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Why do we care for others: bridging evolutionary biology, neuroscience and social psychology

Natural selection has fine-tuned the mechanisms that serve the specific demands of each species’ ecology, and social behaviors are best understood in the context of evolution. Evolutionary altruism makes no assumptions about motivations or intentions. It considers only effects. It refers to behavior that benefits the recipient at a cost to the actor (de Waal, 1996).

Like in other species, emotions and feelings may be shared between individuals, but humans are also able to intentionally “feel for” and act on behalf of other people whose experiences may differ greatly from their own. This phenomenon, called empathic concern or sympathy, is often associated with prosocial behaviors such as helping kin, and has been considered as a chief enabling process for altruism. According to Wilson (1988), empathic helping behavior has evolved because of its contribution to genetic fitness (kin selection). Altruistic behavior arose to help family members and those inclined to return the favor (Hamilton, 1964). Ultimate accounts of altruistic behavior stress return-benefits. In humans and other mammals, an impulse to care for offspring is almost certainly genetically hard-wired. It is far less clear that an impulse to care for more remote kin, and similar non-kin is genetically hard-wired. The emergence of altruism, of empathizing with and caring for those who are not kin is thus not easily explained within the framework of neo-Darwinian theories of natural selection. Social learning explanations of kinship patterns in human helping behavior are thus highly plausible.

I will make it apparent that a complete understanding of altruism and empathy requires attention to be paid to multiple levels of analysis, from cultural, behavioral, psychological, physiological and molecular. This key idea is that each level constraints and can be articulated with the other. I will argue that empathy and altruism are functionally linked, with their roots in the mammalian evolution of parental care. In human, emotional connectedness combined with metacognition and increased self-other distinction account for complex forms of altruistic behavior.

Lectures outline:
- What do we mean by altruism
- The evolution of altruism: distinguishing proximate vs. ultimate causes of behavior
- Approach vs. avoidance: two essential aspects of survival behavior
- Social engagement and the autonomic nervous system
- The role of two neuropetides, prolactin and oxytocin in social behavior
- The empathy-altruism hypothesis
- The anatomy of empathy
- Attachment security and proscocial behavior
- Helping makes us feel good: behavioral and neurophysiological evidence
- What aspects of altruism are specific to humans

Readings
Batson, C.D., et al. (1991). Empathic joy and the empathy-altruism hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 413-426.
Carter, S.C., Harris, J., & Porges, S.W. (2008). Neural and Evolutionary Perspectives on Empathy. In: J. Decety and W. Ickes, The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. Cambridge: MIT press.
Decety, J., & Lamm, C. (2006). Human empathy through the lens of social neuroscience. The Scientific World Journal, 6, 1146–1163.
de Waal, F.B.M. (1996). Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hamilton, W.D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behavior. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 1-52.
Porges, S.W. (2001). The polyvagal theory: phylogenetic substrates of a social nervous system. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 42, 123-146.
Trivers, R.L. (2002). Natural Selection and Social Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wilson, E.O. (2005). Kin selection as the key to altruism: Its rise and fall. Social Research, 72, 159-166.

Course syllabus available on Chalk