Today’s Goals

  • Discuss projects & final papers
  • Mini review: Post-trauma growth
  • Consider classic approaches to helping behaviour
  • Explore whether or when prosocial behaviour might be ‘automatic’

 

Mini-review: Post-Traumatic Growth

  • Describe the pattern of depression (over time) that predicts high mortality following heart attacks?

Emerging depression participants were most likely to die in subsequent follow-up

  • What do prospective studies of earthquakes suggest about how people change in response?

Rumination associated with more distress

Anxious people before hand, were same people who had the after

  • What are some ways people perceive growth following traumatic events?

Meaning in life

Appreciation of life

New possibilities

Spiritual

  • According to the Frazier et al. study, how are perceptions of post traumatic growth related to actual changes over time?

Personal strength

Relating to others

Sense of meaning

Spiritual commitment

  • What are the main limitations of the Frazier et al. study?

 

Prosocial Behaviour

  • A general term
  • Includes anything that increases another’s well-being.
    • Cooperation o Helping o Sharing
  • Does not need to be ‘altruistic’

 

Classic Approaches to Helping

  • The bystander effect o Diffusion of responsibility, reinterpretation, etc.
  • Evolutionary approaches o Kin selection

Helping family members o Reciprocal altruism

We help because there is an adaptive advantage, specifically, that if you help others will help you in the future

  • Negative state relief

Seeing someone in need of help produced a negative state and helping them removes this negative state and even get a mood boost

  • Empathy-altruism (without cost/benefit)

People can be altruistic, they can help others without carefully considering the cost/benefits

Doesn’t mean that those benefits don’t come but that they are not part of the consideration

More likely to help if we can put ourselves in others shoes (empathy)

More empathy for person = more likely to help them

  • Person differences: empathy, agreeableness

People higher in empathy and agreeableness are more likely to help other people

 

Prosocial Behaviour

  • Very common in people
  • Consider donations, volunteering, heroes and everyday favors… o But, many counter examples too Divergent views about causes (previous slide)
  • What about ‘processes’?

Understand how emotion and cognition come together, and when and why they lead to helping behaviour

 

Reflective Model of Prosocial Behaviour

  • Assumes people are ‘naturally’ selfish
  • Yet we can behave in prosocial ways
  • Helping especially common in humans
  • Perhaps due to other ‘human’ capabilities o Self-control, delay of gratification, thoughtful choice, etc.

 

Intuitive Prosociality

Intuitive Model of Prosocial Behaviour

  • Could prosocial behavior/preference be more basic or intuitive (at least sometimes)?
  • Cognitive approach
  • Neuroscience correlates Parts of brain that are active
  • Developmental emergence

If little kids like to help from an early age, that maybe suggests helping is innate and intuitive

 

Cognitive Approach

  • ‘System 1’ vs. ‘System 2’

Some cognitive processes are quick, without much if any thought vs. other processes that weight cost/benefits, and think more

  • Often assessed with o Speed

Quicker – system 1 o Distraction

Better able to do task with distractions – system 1 o (Priming)

Prime participants either with idea that they should go with their gut, or stop and think

  • Here, applied to public goods game

 

Public Goods Game

  • You are paired with 3 other people.
  • Everyone has 40 cents to play with.
  • You can keep it, or contribute some to the group’s common project.
  • Money in the common project is doubled, then split equally among 4.
  • If all contribute 40 cents, each gets 80 cents
  • If all others contribute, but you keep, you get 100 cents; others get 60 cents (mhwaaaaahaaa)
  • You only get 1 of every 2 cents you contribute

 

Public Goods Game Results

  • PGG with forced response time
  • PGG with mindset manipulated

 

Neuroscience Correlates

  • Generally associated with reward seeking: o Ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex
  • Generally associated with cognitive control:
    • lateral prefrontal cortex & anterior cingulate cortex
  • Compared across o Seeing fair outcomes o Seeing another get rewards o Donating money

 

Early Development

  • Recall ‘giving to monkey’ study
  • Preference for prosocial actors
  • Helping without request
  • Offering useful information
  • Fair (or no) allocations

Among children – to the point where they would give up sources to achieve fairness in numbers

  • Significant because age seems younger than much delay or control

 

Summary

  • Prosocial behaviour may be intuitive or ‘easy’ o Automaticity o Neural correlates o Development
  • BUT, these are demonstrations ‘sometimes’ o People also do horrible things

How can we foster prosociality?