Comp 8 Flashcards
What are prosocial behaviours and discuss humans prosocial behaviours
Behaviours that benefit others. Humans are highly cooperative and prosocial beings. At an early stage, humans develop important skills to get along and to help each other. 3-4 year olds show reconciliation and 7-8 year olds show other-regarding preferences.
Humans are known to help eachother even if unknown and at a cost to themselves.
Why do individuals show altruism in nonhuman animals
Hamilton (1964) suggested inclusive fitness, whereby individuals will help their family members.
Trivers (1971) suggested reciprocal altruism, whereby individuals help others AND get help from others
But these don’t explain why animals should help unknown individuals.
Do animals show altruism to unknown others?
Warneken et al (2007) placed a stick or pencil out of reach for a research assistant, but within reach of the subject. The chimp was able to realise this and give the assitant the stick or pencil.
However, the reward was food, so maybe they just associated helping with food and it was a game rather than true helping.
Name two things controversial about altruistic behaviours
Is it really altruistic if one brags about it later?
They theory of natural selection is based on an individual helping themselves.
These errors are also relevant in cooperation - are they cooperating to help eachother or to benefit themselves?
What considerations should be made in comparative studies?
Setting up of a study across species - do we use the same objects and reinforcements for infants as we do for chimps?
Beyond the set up we should consider things such as captivite studies and their rearing history.
Discuss research on helping in chimpanzees
Understanding goals of others and helping accordingly - chimps knew each other, and gave them a tool according to the problem they needed to solve (Yamamoto et al., 2012).
Discuss play behaviours
Bekoff 2001 said play has multiple functions - such as cognitive and social skill developing and builing physical and practical abilities. Gervais and Wilson (2005) found play expressions and play must have allowed ancestral species to develop their physical, emotional, social and cognitive skills.
So do the individuals have friendships? They play differently with eachother depending on their playmates age. They build social bonds (espeically primates) which increases their wellbeing (Engh et al. 2006).
What is the impact of group living on personality?
They are more playful, more social and more cooperative - arguably. Group living has shaped human personality (Buss, 1996) - there is an adaptive value of group living on fitness. It increases chances of survival and reproduction (but there are also disadvantages). Also, human group living has caused highly sophisticated cooperative traits to have emerged.
Moss and Tomasello (2007) came up with the Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis, which is that human-unique social cognition was driven by cooperation, whereas primate social cognition was driven more by competition.
Furthermore, Buss 1996 came up with the 5-factor model of personality.
What is the vygotskian intelligence hypothesis
Human-unique social cognition was driven by cooperation, whereas primate social cognition was driven more by competition. Moll and Tomasello (2007).
What is the 5-factor model of personality?
Buss (1996) came up with the 5-factor model of personality. It includes, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
He found there seems to be a strong association regarding the personality and cooperation.
What is the problem with suggesting animals have personalities?
It is very anthropomorphic - the 5-factor model was based around humans and has human traits.
Researchers need to reflect that they examitine something potentially different in animals than in humans, and capture reliable data linked to animal personality traits.
But it is clear that animals do have temperaments. And they do differ within species in genetics and social-ecological influences.
When rating animal personalities, we can use lexical trait descriptoes, which are often high in accuracy and consistent across texts. Also with observerations across a long period of time, as long as they are non invassive.
Stevenson-Hinde (1980) found confident rheusus macaques spent more time away from their mothers.
What is personality?
Human personality traits are those characteristics of individuals that describe and account for temporally stable patterns of affect, cognition and behaviour.
Personality traits are stable across a variety of situations and persistent throughout the years. Therefore it takes a long time to code for such behaviours. When testing humans we can use questionnaires and interviews.
Discuss one way of objective behavioural measures when testing personality in animals.
Ehtological approach - ecologically more valid, and less subjective than the lexical approach. It is an experiemental approach that is noninvassive.
What do we know about boldness in apes?
Boldness is tested through willing responses to engage in potentially harmful situations. But to test it reliably, there needs to be a larger partners to assess willing responses.
Do animals have personalities?
There is some evidence for unchanged ‘personalities’ across contexts and throughout time. But there may be something differenct across humans and nonhumans. Some researchers still use the word personality in nonhumans, but others have replaced it with temperament (Gosling, 2003), which is the foundation for personality and inherited, with early appearing tendencies that persist throughout an individuals life.
But, animal researchers still disagree on how to define temperament.
