How the threat of violence can make us nice to each other

Under threat of violence, we have a natural instinct to stick together. Researchers say this basic urge explains their seemingly odd observation that feeling threatened, rather than making people bristle, can actually increase their agreeableness.

Andrew White and his colleagues conducted five studies in all. First off, they analysed data from 54 nations around the world showing that the higher a country's spend on their military (a proxy for feeling threatened), the higher their citizens' average score on the personality dimension of agreeableness. The association held even after controlling for a host of potential confounds including a nation's wealth and population density.

Second, White's team surveyed 54 undergrads and found that those who generally felt more threatened in life also tended to report being more agreeable and extravert (scores on conscientiousness, openness to experience and neuroticism were not associated with feeling threatened).

Next, the researchers prompted some of a new group of participants to feel threatened by having them read a story about an intruder entering their house. The remaining participants acted as controls and read a story about losing keys. The threatened participants scored higher in agreeableness (not other traits), but only when they thought about their personality in the context of how they act with people they know well. Moreover, this apparent effect of threat on agreeableness was larger for people who'd grown up in a big family.

Taken together these initial findings support the idea that we have an evolved adaptive response to threat of violence that leads us to affiliate to family and friends, especially if we grow up in a context where this would be useful. This idea complements previous research that suggests we have an evolved instinct to avoid other people when we're under threat of contamination.

A fourth study took things further by testing real-world behaviour. Two kinds of poster were pinned up around campus - one was a threatening reminder about the issue of guns on campus and it featured a pistol pointing out at the reader; the other was about construction on campus. Next to these posters were one of two fund-raising requests, either framed as being for local students or for an out-group of Ethiopian students. The fund-raising notices had pull-off tabs for people to take contact details away. The result here - the gun poster increased students' interest in helping their fellow students, but not outsiders.

Finally, the researchers returned to international data and found that countries that spent more on their military tended to have citizens who score more highly in trusting their family and neighbours, and lower in trusting members of other religions.

"These findings help develop a deeper understanding of one of the ways in which humans respond to threats of violence from others," the researchers said. "Although disagreeableness and mistrust may often seem to arise from violence, it is not always the case. Sometimes nasty breeds nice."

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White, A., Kenrick, D., Li, Y., Mortensen, C., Neuberg, S., and Cohen, A. (2012). When nasty breeds nice: Threats of violence amplify agreeableness at national, individual, and situational levels. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103 (4), 622-634 DOI: 10.1037/a0029140

--Further reading--
Reminder of disease primes the body and mind to repel other people.

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When not to pat someone on the shoulder

Physical touch can be surprisingly persuasive. From diners giving larger tips to waiters who touch them, to people being more helpful to strangers who pat them lightly on the arm, the literature has tended to paint a positive picture of the emotional influence of social touch. But now a study out of Belgium has documented what you might call the dark side of social touching. This isn't about unwanted groping, which is always inappropriate. It's about the fact that context is everything for light social touches, with the new research showing that even a friendly pat on the shoulder can have an adverse effect if it's performed in the wrong situation.

Jeroen Camps and his colleagues had 74 student participants perform a maze challenge in a race against a partner. The outcome was fixed so the participant won by a tiny margin, and then, as the pair left the room, the partner (actually a male or female stooge planted by the researchers) patted the participant on the shoulder lightly three times, smiled gently and wished them good luck for the next task. For participants in the control condition, all this was the same but without the shoulder patting. Next, the participants and their partner went to another room and completed "the dictator game", a simple economic game that involved the participant choosing how many movie-prize credits to share with their partner.

The revealing finding was that participants who'd been patted on the shoulder shared fewer credits with their partner, suggesting that touch can backfire when it's performed in a competitive context, perhaps because it's interpreted as a gesture of dominance. Interestingly, there was no link between participants' awareness of whether they'd been touched and their sharing behaviour; participants who remembered the touch rated it as neutral; and the partner wasn't rated as more unpleasant in the touch condition. All of which suggests the adverse effect of touch on later cooperation was probably non-conscious.

A second study was similar but this time participants and their partner (another stooge, always female) either competed against each other on a puzzle or they cooperated. Again, afterwards, the partner wished them luck, smiled, and either did or didn't pat them on the shoulder at the end, before they both moved to another room to play the dictator game. The results were clear - in a competitive context, touched participants subsequently shared fewer movie-prize credits with their partner, compared with those participants who weren't touched. By contrast, in the cooperative context, touched participants went on to be more generous with their partner, as compared with participants who weren't touched.

"Despite what some people might think, touching someone else may thus not always have desirable social consequences," the researchers said. "A simple tap on the shoulder, even with the best intent, will do nothing but harm when used in the wrong place at the wrong time."

A limitation of the research is the use of a shoulder pat. It could be argued that this is a form of touch with specific connotations, depending on the context. For instance, maybe it is construed as condescending in a competitive situation. By contrast, a lot of the earlier research on the benefits of touch have tended to use a simple, light touch on the arm, which is perhaps a more neutral gesture.

What do you think? Are there any instances when you've been touched lightly (in a non-sexual way) and it's irritated you? Or times that it's endeared you to the toucher? Was it the context that made the difference?

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Camps, J., Tuteleers, C., Stouten, J., and Nelissen, J. (2012). A situational touch: How touch affects people's decision behaviour. Social Influence, 1-14 DOI: 10.1080/15534510.2012.719479

--Further reading--
The power of a light touch on the arm
Why is a touch on the arm so persuasive?

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How to reverse the Bystander Effect

You see a shopper trip over in a busy street. Someone else can help. That's what you tell your conscience. This is the Bystander Effect in action - the dilution of our sense of responsibility in the presence of other people - and it's been demonstrated in numerous studies over many years.

But life is complicated and psychologists have begun looking at the circumstances that can nullify or even reverse the effect. For a new paper, Marco van Bommel and his team tested the idea that the presence of others could in fact increase our proclivity for helping if we're nudged into a self-aware mindset and thereby reminded of our social reputation.

Two experiments were conducted using an online chat room for people with extreme emotional problems. Eighty-six students were logged into the forum and shown five messages posted by troubled forum users - for example, one was written by a person who wanted to commit suicide. The participants were told they could write a reply if they wanted, but it was entirely up to them.

In the baseline condition, each participant could see his or her name in the top left-hand side of the screen alongside other users' names. A counter also told them if the forum was quiet, with just one other person logged-in, or if it was busy, with 30 others online.

This basic arrangement replicated the classic Bystander Effect - participants were less likely to post replies when there were more people logged into the forum. However, when the researchers cued self-awareness by highlighting the participant's name in red on the screen, the Bystander Effect was reversed - they now posted more replies when the forum was busy compared with when it was quiet.

A second study built on these findings, but this time self-awareness was cued by the presence, or not, of a web-cam on the computer. Over one hundred participants took part. For those in the web-cam condition, their attention was drawn to the device by having them check that its LED indicator light was on, although they were told that the camera wouldn't be used until a later task. In the absence of a web-cam, the Bystander Effect was again replicated - participants on a busy forum, compared to a quiet forum, posted fewer replies to users in need. By contrast, participants cued to be self-aware by the presence of a web-cam actually wrote more replies when the forum was busy, compared with when it was quiet.

"The Bystander Effect can be reversed by means of cues that raise public self-awareness in social settings," the researchers said.

van Bommel and his team acknowledged the limitations of using an online arrangement for testing their ideas, but they also defended its relevance to modern life, in which our social activities are increasingly taking place online. Their results also have interesting implications for the debate around the proliferation of security cameras in public places. "While certain forms of self-awareness may not always be welcomed by people, the present findings do underscore their power to promote helping one another," the researchers said.
 _________________________________

  Marco van Bommel, Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Henk Elffers, and Paul A.M. Van Langea (2012). Be aware to care: Public self-awareness leads to a reversal of the bystander effect. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.02.011

Further reading: The responsive bystander.
Meta-analysis of the Bystander Effect.
The truth behind the story of Kitty Genovese and the bystander effect

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Mention of the word "loving" doubles charitable donations

"Love begets love." Proverb

French researchers say that adding the text "donating=loving" to a charitable collection box almost doubled the amount of money they raised.

Nicolas Guéguen and Lubomir Lamy placed opaque collection boxes in 14 bakeries in Brittany for two weeks. All the boxes featured the following text in French: "Women students in business trying to organise a humanitarian action in Togo. We are relying on your support", together with a picture of a young African woman with an infant in her arms. Some boxes had this additional text in French just below the money slot: "DONATING=LOVING"; others had the text "DONATING=HELPING"; whilst others had no further text below the slot. Different box types were placed in different bakeries on different days and the amount of money collected each day was recorded.

The text on the donation boxes made a profound difference. On average, almost twice as much money was raised daily in boxes with the "donating=loving" text, as compared with the "donating=helping" boxes and the boxes with no additional text (€1.04 per day vs. €0.62 and €0.54; the effect size was d=2.09). "Given the high effect-size ... we can conclude that evoking love is a powerful technique to enhance people's altruistic behaviour," the researchers said. In contrast, the difference in the amount of money left in "donating=helping" boxes and boxes without additional text was not statistically significant.

Guéguen and Lamy think that the word "loving" acts as a prime, activating related concepts such as compassion, support and solidarity, and thereby encourages behaviour consistent with those ideas. Such an explanation would fit the wider literature showing how our motivations and attitudes can be influenced by words and objects without us realising it. For example, one previous study showed how exposure to ageing-related words like "retired" led participants to walk away more slowly after an experiment. Other research found a poster of a pair of eyes on a wall led to greater use of an honesty box in a university canteen. Previous research by Guéguen and Lamy has further shown how asking a male passerby for directions to "Saint Valentine Street" as opposed to "Saint Martin Street" makes them subsequently more likely to help a nearby woman who's had her phone stolen, presumably because of the automatic activation of romance-related concepts.

Why should the text "donating=helping" not have had a similar beneficial effect on giving behaviour? Guéguen and Lamy think this might be due to a compensatory counter-reaction against words that are perceived as too much like a command. Indeed, in French, the verb "donner" to donate is also used to order someone to do something. However, why this reactance should have happened with "donating=helping" and not with "donating=loving" isn't entirely clear. Another reason for the impotence of the word "helping", the researchers said, is its redundancy - it was really just repeating the  plea for support in the main text.

The measure of giving was crude, which is a weakness of the study. We don't know if the "donating=loving" text led more people to donate, or to more generous giving among those people who donated.

"Despite the shortcomings of our study, the results will no doubt be of interest to those involved in philanthropic planning and support assessment in the aresas of corporate giving, nonprofit organisations, charitable foundations, and grants," the researchers said. "Conducted in a field setting, the experiment demonstrates how a simple, low-cost intervention can increase charitable giving."
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Guéguen, N., and Lamy, L. (2011). The effect of the word “love” on compliance to a request for humanitarian aid: An evaluation in a field setting. Social Influence, 6 (4), 249-258 DOI: 10.1080/15534510.2011.627771

Previously on the Research Digest: How Michael Jackson's Heal The World really could help heal the world.

Other Digest posts related to altruism.

Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

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Empathy breeds altruism, unless a person feels they have low status. A brain-scan study with a lesson for riot-hit England

In a defining image of the recent English riots, a man helped an injured youngster to his feet while an accomplice stole from the same victim's bag. This sheer lack of empathy on the part of the perpetrators has shaken observers to their core. How could humans display such a lack of altruism toward their fellow man?

A possible clue comes from a new brain imaging study that has examined links between the neural correlates of empathy, an act of altruism, and participants' subjective sense of their social status. Among people who feel they have low status, the study finds, increased neural markers of empathy are actually related to reduced altruism. The researchers surmised this is because any feelings of empathy are quashed by a grudging sense of low status. This could be a kind of defence mechanism whereby self-interest dominates over empathy for others. A possible lesson is that by reversing people's feelings of low status, through educational opportunities and other interventions, we all gain, by reinstating the usual link between empathy and altruism.

Yina Ma and her team at Peking University scanned the brains of 33 student participants while they watched numerous video clips of people being pricked painfully in the face or hand by a needle, or touched on those same parts by a cotton bud (referred to as a Q-tip in the US). Extra activity in the brain, in response to the needle clips versus cotton bud clips, was taken to be a neural marker for empathy (seeing someone else in pain is known to trigger activity in the pain matrix of one's own brain).

The participants also rated their own empathy levels and their subjective sense of their socio-economic status. They were shown a ladder with ten rungs, with the top rung representing people with the best jobs and education and most money; participants then indicated which rung they saw themselves as occupying. Although the participants were students at the same university they varied in their subjective sense of status. Finally, the participants were left alone in a room with an anonymous donation box, labelled as raising money to help impoverished patients with cataracts.

Among patients who considered themselves privileged in terms of socio-economic status, there was a positive relationship between empathy and altruism. The more neural signs of empathy they displayed in the scanner (based on extra activity in the left somatosensory cortex when viewing needle clips), the more empathy they said they had, and the more money they chose to donate to charity. By contrast, among participants who considered themselves lower in socio-economic status, the opposite pattern was observed. The greater their empathy-related brain activity in the scanner (based on extra right somatosensory cortex and inferior frontal cortex activity in response to needle clips), the less empathy they said they had, and the less money they chose to donate to charity. The researchers said the empathy-related inferior frontal cortex activity observed in these participants could be a sign of inhibitory processes quashing the emotional impact of seeing another person in pain.

Note, there was no absolute difference in the amount of money donated by participants who self-identified as low or high socio-economic status. The finding is more subtle and suggests empathy has a differential effect on our altruistic behaviour depending on how we see our standing in the world.

"Our findings have significant implications to the social domain," the researchers said, "in that, besides improving objective socio-economic status, raising subjective socio-economic status via education may possibly manifold altruistic behaviours in human society."

The findings add to a complex literature that suggests lower socio-economic status is sometimes associated with more empathy and altruism, but sometimes associated with reduced empathy.
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Ma, Y., Wang, C., and Han, S. (2011). Neural responses to perceived pain in others predict real-life monetary donations in different socioeconomic contexts. NeuroImage, 57 (3), 1273-1280 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.05.003

This post was written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

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How Michael Jackson's Heal The World really could help heal the world

"Heal The World

Make It A Better Place

For You And For Me

And The Entire Human Race"

So much research has looked at the effects of violent music lyrics and video-games on people's aggressiveness, but what about the effects of media with a positive message? Can songs like Michael Jackson's Heal the World and Bob Sinclair's Love Generation change people's behaviour for the better? Tobias Greitemeyer says this side of the media-behaviour equation has been neglected before now, but in a series of five studies conducted in Germany and the UK he's shown that 'pro-social' music reduces people's aggression. What's more, he's demonstrated that it appears to do so through its effect on mood and emotion rather than via changes to thoughts and cognition.

Greitemeyer's general approach was to have half his participants listen to a few pro-social songs, the others listen to neutral songs, and then all of them complete various questionnaires or tasks, depending on the specific experiment.

Further examples of pro-social songs used in the experiments include Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie's We Are The World (among the biggest selling singles of all time) and U2's Vertigo. Among the neutral songs used were Michael Jackson's On The Line and Bob Sinclair's Rock This Party. Greitemeyer deliberately chose some pro-social and neutral songs by the same artists so as to control for the effects of the actual singer and general style.

Participants who listened to pro-social songs subsequently showed reduced aggressive cognitions - for example they were less likely to complete ambiguous word stems (e.g. 'schla_' in German) with violent endings (e.g. 'schlagen', to hit), choosing instead more peaceful endings (e.g. 'schlafen' to sleep). They also exhibited reduced aggressive mood, being less likely to say they felt angry or irritated.

Most importantly, participants who listened to Heal the World and other pro-social songs were less likely than participants who listened to neutral music to actually be aggressive. This was tested indirectly by having participants evaluate a job candidate. Apparently this is a common measure in the aggression field, with harsh judgements being taken as a sign of indirect aggression. Aggressive behaviour was tested directly in another experiment by giving participants the chance to choose how much chilli sauce another student would have to eat, having heard that he or she hated chilli. This student had earlier given the participants an unfair essay evaluation so there was a temptation to be aggressive.

In the final experiment, when Greitemeyer looked to see whether it was cognitions or mood that mediated the effect of pro-social songs on aggressive behaviour, he found it was mood or 'affect' that was key. Intriguingly, this is the opposite to what's been found for video-games, in which case it's changes to cognitions, not affect, that mediates the influence, for better or worse, of violent or pro-social games on subsequent aggression.

'Music exposure is omnipresent in our daily life,' Greitemeyer concluded. 'Thus, the present findings are not only of theoretical significance, but have important practical implications as well, in suggesting that depending on the context of the song lyrics music exposure may reduce aggressive encounters.'
_________________________________

Greitemeyer, T. (2011). Exposure to music with prosocial lyrics reduces aggression: First evidence and test of the underlying mechanism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47 (1), 28-36 DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.08.005

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Why we tip and how to get a bigger tip

Stats from the USA suggest that $40 billion is spent on tips every year. Yet from the traditional economic perspective, which sees us as rational agents operating in our own interest, tipping waiters, barbers, taxi drivers and other service workers is crazy. You don't have to so why do you? That's if you do. Not everyone does. In an effort to explore our motivations for tipping, Stephen Saunders and Michael Lynn sent out 29 fieldworkers to survey 530 South African citizens after they'd had an encounter with a car guard. These unpaid workers are a common sight in South Africa at shopping centres, hospitals and schools. They help with parking, protect the car from vandalism and assist drivers with loading shopping and luggage.

One explanation for why we tip is that we're trying to encourage good service in the future. However, Saunders and Lynn found no evidence that people who used a car guard more were more likely to tip, as you'd expect if this were their true motive. By contrast, perceived service quality was associated with both the likelihood of giving a tip and the amount tipped, thus suggesting that participants were using tipping as a form of reward. Similarly, those who said they thought it was important to help others in need tended to tip more (although they weren't any more likely to tip), suggesting altruism was another motive. Finally, social norms were a key factor - participants who said their friends and relatives thought it was important to tip were more likely to tip themselves, especially if there were more people with them at the time of questioning. Size of tip was not associated with this factor, perhaps because it's only the act of tipping that's visible to others, rather than the amount tipped.

'Hopefully this paper will encourage more economists to look beyond the apparent irrationality of tipping and to study it from both a behavioural economics and psychological perspective,' the researchers said.

In a separate study, based in Utah, John Seiter and Harry Weger tested the effects of ingratiation on food servers' tips. They had two waiters and two waitresses go about their usual duties but with a twist: for half the parties they served they were instructed to compliment the customers, telling them that they'd made an excellent choice in what they'd ordered. Counting the tips received from 348 dinner parties showed that complimenting customers on making a shrewd order led to tips that were three per cent greater on average than when no compliment was made - a statistically significant boost.

'A roughly 3 per cent increase may seem a small amount,' the researchers said, '[but] an additional $1 to $5 per shift could translate into hundreds of dollars per year for each food server.'

More in-depth analysis showed that complimenting customers on their order only led to bigger tips for parties of two to three people. It made to no difference with a party of four and actually led to smaller tips for groups larger than this (the research involved parties of up to seven). It also turned out that one of the waiting staff had received smaller tips after complimenting customers (even though the group average was for larger tips in this condition). Seiter and Weger surmised this could be because she didn't come across as sincere.

This study builds on earlier research showing that use of mimicry, light touches on customers' shoulders, happy faces on the bill and squatting to customers' eye level can all help provoke larger tips.
_________________________________

Saunders, S., & Lynn, M. (2010). Why tip? An empirical test of motivations for tipping car guards. Journal of Economic Psychology, 31(1), 106-113 DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2009.11.007

Seiter, J., & Weger, Jr., H. (2010). The Effect of Generalized Compliments, Sex of Server, and Size of Dining Party on Tipping Behavior in Restaurants. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40 (1), 1-12 DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2009.00560.x

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How to increase altruism in toddlers

Surely one of the most charming sights is of an adult struggling to reach an object, only for a toddler to pick up that object and hand it to the adult, as research has shown they so often will. Psychologists think such ingrained altruism has evolved as a consequence of our species' dependence on group living for survival. Supporting this account, Harriet Over and Malinda Carpenter have shown that subtle exposure to the sight of two apparently companionable dolls, stood side by side, is enough to increase the likelihood that an 18-month-old will help an adult pick up some dropped sticks.

Sixty 18-month-old infants were shown eight photos of household objects, such as teapots, books or shoes. Crucially, infants were divided into four groups, with each group shown one of four versions of these photos. One "affiliated" version featured in the background two dolls standing together side by side; another version featured a doll in the background on its own; the third version featured two dolls facing away from each other; and the final version merely had toy bricks in the background.

After they'd been shown these photos, another experimenter walked over to the infants and dropped a bundle of sticks on route. Amazingly, the infants who'd seen the photos with the companionable dolls in the background were three times as likely as the other infants to help the experimenter by spontaneously picking up one or more sticks and handing it to the experimenter.

Further analysis showed it's not that the infants who'd seen the photos with companionable dolls were caused to be in a better mood, nor that they spent longer looking at the photos, than the other infants. Rather, according to the researchers, "the connections between affiliation to the group and prosocial behaviour are ... so fundamental that, even in infancy, a mere hint of affiliation is sufficient to increase helping."

Over and Carpenter said their finding has important implications for research - paving the way for future investigations of other non-verbal social influences on infants' behaviour - and also for real life. "Our data suggest that surprisingly subtle changes to our social environment may promote prosocial behaviour in our children."
_________________________________

Over, H., & Carpenter, M. (2009). Eighteen-Month-Old Infants Show Increased Helping Following Priming With Affiliation. Psychological Science, 20 (10), 1189-1193 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02419.x

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Was altruism borne out of a universal willingness to punish?

If human nature has been shaped entirely by evolutionary pressures, then why are so many people prepared to help complete strangers? Surely those ancestors of ours with an altruistic bent would have been wiped out by the more ruthless and self-serving among our forebears. Joseph Henrich and colleagues believe the answer lies, somewhat paradoxically, in the universal human willingness to punish unfair behaviour.

Henrich’s team used three economic games involving real money to test the behaviour of 1762 participants from 15 different societies on five continents. Across the world, from the Samburu in Kenya to the Sursurunga in Papua New Guinea, they found people playing anonymously were willing to sacrifice their own winnings to punish a player who was unfair in the way they shared money with themselves or a third party.

Willingness to punish varied across the cultures, but in every society, less equal sharing was more likely to be punished. And crucially, those societies that showed the greatest willingness to punish unfair behaviour also turned out to be the most altruistic, as judged by their performance in the games. “You evolve into a more cooperative being if you grow up in a world where there are punishers” Joseph Henrich told Science.

However, whilst welcoming the cross-cultural nature of the study design, and acknowledging the contribution it makes to the debate on altruism, evolutionary psychologist John Tooby told Science that he was wary of reading too much into these anonymous games – “…in ancestral societies, people lived in small groups where everybody knew each other. In that environment, anonymous punitive interactions would have been rare to nonexistent, so there would have been no selection to adapt to such situations”.
__________________________________

Henrich, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Cardenas, J.C., Gurven, M., Gwako, E., Henrich, N., Lesorogol, C., Marlowe, F., Tracer, D. & Ziker, J. (2006). Costly punishment across societies. Science, 312, 1767-1770.

Supplementary material on the methodology.

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Hey girls: Science helps people!

The story of women’s under representation in science begins at school where fewer girls than boys choose to pursue science, especially physics. According to Erica Weisgram and Rebecca Bigler, the secret to enticing more girls into science could be to show them that science helps people, and that it contributes to the overall well-being of society. But the hard part is finding an effective way to convince them of that.

Weisgram and Bigler assessed hundreds of girls before and after they completed a programme in America called ‘Expanding Your Horizons’ that’s designed to increase girls’ interest in science.

The programme involved the girls attending four one-hour sessions on different scientific subjects such as earth science and engineering. The sessions were all presented by a female scientist and involved hands-on activities. Half the girls went on a special version of the programme in which the presenters took extra care to emphasis how their work as a scientist helps people and society.

After the programme, the girls who believed in the altruistic value of science also tended to report having more interest in it, to believe it was more important, and they had stronger belief in their own scientific ability. But the bad news was twofold: firstly, the girls who attended the special version of the course emphasising altruism were no more likely to believe in the altruistic value of science, so in that sense it failed. Secondly, although the course did increase the girls’ interest in science overall, their belief that science is equally appropriate for men and women actually dropped, perhaps because the exclusive use of female presenters focused the girls’ attention on the need for women in science.

“To encourage more women to enter scientific fields, public advertising campaigns, vocational counselling programmes, and educational materials might usefully highlight the ways in which science fulfils individuals’ altruistic values”, the researchers said.
___________________________________

Weisgram, E.S. & Bigler, R.S. (2006). Girls and science careers: The role of altruistic values and attitudes about scientific tasks. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 27, 326-348.

Link to previous, related Digest item.

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Chimps and toddlers lend a helping hand

It’s been argued that only humans display truly altruistic behaviour, but now, under laboratory conditions, Michael Tomasello and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology have observed altruistic behaviour by chimpanzees towards a human experimenter, suggesting we’re not so unique after all. They’ve also observed surprising degrees of altruistic helping by 18-month old children.

Three young chimpanzees were observed helping a human experimenter reach items she’d dropped or couldn’t reach. They helped without verbal prompting, training or any form of reward or punishment (see movie). However, they didn’t help when the experimenter’s needs were more complicated – for example they didn’t open the doors to a cabinet when she had her hands full.

In a related study, Tomasello’s group also observed chimps letting another chimp in from an adjacent room when they needed help reaching a food platform, and that given a choice, they chose the more able chimp from two potential collaborators (see movie). “The implication is that human forms of collaboration are built on a foundation of evolutionary precursors that are present in chimpanzees and a variety of other primate species”, the researchers said.

Tomasello found the altruism shown by 18-month old infants was even more extensive – they helped a researcher reach things he’d dropped but also did things like open a cabinet door so he could place books inside (see movie). Again this behaviour was observed without any verbal requests for help or any reward or praise. And importantly, the infants (and chimps) rarely helped in control conditions – for example, if the researcher deliberately threw something on the floor, or clearly intended to place books on top of the cabinet rather than inside.

“Children and chimpanzees are both willing to help, but they appear to differ in their ability to interpret the other's need for help in different situations," the researchers said.

The observed altruism in chimpanzees appears to contradict an earlier study that showed chimps tended not to share food with others when given the opportunity at no cost to themselves. However, Tomasello and colleagues suggest that study may not have used ideal conditions to study altruism because chimps are notoriously competitive with each other when it comes to food.
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Warneken, F. & Tomasello, M. (2006). Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees. Science, 311, 1301-1302.
Melis, A.P., Hare, B., Tomasello, M. (2006). Chimpanzees recruit the best collaborators.Science, 311, 1297-1300.

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