Lecture 17 Flashcards
Define prosocial behaviour
Behaviour that benefits others, usually at a cost to yourself. Humans have been know to help people they do not even know.
Discuss prosocial behaviour in human infants
Humans develop cooperative behaviour early on in their lives. At 3 years of age, children show reconciliation after a fall out. By 7 years, infants begin to regard the preferences of others instead of being selfish.
Define altruism
Attitudes and behaviours that represent an unselfish concern for the welfare of others. However, it can be argued that altruism does not exist as you feel good about being altruistic or you expect something in return at a later date.
Discuss how altruism contrasts the theory of natural selection
Natural selection is based on individual benefits and believes that if you are costly to yourself, then your fitness will reduce. Thus, altruism should not survive as a trait. However, it has, maybe because altruism usually prefers kin, meaning an inclusive fitness occurs. Also, it could have survived because of reciprocal altruism; when you help someone, they help you out as well at a later date. The issue of helping unknown others still remains though.
Discuss internal and external validity in comparative studies
Internal considerations should involve methodology that is functionally equivalent across species. It is accepted that the method cannot be identical, for example, infants have a desire to play with a toy whereas apes do not have this desire so the method needs to be adapted like using grapes to motivate the apes.
In terms of external considerations, it needs to be acknowledged that captive and wild apes may have different cognitive abilities. Thus, emulating a situation that would be similar and likely for a wild ape to come across, is most beneficial. Captive studies find out what cognitive abilities they have, wild studies explore when they use their cognitive abilities; both are essential. External considerations look beyond the methodology.
Therefore, when testing for altruism in infants and non-human primates, different objects/reinforcements should be used but with the same methodology (internal considerations). Furthermore, you should account for the history of the ape in captivity, how were they reared, have they practiced these things before etc. (external considerations).
Discuss helping behaviours in chimps
It has been found that chimps can understand the goals of others and then help accordingly. For example, one chimp has a box of tools and the other needs one of the tools to reach juice. The chimp with the tools would give the other chimp the appropriate tool to retrieve the juice. However, this may not have been altruistic as the chimp might have given the tool in hope for something in return.
Discuss play behaviour in non-human primates
Non-human primates engage in play as it helps them develop physical, emotional, social and cognitive skills. It has also been found that play changes depending on the playmate; this is called self-handicapping in play. Playing improves social bonds in primates which can reduce stress and improve fitness. The social network analysis reveals that certain dyads are stable in their interactions, which could suggest that friendships occur in non-human primates.
Discuss how human personalities arose
It evolved because of group living. Group living had an adaptive value as it increased one’s chances of survival and reproduction. However, it increased conflict, meaning sophisticated cooperative traits needed to emerge, this follows the Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis. From this, the 5 factors of personality emerged; Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Almost all of these involve traits that can be linked to cooperation.
Do animals have personalities
This is a really hard question to answer without being anthropomorphic. Thus, it is better to consider it as temperament, however, this can be hard to define. If animals have personalities, then one needs to look at inter-individual differences in genetics and in social-ecological influences. These traits need to be present across a variety of situations and persist through years. This extremely hard to explore in animals as they cannot self-report their personalities, meaning humans have to code their behaviour.
The most common approach is using lexical trait descriptors (human adjectives) to rate an animal’s behaviour. This allows one to be highly accurate as consistency across tests can be measured. This method has allowed us to see that some macaques are more confident than others as they spent more time away from their mothers.
The ethological approach has more EV and is more objective than the lexical approach. One can either experimentally explore how animals react to novel situations or they can observe how social animals are by coding their behaviour and facial expressions.
It has been found that animals have boldness, which was explored by observing how risky their play was or how closely they sat next to an elder that was eating.
Discuss Marshall’s study
They argue that prosocial behaviour is not related to the phylogenetic closeness of humans, rather it is related to maternal care or collaborative foraging and other convergent selection pressures. Therefore, more research needs to explore prosocial behaviour outside of primates in order to understand why it evolved and which species are more capable of it, rather than comparing differences between them and us.
Discuss Hernandez’s study
They found evidence for prosocial behaviour in rats. The rats completed a maze task and chose either own reward or both reward, where a partner also gets a reward. In one condition the partner was another rat and in another it was a toy. It was found that the rats picked the shared reward significantly more when the partner was another rat. This shows evidence for the rats being prosocial.
Discuss Pellis’ study
They found evidence of play behaviour is rats and showed how it differed to actual fighting behaviour. Play fighting entailed biting the nape of the other’s neck whereas in serious fighting, the rats aimed for the rump. This shows that they are 2 distinct interactions and suggests signs of prosociality and thus, higher levels of cognition.
Discuss Freeman’s study
Furthermore, prosociality may not be found in all animals within a species because it could be a ‘personality’ trait and therefore there would be differences. Freeman found that many lexical trait descriptor studies have found evidence for personality in non-human primates, some relating to prosociality like agreeableness, sociability and extraversion. Thus showing that it can be tricky to claim that a species is prosocial as it might just be particular individuals that have unique adaptations.
Discuss Blaza’s study
Oxytocin is a hormone that is associated with social interactions, specifically prosociality. It was found that mice have elevated levels of oxytocin when they see a familiar conspecific compared to when they see a novel conspecific. This ethological approach provides evidence for prosociality in rats and shows how rats may have friendships or maybe that the rats in this study had a prosocial personality trait, meaning that they affiliated more towards familiar conspecifics.
Discuss Stone’s study
They found that personality traits in dogs correlated with their morphology. Taller dogs were more cooperative and playful whereas shorter dogs were more aggressive and fearful. This shows how dogs have developed unique adaptations, perhaps because of their size. For example, smaller dogs might need to be more aggressive to scare off predators whereas the larger dogs can just rely on their size. Furthermore, this shows that prosociality might be a trait rather than a universal characteristic.
