself propagate?
Kin selection
- Proposes that we help others who share genetic material with us (our kin) Predicts that we should be more likely to aid close relatives. Doesn’t explain why we help unrelated friends and even strangers
Group selection
-altruistic behaviours spread because they benefit the group as a whole. Difficult to explain how exactly this works and hard to reconcile with selfish gene accounts. Most biologists have railed against group selection arguments since the 1960s
Reciprocity
- human adults preferentially share resources with close relations, with people who have shared with them (reciprocity), Around 3 years, children start to become more discerning about who should benefit
Olson & Spelke (2008): 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)
Despite their limited experience with complex cooperative networks. Three pillars of mature cooperative behavior therefore appear to have roots extending deep into human development
Warneken & Tomasello (2008)
1. Human infants as young as 14 to 18 months of age help others attain their goals. They do this irrespective of any reward from adults (indeed external rewards undermine the tendency), and very likely with no concern for such things as reciprocation
2.Children helped an adult and the adult responded by either:
-Giving them a material reward
-Praising them
-Responding neutrally (no reward)
Then given the opportunity to help again but given no reward. Less likely to help if rewarded. Suggests early helping behaviours are intrinsically motivated – By rewarding good behaviour you can destroy good behaviour, always want the reward then onwards
Comforting
Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow et al. (1992)
- Longitudinal study 1-2yr olds.
-record children’s responses to the emotions of others over the year long period
2 years old they were observed.
-transition from generally being upset themselves when they saw someone in distress to increasingly attempting to comfort the person by engaging in prosocial behaviours (e.g., hugging)
By 15 months over ½ the children had spontaneously responded to another’s distress by engaging in prosocial behaviour
By 25 months all but one child had done so
- With age expressions of concern developed as well as efforts to understand and experience “are you okay”
Age changes in these early signs of moral development were accompanied by social–cognitive changes in self-recognition.
Children sometimes responded to others’ distress with amusement, aggression or indifference
Helping
• Warneken & Tomasello (2006)
Human children as young as 18 months of age (prelinguistic or just-linguistic) quite readily help others to achieve their goals in a variety of different situations. This requires both an understanding of others’ goals and an altruistic motivation to help. In addition, we demonstrate similar though less robust skills and motivations in three young chimpanzees.
This is taken as evidence that altruism is something we are biologically prepared for (i.e. it has some innate basis) and is not just the result of cultural transmission or explicit teaching
Inequity Aversion
Blake et al, 2015
- Adult norms of fair resource sharing vary widely across societies, suggesting that culture shapes the acquisition of fairness behaviour during childhood
- Here we examine how fairness behaviour develops in children from seven diverse societies, testing children from 4 to 15 years of age
- In all seven populations, children sacrificed a food reward to prevent a peer from receiving more than them – Avoid disadvantageous inequity
- Rejecting things that disadvantage them – not fair and they are loosing out
- advantageous inequity aversion was more variable, only three of our communities: USA, Canada and Uganda. In these societies, rejections of advantageous allocations increased with age with AI appearing to emerge by pre-adolescence
- Rejecting items in advantageous version – not fair even when it is beneficial to them
- Sense of equality – cultural difference (Canada > Mexico) and increases overtime (effected by experience)
Given that Western societies tend to emphasize establishing and enforcing norms of equality, it is possible that children in these communities face social pressures to internalize and enact these norms earlier in development compared to other societies. Although Uganda is a non-Western society, the schools from which we recruited children interacted frequently with Western teachers
Sharing
Moore (2009) 4 ½ - 6-year-olds drew picture of -a classmate they liked -a classmate they didn’t like -unknown photo of another child
On ‘prosocial’ trials children were told “You can have 1 sticker for yourself now OR 1 sticker for [?] and 1 for you later” – Said they would wait to give a sticker to other child – they get the same, no cost or benefit to them
On ‘sharing’ trials children were told “You can have 2 stickers for yourself now or 1sticker for [?] and 1 for you later” - Sharing
Children were more likely to prefer equitable division of resources:
- When the recipient was a friend, children made equitable decisions and shared as much when there was a cost to themselves as when there was no cost.
- When the recipient was another familiar child who was not a friend, children were less likely to allocate resources to that child.
- When the recipient was a stranger, children allocated resources as much as with a friend and more than with a nonfriend when there was no cost to themselves. However, when there was a cost to themselves, children treated strangers like nonfriends.
children’s sharing reflects their assessment of the recipient and sometimes the cost to themselves
Liszkowski et al., 2006
From about 12 months if infants see someone searching for something they point at the object to tell them where it is
Biological influence
Zahn-Waxler et al. (1992)
- observed young 94 monozygotic and 90 dizygotic pairs during 2nd year of life
- Recorded their reactions to adults pretending to be distressed
- Heritability estimates indicated that genetic factors play some, albeit modest, role in explaining toddlers’ prosocial actions and concern
Eisenberg & Fabes (1998) argue that genetic factors are likely to be played out in terms of differences in temperament
- Children’s tendency to feel negative emotions, their ability to regulate emotion and their assertiveness will affect how they act
- They argue that 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 and thus behave prosocially.
Social influences
Socialization in the family has a major impact on children’s behaviour
Parents promote prosocial behaviour in their children by:
-Having a secure attachment relation with their child
-Modelling empathy, sensitivity and prosocial behaviours
-Arranging opportunities to engage in positive behaviours, e.g., caring for family
School
- Fabes et al. 2002 - Preschoolers exposed to prosocial peers at the start of school year found to be more prosocial themselves by the end of the year
- Smith, Cowie & Blades, p.252 - Peer support systems (where, e.g., a responsible, trained pupil supports another who is new to the school, has learning difficulties or other needs) have been shown to be successful in the UK
- Some evidence that children choose to play with other children who as about as prosocial as they are – resulting in reinforcement of their behaviours
Cultural influences
-Whiting & Whiting (1975) - 3 and 11 years in 6 countries
Found children from Kenya, Mexico and the Phillipines acted more prosocially than those from Japan, India and the USA. mothers delegated household chores to younger children encouraged more prosocial development
Gentile, 2009
In the two longitudinal samples of Japanese children and adolescents, prosocial game play predicted later increases in prosocial behaviour.
In the experimental study, U.S. undergraduates randomly assigned to play prosocial games behaved more prosocially toward another student.
These similar results across different methodologies, ages, and cultures provide robust evidence of a prosocial game content effect, and they provide support for the General Learning Model
Emotion meets reason
Greene et al. (2001) reported an fMRI study where they demonstrate the effect of emotional engagement on moral reasoning
Thinking of moral problems activates emotion related brain areas more than working memory – emotional understanding influences decisions
Cognitive load manipulation selectively interferes with utilitarian judgment. This interference effect provides direct evidence for the influence of controlled cognitive processes in moral judgment, and utilitarian moral judgment more specifically
Empathy
Empathy
-Feeling as the other does, e.g., seeing a sad person and feeling sad
Sympathy
-Feeling for the other, e.g., seeing a sad person and feeling concern
Emotional contagion: the tendency to “catch” other people’s emotions
-Babies cry when they hear other babies crying
Mimicry: the tendency to automatically synchronize affective expressions, vocalizations, postures and movements with those of another person. Lead to a causal chain whereby one adopts another’s affective facial expressions and thereby feels the corresponding affective expression oneself. Neonates (new borns) mimic facial expression.
Overman (2007) Pencil in mouth impairs ability to smile - impairs ability to recognise happiness but not sadness
Harrison et al., 2009
Pupil dilation – People judge emptions based on pupil dilation
Pupil dilation was on either neutral, happy, sad or angry faces
Physiological response – sympathetically your pupil dilates as well
Like me Hypothesis
Three developmental phases for getting early social cognition off the ground. The older child and adult are not locked into the same understanding as the newborn.
First phase is functional at birth - Newborn imitation provides evidence of an intrinsic link between the perception and production of human acts.
- Meltzoff and Moore (1983) Average age was 32 hours old – Youngest was 42 minutes old – Newborns imitated both mouth opening and sticking out tongue. Replicated in 72 hour olds (Meltzoff & Moore, 1989) Primitive capacity to imitate is biological
Second phase. Through everyday experience infants map the relation between their own bodily states and mental experiences. They develop a detailed bidirectional map linking internal states and behaviors
Third phase. When infants see others acting similarly to how they have acted in the past – acting “like me” – they make an attribution. They ascribe the internal feelings that regularly go with those behaviors, based on their self - experience.
Like me Evaluation
Tested 12 month old’s first person experience on interpreting others behviours. 3 conditions – Blindfolded, transparent blindfold and being familiar with a blindfold. Children were allowed to play with a toy but when they looked down either the transparent or opaque blindfold was in the way. They were then given a standard gaze following test, they were presented with a blindfolded adult who turned towards objects. Experience meant infants did not turn when the adult wore the blindfold. Experience about mental state such as seeing is used to make interpretations about another person. (Meltzoff, 2007)
Meltzoff (2004).
- Provides only a partial story about how we come to understand others in the mature adult manner.
- The Like - Me framework provides the initial foothold for interpreting others, but further development is needed for acquiring the mature theory of mind
