Human Prosocial Behavior Research Articles

How the emotions evoked by homeless pets induce online charitable giving

AbstractIn this study, we investigated the relationship between emotions and charitable behavior in the context of pet charities. In particular, we examined the role of pet characteristics such as age, health status, signs of homelessness, and the animal being in the presence of a human as factors in a potential benefactors' emotional state (valence and arousal) that are associated with the willingness to donate. We conducted an online experiment in which participants (N = 54) voluntarily donated in response to being presented with pictures of dogs in various conditions. Emotional state was measured as self‐reported valence and arousal. Our findings showed that willingness to donate was higher when participants experienced unpleasant emotions with a high arousal. In addition, we found that animals' apparent sickness and signs of homelessness provoked larger donations, while age (adult or puppy) and being in the presence of a human did not affect charitable behavior. Our study contributes to the research on the effectiveness of charity appeals in the context of pet charities and complements the literature on human prosocial behavior in support of other species. The results have practical implications for the development of advertising on behalf of pet charities as they explore the impact of dogs' characteristics on donors' emotions and willingness to donate under ecologically valid conditions, in contrast to previous laboratory studies.

The links between physical activity and prosocial behavior: an fNIRS hyperscanning study.

The prevalence of physically inactive lifestyles in modern society raises concerns about the potential association with poor brain health, particularly in the lateral prefrontal cortex, which is crucial for human prosocial behavior. Here, we explored the relationship between physical activity and prosocial behavior, focusing on potential neural markers, including intra-brain functional connectivity and inter-brain synchrony in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Forty participants, each paired with a stranger, completed two experimental conditions in a randomized order: (i) face-to-face and (ii) face stimulus (eye-to-eye contact with a face stimulus of a fictitious person displayed on the screen). Following each condition, participants played economic games with either their partner or an assumed person displayed on the screen. Neural activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex was recorded by functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning. Sparse multiset canonical correlation analysis showed that a physically inactive lifestyle was covaried with poorer reciprocity, greater trust, shorter decision-making time, and weaker intra-brain connectivity in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and poorer inter-brain synchrony in the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex. These associations were observed exclusively in the face-to-face condition. Our findings suggest that a physically inactive lifestyle may alter human prosocial behavior by impairing adaptable prosocial decision-making in response to social factors through altered intra-brain functional connectivity and inter-brain synchrony.

Endogenous Opioids and Volunteering: On the Evolutionary Significance of Helping Others.

The human tendency to help others in need has been subject to trans-, inter-, and multidisciplinary studies (e.g., anthropology, neurobiology, evolutionary psychology, economy), within the frame of studying the mechanisms and adaptive significance of human prosocial behavior. Volunteering directed to unrelated and unfamiliar individuals is one common form of such helping behavior. Helping others may be adaptive for a species at a macro-level, which in turn is mediated by neurobiological mechanisms. A key target for analysis of the neurobiological underpinnings of volunteering is the endogenous opioid system (EOS). This chapter discusses EOS activity as a potential mediator of volunteering behavior. Evidence of the congruence between EOS involvement in social group behavior and social bonding and the role of these phenomena in volunteerism is reviewed. Models and empirical evidence of the mechanisms and adaptive value of helping unrelated others are discussed and integrated, including the mammalian caregiving system, the neurobiological model of prosocial behavior, synchrony promoting social bonding, and stress-driven motivation of prosocial action in immediate needs.

Navigating uncertainty in human social decision‐making: Consequences and coping strategies

AbstractUncertainty is a fundamental aspect of human social life. Based on fruitful findings, the current review aims to establish a schema that outlines the relationship between uncertainty and human social decision‐making: the influences of uncertainty on social decision‐making (mainly prosocial behaviors) and the strategies commonly employed to reduce social uncertainty. Human prosocial behaviors are modulated by both social and nonsocial uncertainty. Specifically, uncertainty decreases prosocial behaviors by providing moral wiggling room or promoting loss aversion but also helps maintain relationships by mitigating negative interactions. Moreover, impression formation, impression updating, and compliance with social norms are crucial strategies for coping with social uncertainty, but they are subject to various biases. Finally, we highlight some important issues that need to be addressed in future studies. In summary, the current review deepens our understanding of the role of uncertainty in social behaviors.

Shared cross-cultural principles underlie human prosocial behavior at the smallest scale

Prosociality and cooperation are key to what makes us human. But different cultural norms can shape our evolved capacities for interaction, leading to differences in social relations. How people share resources has been found to vary across cultures, particularly when stakes are high and when interactions are anonymous. Here we examine prosocial behavior among familiars (both kin and non-kin) in eight cultures on five continents, using video recordings of spontaneous requests for immediate, low-cost assistance (e.g., to pass a utensil). We find that, at the smallest scale of human interaction, prosocial behavior follows cross-culturally shared principles: requests for assistance are very frequent and mostly successful; and when people decline to give help, they normally give a reason. Although there are differences in the rates at which such requests are ignored, or require verbal acceptance, cultural variation is limited, pointing to a common foundation for everyday cooperation around the world.

Moral emotions in neuropsychiatry : testing FTD and Schizophrenia patients with the MEA scale.

AbstractBackgroundMoral emotions have a key role in human prosocial behaviors. Impaired moral emotion processing can lead to disrupted decision‐making and behavioral adaptation.Better knowledge about moral emotion processing in neuropsychiatric diseases is necessary to facilitate diagnosis and patient care.The aim of this study was to investigate and to compare moral emotion processing in patients with neurodegenerative diseases ‐behavioral fronto temporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD)‐ and patients with schizophrenia.MethodWe investigated 22 FTD, 15 AD, 30 schizophrenia patients and a control group with validated task, the Moral Emotions Assessment (MEA). This tool consisted in 42 scenarios exploring positive and negative moral emotions such as admiration, gratitude, shame or anger. Subjects had to choose between several emotions the most appropriate to the context of the scenario. To control for moral specificity, we contrasted the 42 moral scenarios with 18 extra‐moral scenarios eliciting the emotions without involving any inter‐human moral context.ResultFTD patients and Schizophrenia patients were significantly impaired in moral emotion processing, when compared to healthy controls, whereas AD patients were not impaired. There was a specific impairment of moral emotions in FTD, (73.1% of correct answers VS 95.1% in control group p<0,001) and the most impaired emotion was guilt. AD patients didn’t show impairment in moral emotion processing compared to healthy controls. In Schizophrenia patients, moral emotion processing was significantly impaired (85,8% of correct answers VS 95,9% in control group, p<0,001), and the most impaired emotions were anger and shame.ConclusionMoral emotions processing seemed significantly impaired in FTD patients and schizophrenia patients, with different patterns of deficits, whereas AD patients seemed to have preserved moral cognition. These results provide a better understanding of the behavioral changes observed in FTD and schizophrenia patients.

Functional Connectivity Basis and Underlying Cognitive Mechanisms for Gender Differences in Guilt Aversion.

Prosocial behavior is pivotal to our society. Guilt aversion, which describes the tendency to reduce the discrepancy between a partner’s expectation and his/her actual outcome, drives human prosocial behavior as does well-known inequity aversion. Although women are reported to be more inequity averse than men, gender differences in guilt aversion remain unexplored. Here, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study (n = 52) and a large-scale online behavioral study (n = 4723) of a trust game designed to investigate guilt and inequity aversions. The fMRI study demonstrated that men exhibited stronger guilt aversion and recruited right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)-ventromedial PFC (VMPFC) connectivity more for guilt aversion than women, while VMPFC-dorsal medial PFC (DMPFC) connectivity was commonly used in both genders. Furthermore, our regression analysis of the online behavioral data collected with Big Five and demographic factors replicated the gender differences and revealed that Big Five Conscientiousness (rule-based decision) correlated with guilt aversion only in men, but Agreeableness (empathetic consideration) correlated with guilt aversion in both genders. Thus, this study suggests that gender differences in prosocial behavior are heterogeneous depending on underlying motives in the brain and that the consideration of social norms plays a key role in the stronger guilt aversion in men.

Intranasal vasopressin expedites dishonesty in women

As an integral ingredient of human sociality, dishonesty can be both egocentric and altruistic, as well as gradually escalate. Here, we examined the influence of arginine vasopressin (AVP), a neuropeptide associated with human prosocial behaviors, on dishonest behaviors in men and women. In this double-blind and placebo-controlled study, 101 participants were randomized to administration of either 20 IU intranasal AVP or placebo. We used a two-party task to manipulate the incentive structure of dishonesty in the way of self-/other-serving repeatedly. For lies that benefit both themselves and others, women receiving intranasal AVP lied more than women receiving intranasal placebo and men receiving intranasal AVP. The dishonest behavior of women treated with AVP gradually escalated with repetition over time. These results suggest that AVP selectively regulates the escalation of dishonesty in women, contingent on the motivation of dishonesty. Our findings provide insight into gender-specific modulations of AVP on human dishonest behavior.

This land is my land: Psychological ownership increases willingness to protect the natural world more than legal ownership

Pro-environmental appeals that strive to protect a natural area often invoke psychological ownership, or a personal, emotional connection to the place. However, in Western cultures, legal ownership is often suggested as a way to preserve natural resources and avoid the “commons problem.” Based on research on human prosocial behavior, we hypothesized that psychological ownership would be a more effective way to preserve natural resources. Using an online U.S. sample (N = 543), we manipulated people's sense of ownership for natural areas, with a fully-factorial design. We confirmed that activating the motives of ownership produced a sense of psychological ownership of the place and “mine-ness,” associated with similar psychological ownership attributes as occurs in other domains (i.e., intimate familiarity, incorporation into the self-identity, investment of time/effort, positive memories and experiences). Legal owners also experienced a sense of mine-ness and felt more control and territoriality over the place, but felt less of a psychological connection and rated the psychological attributes lower. As predicted, psychological ownership increased people's willingness to protect and oppose exploiting natural areas—particularly for self-reported willingness and hours donated to preserve the place. This may explain why legal ownership often fails to reduce environmental exploitation in Western populations, despite fostering a sense of responsibility toward owned resources. Invoking psychological ownership may be a more effective way to encourage environmental protection.

Punishing or helping: The influence of acute stress onthird-party decision-making

In modern society, acute stress has become one of the main risk factors affecting human mental health and quality of life. Stress not only has a profound impact on the brain and cognition, but also affects human prosocial behaviors and social interactions. Acute stress has been implicated in modulating various social behaviors, including trust and empathy. However, it remains unclear how stress influences the third-party altruistic decision, especially in the face of conflicts between altruistic decisions and self-interest. When facing with a violation of justice, people show high probability of self-sacrifice to restore justice, but the optimal decision of the impact of stress on social decision-making in different circumstances is unclear. To address this question, we used a third-party intervention paradigm to assess participants’ choice preferences after exposure to physical stress. In the third-party intervention task, participants could transfer MUs from their endowment to punish a norm violator or help the victim, and they could also leave the MUs to themselves. After the decision-making task was completed, participants were also asked to complete an analogous scenario task, including two crime scenarios: A robbery scenario and a traffic accident scenario. They were asked to put themselves in these situations and make calls as soon as possible based on priority, that is, call 110, the police, (i.e., punish offenders); call 120, the First Aid Center, (i.e., help victims); and call for themselves (i.e., defend their own interests). First, we found that selfish choices focused on the condition of fair offers. Second, compared with the moderate unfair condition, the serious unfair condition increased punishment and help behavior. Additionally, for the trade-off between the two prosocial choices under the condition of moderate unfairness, the participants in the stress group tended to increase the punishment behavior and reduce the help behavior, when compared with the control group. We also found that the increase of punishment behavior was not only reflected in the choice preference, but also in the intensity of punishment. The participants in the stress group punished more, consistent with the “fight or flight” pattern, which is considered to be the typical human response to stress. However, under the serious unfairness condition, there was no significant difference between the stress group and the non-stress group. In the scenario task, although there was no significant difference between the two groups in the three options, the stress group evaluated the accident scene to be more serious. These findings suggest that when the third-party helping and punishment as an optional prosocial behavior, stressed individuals are accustomed to choosing punishment behavior. This study provides evidence and explanations for studying the effects of stress on prosocial behavior.

Empathy or schadenfreude? Social value orientation and affective responses to gambling results

Social value orientation (SVO) refers to the social motivation that guides people to trade off interests between the self and others, which plays an important role in human prosocial behaviors. In this research, three studies were conducted to investigate whether people with high versus low SVO differ in their affective response to winning and losing in a gambling task when the gambler is a stranger (Study 1), when both oneself and strangers are the gamblers and social comparison is involved (Study 2) and when the gambler is a liked or disliked person (Study 3). The results show that when the gambler is a stranger (Study 1) or a liked person (Study 3), people manifest empathy regardless of their level of SVO. When the self is involved (Study 2) or when the target is a disliked person (Study 3), however, people with high SVO manifest empathy-like responses, but people with low SVO manifest schadenfreude. Overall, whether SVO influences affective responses to economic gain and loss depends on the gambling situation or the target person, thus enriching our understandings of humans’ prosocial behaviors.

Neurometabolic and functional connectivity basis of prosocial behavior in early adolescence

Human prosocial behavior (PB) emerges in childhood and matures during adolescence. Previous task-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have reported involvement of the medial prefrontal cortex including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in social cognition in adolescence. However, neurometabolic and functional connectivity (FC) basis of PB in early adolescence remains unclear. Here, we measured GABA levels in the ACC and FC in a subsample (aged 10.5–13.4 years) of a large-scale population-based cohort with MR spectroscopy (MEGA-PRESS) and resting-state fMRI. PB was negatively correlated with GABA levels in the ACC (N = 221), and positively correlated with right ACC-seeded FC with the right precentral gyrus and the bilateral middle and posterior cingulate gyrus (N = 187). Furthermore, GABA concentrations and this FC were negatively correlated, and the FC mediated the association between GABA levels and PB (N = 171). Our results from a minimally biased, large-scale sample provide new insights into the neurometabolic and neurofunctional correlates of prosocial development during early adolescence.

Imágenes en la explicación del comportamiento prosocial humano y su evolución

En este texto rastreamos las imágenes implícitas en la explicación del comportamiento prosocial humano y su evolución, que han direccionado por más de un siglo y medio el pensamiento evolutivo y han generado una influencia dramática en la manera en que se estudia y evalúa el conocimiento de organismos unicelulares, multicelulares, colonias y sociedades. Con el trabajo historiográfico de identificar las imágenes de la naturaleza y las imágenes de la ciencia en las explicaciones sobre la evolución de la cooperación y el altruismo se logra, en parte, reconstruir la actividad científica y entender la dinámica de las teorías imperantes, y su incidencia en el surgimiento y desarrollo de explicaciones alternas a la ortodoxia como la selección de grupo.

Worth the wait: Children trade off delay and reward in self- and other-benefiting decisions.

Human prosocial behaviors are supported by early-emerging psychological processes that detect and fulfill the needs of others. However, little is known about the mechanisms that enable children to deliver benefits to others at costs to the self, which requires weighing other-regarding and self-serving preferences. We used an intertemporal choice paradigm to systematically study and compare these behaviors in 5-year-old children. Our results show that other-benefiting and self-benefiting behavior share a common decision-making process that integrates delay and reward. Specifically, we found that children sought to minimize delay and maximize reward, and traded off delays against rewards, regardless of whether these rewards were for the children themselves or another child. However, we found that children were more willing to invest their time to benefit themselves than someone else. Together, these findings show that from childhood, other- and self-serving decisions are supported by a general mechanism that flexibly integrates information about the magnitude of rewards, and the opportunity costs of pursuing them. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/r8S0DGe7f8Q.

Social Behavior: Bonobos Are Nice but Prefer Mean Guys

Human infants prefer to interact with prosocial individuals. Bonobos, our close relatives, however, prefer antisocial individuals, perhaps due to a preference for social dominance. Human prosocial behavior may be due to unique tendencies to positively evaluate prosocial others.

Doing Good vs. Avoiding Bad in Prosocial Choice: A Refined Test and Extension of the Morality Preference Hypothesis

Prosociality is fundamental to human social life, and, accordingly, much research has attempted to explain human prosocial behavior. Capraro and Rand (Judgment and Decision Making, 13, 99-111, 2018) recently provided experimental evidence that prosociality in anonymous, one-shot interactions (such as Prisoner’s Dilemma and Dictator Game experiments) is not driven by outcome-based social preferences – as classically assumed – but by a generalized morality preference for “doing the right thing”. Here we argue that the key experiments reported in Capraro and Rand (2018) comprise prominent methodological confounds and open questions that bear on influential psychological theory. Specifically, their design confounds: (i) preferences for efficiency with self-interest; and (ii) preferences for action with preferences for morality. Furthermore, their design fails to dissociate the preference to do “good” from the preference to avoid doing “bad”. We thus designed and conducted a preregistered, refined and extended test of the morality preference hypothesis (N=801). Consistent with this hypothesis, our findings indicate that prosociality in the anonymous, one-shot Dictator Game is driven by preferences for doing the morally right thing. Inconsistent with influential psychological theory, however, our results suggest the preference to do “good” was as potent as the preference to avoid doing “bad” in this case.

Evolution of cooperation under social pressure in multiplex networks.

In this work, we aim to contribute to the understanding of human prosocial behavior by studying the influence that a particular form of social pressure, "being watched," has on the evolution of cooperative behavior. We study how cooperation emerges in multiplex complex topologies by analyzing a particular bidirectionally coupled dynamics on top of a two-layer multiplex network (duplex). The coupled dynamics appears between the prisoner's dilemma game in a network and a threshold cascade model in the other. The threshold model is intended to abstract the behavior of a network of vigilant nodes that impose the pressure of being observed altering hence the temptation to defect of the dilemma. Cooperation or defection in the game also affects the state of a node of being vigilant. We analyze these processes on different duplex networks structures and assess the influence of the topology, average degree and correlated multiplexity, on the outcome of cooperation. Interestingly, we find that the social pressure of vigilance may impact cooperation positively or negatively, depending on the duplex structure, specifically the degree correlations between layers is determinant. Our results give further quantitative insights in the promotion of cooperation under social pressure.

Prosocial Behavior in Infancy: The Role of Socialization

AbstractHuman prosocial behavior emerges in the 2nd year of life, posing challenging questions about mechanism. An increasingly common claim is that prosocial behavior in the first 3 years of life is neither a result of nor affected by socialization. In this article, we argue that early socialization plays a critical role in the developmental origins of prosocial behavior. To support this argument, we highlight conceptual perspectives and empirical evidence for influences of socialization from parents' reports, direct observation, and experimental studies. We conclude that progress in explaining the ontogenetic origins of human prosocial behavior depends on more fully specifying mechanisms of socialization in infancy as well as what and how human infants learn from their social experiences.

Here you are!—Selective and active food sharing within and between groups in captive Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii)

A variety of studies on food sharing elucidate both its ultimate and proximate functions in non-human primates, especially in Pan. For chimpanzees, food sharing serves as a means to strengthen social relationships. In contrast, little is known about food sharing in orangutans, since their semi-solitary lifestyle barely provides an opportunity to share food outside of the mother-offspring context. However, recent long-term studies suggest that social bonding might play a more important role for orangutans than previously assumed. In zoos, orangutans are often kept in groups and seem to cope with group living quite well. If captive orangutans use food sharing as a social tool, they are expected to share food frequently and selectively with close social partners and to engage frequently in active transfers. We provided three orangutan groups with monopolizable food and recorded all dyadic food-related interactions. For each dyad, we determined the relationship quality and tested whether it predicts food sharing. We found that, in support of our predictions, almost two thirds of interactions involving food resulted in sharing and that the probability for an individual to share food with a particular partner increased with the strength of their relationship. Exceeding our expectations, food sharing occurred even between individuals from two neighboring groups. Finally, a comparison with studies on captive chimpanzees revealed a significantly higher proportion of active transfers for orangutans suggesting species-specific sharing psychologies. Sharing of food is a universal prosocial behavior in humans. Recent research aims to elucidate its adaptive functions and proximate mechanisms by comparison with other species, especially non-human primates, in natural and captive settings. For bonobos and chimpanzees, our closest relatives, the quality of social relationships was revealed to be important for food sharing. In contrast, there is very limited knowledge on food sharing in orangutans, our most distant and semi-solitary living hominid relatives. This study provides the first systematic investigation of food-sharing patterns and the role of relationship quality in captive orangutans. The results demonstrate that group-living orangutans share frequently and selectively with close associates and even more actively than found for chimpanzees. These findings add further evidence supporting the hypothesis that social bonding played a role in the evolution of human prosocial behavior.

Dopamine Modulates Egalitarian Behavior in Humans

Egalitarian motives form a powerful force in promoting prosocial behavior and enabling large-scale cooperation in the human species [1]. At the neural level, there is substantial, albeit correlational, evidence suggesting a link between dopamine and such behavior [2, 3]. However, important questions remain about the specific role of dopamine in setting or modulating behavioral sensitivity to prosocial concerns. Here, using a combination of pharmacological tools and economic games, we provide critical evidence for a causal involvement of dopamine in human egalitarian tendencies. Specifically, using the brain penetrant catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) inhibitor tolcapone [4, 5], we investigated the causal relationship between dopaminergic mechanisms and two prosocial concerns at the core of a number of widely used economic games: (1) the extent to which individuals directly value the material payoffs of others, i.e., generosity, and (2) the extent to which they are averse to differences between their own payoffs and those of others, i.e., inequity. We found that dopaminergic augmentation via COMT inhibition increased egalitarian tendencies in participants who played an extended version of the dictator game [6]. Strikingly, computational modeling of choice behavior [7] revealed that tolcapone exerted selective effects on inequity aversion, and not on other computational components such as the extent to which individuals directly value the material payoffs of others. Together, these data shed light on the causal relationship between neurochemical systems and human prosocial behavior and have potential implications for our understanding of the complex array of social impairments accompanying neuropsychiatric disorders involving dopaminergic dysregulation.