UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX
Psychology Department
ALTRUISM AND HELPING
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CARING
ABOUT AND FOR OTHERS
(C8014)
3rd Year Option (Level 6, 15 Credits)
Autumn Term/Teaching Block 1, 2013
Module Convenor & Tutor: Tom Farsides
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. (Ayn Rand)
He who does not live in some degree for others, hardly lives for himself. (Montaigne)
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. (Albert Einstein)
Always do right -- this will gratify some and astonish the rest. (Mark Twain)
Essential information
This module seeks to foster understanding of altruism defined as (cognitive, emotional, or
physical expression of) humans' concern for the positive welfare of others.
Lecture
A 1-hour lecture on Tuesday 24 September, 11-12 (Week 1), Shawcross AS 02.
Event
A 1-hour event on Tuesday 22 October, 11-12 (Week 5), Shawcross AS 01.
Seminars
One 2-hour seminar in Weeks 2 – 12 (but not in Week 5). Please see Sussex Direct for
venues and times.
Timetable
Week 1 (19/09 – 25/09): Lecture: All about altruism (No seminar.)
Week 2 (26/09 – 02/10): Academic altruism
Week 3 (03/10 – 09/10): Real world altruism
Week 4 (10/10 – 16/10): Conception and measurement
Week 5 (17/10 – 23-10): Event. (No seminar.)
Week 6 (24-10 – 30/10): Biology
Week 7 (31-10 – 06-11): Understanding
Week 8 (07/11 – 13/11): Motivation and emotion
Week 9 (14/11 – 20/11): Individual and other differences
Week 10 (21/11 – 27/11): Barriers
Week 11 (28/11 – 04/12): Intervention
Week 12 (05/12 – 11/12): Sustainability
Assessment
Autumn Term presentation (30%)
One 3000-word essay (70%)
Module Tutor
Location:
Telephone:
E-mail:
Twitter:
Office Hours
Pevensey 1, 1C7
67 8886
[email protected]
@TomFarsides
Wednesday & Thursday, 12-1
About the Module
Module description
This module seeks to foster understanding of (cognitive, emotional, or physical expression
of) humans' concern for the positive welfare of others. Within psychology, such concern is
usually called altruism. Key antecedents of altruism include sympathy and morality. Key
consequences of altruism include helping and other prosocial behaviours, although altruism
can also evoke aggression and violence. This module investigates the processes mediating
altruism and its antecedents and consequences, as well as the conditions that moderate those
relationships. All main sub-disciplines of psychology are extensively represented on the
course, e.g., biological, cognitive, developmental, personality, and social psychology, as are
contributions from other disciplines including anthropology, economics, geography,
marketing, and sociology. The module pays special attention to critically examining how
successfully psychological knowledge may be used to promote ‘real-world’ instances of
altruism, such as evidenced by emergency intervention, blood and organ donation, charitable
giving and volunteering, citizenship and social activism, etc..
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module, a successful student should be able to:
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Demonstrate an understanding of the scientific underpinnings of the psychological
study of altruism and helping behaviour.
Be able to reason scientifically and demonstrate the relationship between theory and
evidence in relation to the study of altruism and helping behaviour.
Communicate ideas and research findings by written, oral, and visual means.
Each assessment (see below) assesses all three learning outcomes.
This is a 15-credit module. This means that, as a rough guide, students should expect to work
independently for this module for about 15 hours each week, in addition to contact hours.
Seminars
Weekly seminars last up to 1 hour and 50 minutes. Exceptions are in Weeks 1 and 5, when
there will be no seminars.
Seminars are largely student-run and under the immediate control of the student(s) giving
their assessed presentation that week. To gain a lot from the seminar and to be helpful to the
person(s) doing their assessed presentation, it is essential that all students come to all
seminars having done some reading and thinking relevant to that week’s topic. Everyone
should have at least tried to read the ‘Essential Readings’ plus at least something else.
Ideally, they will come with questions about that reading and/or points that they would like to
make or explore from it.
Any student coming to a seminar without being able to show evidence of having done
reading and thinking of appropriate breadth or depth will be invited to engage in
private study and to present written material on the topic to the tutor the following
week.
Students are not expected to read every text listed below for a particular week. A relatively
large number of potential readings have been provided to enable students to ‘follow their
interests’. It will be an asset if different students have done different reading!
Assessment
Presentation
30% of your course grade will come from an assessed presentation scheduled during an
Autumn Term seminar. Information and advice about this will be given in Weeks 1 and 2,
some of which is shown in the Week 2 material below.
Essay
70% of your course grade will come from a 3000 word essay you should submit during
Assessment Period 1 (see Sussex Direct for submission date and details). You may select a
title from ones suggested below or use an original one that you have received written
approval for from the module tutor.
Essay Assessment Criteria
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/psychology/internal/students/examinationsandassessment
Essay writing guide – written by the module tutor...
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/ssfd0/Feedback.html
APA style to be used
http://www.discoveringstatistics.com/docs/writinglabreports.pdf
http://www.socialpsychology.org/teaching.htm#writingguides
Academic misconduct to be avoided, i.e., plagiarism, collusion, and personation. See the
Handbook for Undergraduate Candidates and
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/s3/index.php?id=33
Late submission: If your essay is submitted up to 24 hours late, there will be a penalty of 5%.
If submitted more than 24 hours and up to one week late there will be a penalty of 10%.
Mitigating evidence: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/studentlifecentre/mitigation
Overlapping material/self-plagiarism: There should be no substantial overlap between the
content of your assessed presentation and the content of your essay. Section 7.15 of the
Examiners’ Handbook says:
Unless specifically allowed in module or course documentation, the use of the same
material in more than one assessment exercise will be subject to penalties. If
examiners detect substantial overlap or repetition in the subject matter of a student's
assessments within a single module they must adjust the marks of the two (or more)
assessments involved so that the student does not receive credit for using the same
material twice. The examiners must inform the Student Progress and Assessment
Office which will then inform the Deputy Chair of the relevant subject exam board.
Essay word length
The essay maximum word-length is 3000 words. There is no official “10% rule,” whereby
essays may be up to 10% longer the set word-length without being penalised. The Students’
Examination Handbook (section 4.2: “Word-length”) says:
The maximum length of formal submissions (e.g. essays or dissertations - see
Glossary for definition) is specified in module material. Excessive length may be
penalised. The limits as stated include footnotes and/or endnotes, and quotations in
the text, but do not include the bibliography, appendices, abstracts, maps, illustrations,
transcriptions of linguistic data, or tabulations of numerical or linguistic data and their
captions. You will be asked to state on each cover sheet the approximate number of
words in the assessment. If the examiners consider that an unfair advantage has been
gained by exceeding the given length for an assessment they will reduce the mark for
that assessment. This may be by any amount up to, but not more than, 10% of marks
available for the assessment concerned. This does not mean there is a 10% word limit
margin around the given length of an assessment.
General texts
The following texts provide overviews of altruism and prosocial behaviour.
Batson, C. D. (2011). Altruism in humans. Oxford University Press.
Batson, C. D. (1998). Altruism and prosocial behaviour. In D.T. Gilbert, S.T. Fiske & G.
Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (4th Ed., Vol. 2, pp. 282-316).
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Bierhoff, H-W. (2002). Prosocial behaviour. Hove: Psychology Press.
Dovidio, J. F., & Penner, L. A. (2001). Helping and altruism. In M. Brewer & M. Hewstone
(Eds.), Blackwell international handbook of social psychology: interpersonal
processes (pp. 162-195). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Dovidio, J. F., Piliavin, J. A., Schroeder, D. A., & Penner, L. A. (2006). The social
psychology of prosocial behavior. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Farsides, T. L. (2007). The psychology of altruism. The Psychologist, 20, 474-477.
Fehr, B., Sprecher, S., & Underwood, L. G. (Eds.) (2009). The science of compassionate
love: theory, research, and applications. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Miller, A. G. (Ed.) (2004). The social psychology of good and evil. London: The Guilford
Press.
Post, S. G., Johnson, B., McCullough, M. E., & Schloss, G. (2003). Research on altruism and
love. London: Templeton Foundation Press.
Module Evaluation
You will be asked to complete a standard evaluation questionnaire at the end of the module.
Constructive comments and criticisms will also be welcome at any time; the earlier the better.
These may be passed to the module tutor directly, via one of your year’s Student
Representatives, or via any other communication channel you prefer. All feedback will be
collated and reported to all relevant Psychology Department Meetings. Reactions and
responses to the feedback will be reported back to students via the world-wide web and via
student representatives (who attend the subject group meetings). We want the module be as
good as it possibly can be so all and any feedback is gratefully received.
Contact Information
Tom Farsides
Location:
Telephone:
E-mail:
Twitter:
Office Hours:
Pevensey 1, 1C7
67 8886
[email protected]
@TomFarsides
12-1, Wednesdays and Thursdays
WEEK 1 LECTURE: ALL ABOUT ALTRUISM
A lecture in Week 1 will provide all sorts of information that will be essential for students to
make the most of the course. Among other things, it will be invaluable in helping students
choose which topic they wish to do for their assessed presentation /which week they want to
do it in.
Other than an event held in a lecture theatre in Week 5, all contact time will take place in
seminars.
WEEK 2: ACADEMIC ALTRUISM
Other than attending the lecture in Week 1, no preparation is required for this seminar.
In the seminar, we will:
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


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Clarify and stress that the “altruism” studied on this course is (cognitive, emotional,
or physical expression of) concern for the positive welfare of another
Get to know each other, especially about each other’s particular interest in altruism.
Decide who is going to give which assessed presentation and when.
Discuss what is required for presentations and what qualities the best ones will have.
Provisionally decide what we want to happen in seminars, e.g. how much we want to
devote to such things as:
o Presenters being primary facilitators (a minimum of 20 minutes each)
o The tutor being proactive and reactive
o Class discussing Essential Readings
o Other class discussions, e.g., sharing news, discussing assignments, etc.
Clarify what preparation is required for Week 3’s seminar activity.
Address any questions and concerns anyone may have.
More Week 2 information follows below.
Module overview (See information elsewhere in handbook for more information)
Week 3: Real World Altruism
We will discuss single-page (any size) ‘posters’ each student has prepared in advance
of the seminar. Each will summarise what a particular student has learned in the
previous week about one example of real world behaviour in which altruism might
play an important role, e.g., adoption, blood donation, body-part (e.g., organ)
donation, business practices, caring, citizenship, (self-) compassion, courageous
resistance (including whistle-blowing), courtesy, driving, environmentalism and
animal welfare, heroism and emergency intervention, honesty, liberalism, lying,
mercy killing, philanthropy (charitable giving), religious action, rescuing, sexual
behaviour, shopping, social activism, surrogacy, terrorism, tipping, vaccination,
volunteering, working, etc.
From Week 4, seminars will largely be facilitated by the student(s) doing their assessed
presentation that week. They will determine the specific content of their presentations and of
the activities within and following them. The headings below provide the broad areas that
each Week will address. The descriptions or questions under the headings discuss the sorts of
specific issues and areas that week’s presenters might focus on.
Week 4: Conception and measurement
Reminder: Altruism on this course is the phenomenon of (cognitive, emotional, or
physical expression of) concern for the positive welfare of another
Conceptual issues include: Is altruism necessarily costly? If so, what sorts of costs are
required? If an attempt to help makes things worse, is it an example of altruism? Are
people only altruistic towards the needy? Is it altruistic to support a group? Are
aggression or violence ever altruistic? What is the relationship between altruism and
morality? Is the single word “altruism” adequate to do justice to behaviours as diverse
as smiling at a crying child and giving up one’s life to save others?
Measurement issues include: How reliable is self-report altruism? What about selfreports of how one might behave in hypothetical scenarios? How valid an indicator of
altruism is giving money to a stranger? Is any behaviour an infallible marker of
altruism? If so, which? Can and should indicators of empathy, politeness, honesty and
other things be included in measures of altruism?
Week 6: Biology
Evolutionary aspects: Examining the relationship between evolutionary processes
(including ‘biological altruism’) and concern for the positive welfare of others.
Biological aspects: Looking at the role of genes, neurons, and other biological stuff in
altruism.
Week 7: Understanding
Understanding others: The role of perspective-taking, imagination, theory of mind,
mirror neurons, inference, and other aspects of ‘cognitive empathy’ on altruism.
Understanding morality: Perceiving responsibility, moral demands, and the like.
Week 8: Motivation and emotion
Caring about others: Sympathy, connection, commitment and similar aspects or
determinants of ‘emotional empathy’.
Other moods, emotions, or anticipated moods or emotions that might be related to
altruism, e.g., anger, elevation, gratitude, guilt, shame.
Week 9: Individual and other differences
Are there individual differences in altruism? Which is the more altruistic sex/gender?
Does altruism alter over the lifespan? Do various clinical populations differ in their
ability and propensity to be altruistic, e.g., people with autism, narcissists,
psychopaths? How altruistic are various animals, e.g., apes, dogs, dolphins, rats? Are
there cross-cultural differences in altruism? What reasons are there for any differences
which exist?
Week 10: Barriers
What stops people having or acting on altruistic intentions? Can and do people stop
themselves from having or acting on altruistic inclinations? What roles do things like
stereotyping, prejudice, and hostility have? Does psychological distance matter? Do
people avoid altruism for fear of exploitation? Does power promote or undermine
altruism? Are people less helpful when alone or when with or observed by others?
Week 11: Intervention
What situations trigger altruism? Can environments be changed to make altruistic
action more likely? Are people more likely to be altruistic after recently being kind or
unkind? Can altruism be increased by giving people drugs? Does meditation foster
altruism? Will paying people promote or undermine altruism? Can media foster or
undermine altruism, e.g., via poems, books, radio plays, films, television, video
games, music? What about tweaking people’s moods, priming certain constructs or
thoughts, observing people, etc, etc?
Week 12: Sustainability
Can people become more enduringly, generally, and effectively altruistic? Is love all
that is needed? Can moral education or character development programmes work?
Must other skills and characteristics be fostered to make altruism feasible and
sustainable, e.g., tolerance, bravery, resilience, wisdom? What role is played by
cultural influences, e.g., common parenting practices, materialistic values, etc? What
roles are played by personal experience, religiosity, etc.?
Assessed presentations
Each student will be scheduled to give an assessed presentation during an Autumn Term
seminar.
Before an assessed presentation is given, the tutor must be given a copy of all materials used
in the presentation, via email wherever possible. This should include things like Power Point
Slides; handouts; descriptions of individual, group, and whole-class exercises; descriptions of
and/or links to video-clips used; details of questionnaires, stories, or other ‘stimuli’ used; a
narrative plan for the seminar, e.g., of what was to happen and in what sequence. This will be
used to help the tutor mark and give feedback for the presentation. It may also be used for
auditing the tutor’s marking.
Each presenter must produce a handout and send or give a copy of this to each class member.
Presenters much get advance permission from the module tutor for any planned presentation
content or activities that might reasonably be expected to unduly upset class members.
Formal criteria for assessment presentations:
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/psychology/internal/students/examinationsandassessment
A presentation guide – written by the module tutor...
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/ssfd0/presgood.html
This presentation guide is slightly out of date (use APA rather than Harvard style, for
example) and is geared mainly towards giving ‘traditional’ presentations. Nevertheless, it is
strongly recommended that you read it.
Each week’s topic is broad and presenters should not try to cover everything that could be
said. Instead, they should base their presentation on one or more sub-topics from that week
that they find particularly important or interesting. The aim should be to “say a lot about a
little, rather than a little about a lot”: to ‘go deep’ rather than to ‘skim a lot of surface’.
A copy of the tutor’s presentation assessment aid can be found at the end of this course
document. It is strongly recommended that you use this to evaluate your own presentation,
ideally both before and after its delivery.
Also at the end of this document is a list of comments the module tutor has made over the
years in response to assessed presentations he has witnessed. It would be wise for students to
read this prior to giving their own presentations.
The module tutor will aim to provide feedback to each presenter as soon as possible after its
delivery, most often well within a few days.
WEEK 3: REAL WORLD ALTRUISM
I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I
am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to
individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or
like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest
monuments of pride.
William James, The art of possibility: transforming professional
and personal life (p. 197)
Before examining predominantly ‘basic’ research concerning the psychology of altruism, it
will be instructive to consider how well the psychology of altruism seems to explain various
‘real-world’ caring behaviours.
Each student is invited to choose a behaviour that might be, at least sometimes or in part,
motivated by actors’ concern for the positive welfare of someone else, e.g., adoption, blood
donation, body-part (e.g., organ) donation, business practices, caring, citizenship, (self-)
compassion, courageous resistance (including whistle-blowing), courtesy, driving,
environmentalism and animal welfare, heroism and emergency intervention, honesty,
liberalism, lying, mercy killing, philanthropy (charitable giving), religious action, rescuing,
sexual behaviour, shopping, social activism, surrogacy, terrorism, tipping, vaccination,
volunteering, working, etc.
Having chosen an example, students should find out as much as they can about its
psychology within the time available to them. Imagine you are a journalist, consultant, or
similar, and that you have a week to understand all you can about the topic from a
psychological perspective. Ask yourself, ‘Can psychology explain what is going on here?’
‘Can it make predictions?’ ‘Does it offer possibilities for influencing how much or when
people engage in the behaviour?’ ‘How well grounded are the explanations and predictions
that psychology offers?’ ‘Are there any glaring inconsistencies among or gaps in the
explanations?’ ‘What further research might be both feasible and enlightening on the topic,
and why?’
Each student should summarise the main aspects of what they find out
on a single side of paper (any size), making full use of diagrams (e.g., to
show connections between important variables). Having put their name
on this, they should bring it to the class this week, so that summaries of
different behaviours can be compared and contrasted. (It would be good
practice to include an accompanying bibliography of the most important
sources used, on the back or on another piece of paper.)
The tutor will collect the posters after class to help with him writing reports on students’
behaviour in seminars. Please note, though, that this poster does not contribute to formal
assessment of students’ performance on this course.
Essential Seminar Readings
As much as you can on the topic of your choice.
Essay Questions
1. Critically evaluate the usefulness of what is known about the psychology of altruism
for understanding and promoting helping behaviour.
2. To what extent is the psychology of altruism in any particular domain (e.g., charitable
giving, volunteering, etc.) generalisable across all altruistic behaviour?
WEEK 4: CONCEPTION AND MEASUREMENT
To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of
children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to
appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a
healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has
breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This topic explores how altruism and related concepts have been conceptualised and
measured. The ‘big question’ here is, “what, precisely, are we trying to understand?”
Candidate answers include emotions (e.g., feelings of warmth towards another), cognitions
(e.g., beliefs that another should be helped), goals (e.g., intentions to help another),
behaviours (e.g., actions intended to and/or that do improve another’s welfare), consequences
(e.g., another enjoying improved welfare as a result of something you do), and various
combinations of these things. A related issue is what can count as a legitimate beneficiary of
altruism, e.g., other individuals; groups; abstract entities (e.g., justice); one future self; and
collections of genes, some of which are in the self. Another issue is whether the term altruism
is appropriate only in certain circumstances, e.g., when another is in need and/or when
improving another’s welfare involves costs to the self. Once we’ve decided what altruism is
(and if that is, in fact, what we are interested in, we need to determine whether we can
identify and ideally measure it and, if so, how.
Tom Farsides, the module tutor, defines “altruism” as (cognitive, emotional, or physical
expression of) concern for the positive welfare of another. This definition differs from many
important and established uses of the term “altruism”. You do not have to agree with Tom’s
definition. However, this is the sort of altruism the current module was designed to try to
understand. For many reasons, and unless specified otherwise, this is how the term will
‘typically’ be used during this module, e.g., when the term “altruism” is used without
qualification in essay questions.
Essential Seminar Readings
1. Goetz, J. L., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010). Compassion: an evolutionary
analysis and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 136 (3), 351-374.
2. Levine, R. V. (2003). The kindness of strangers. American Scientist, 91, 226-233.
Essay Questions
1. Compare and contrast ‘altruism’ and ‘aggression’.
2. In what ways, if any, is altruism necessarily costly for the altruist?
Additional readings – Focus on conceptualisation
Batson, C.D., Ahmad, N., & Tsang, J-A. (2002). Four motives for community involvement.
Journal of Social Issues, 3, 429-446.
Batson, C. D., Batson, J. G., Todd, M., Brummett, B. H., Shaw, L. L., & Aldeguer, C. M. R.
(1995). Empathy and the collective good: caring for one of the others in a social
dilemma. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 619-631.
Clark, M. S., & Grote, N. K. (1998). Why aren’t indices of relationship costs always
negatively related to indices of relationship quality? Personality and Social
Psychology Review, 2, 2-17.
Clavien, C., & Chapuisat, M. (2013). Altruism across disciplines: one word, multiple
meanings. Biology & Philosophy, 28 (1), 125-140.
DeScioli, P., & Krishna, S. (2012). Giving to whom? Altruism in different types of
relationships. Journal of Economic Psychology, 34, 218-228.
Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes
happiness. Science, 319, 1687-1688.
Farsides, T. L. (2013). Super altruism. The Psychologist [probably the October issue].
Farsides, T. L. (2007). The psychology of altruism. The Psychologist, 20, 474-477.
Feeney, B. C., & Collins, N. L. (2003). Motivations for caregiving in adult intimate
relationships: influences on caregiving behaviour and relationship functioning.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 950-968.
Folbre, N., & Goodin, R. E. (2004). Revealing altruism. Review of Social Economy, 62, 1-25.
Gebaur, J. E., Riketta, M., Broemer, P., & Maio, G. R. (2008). Pleasure and pressure based
prosocial motivation: divergent relations to subjective well-being. Journal of
Research in Personality, 42, 399-422.
Gilbert, D. T., & Silvera, D. H. (1996). Overhelping. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 70, 678-690.
Grant, A. M. (2008). Does intrinsic motivation fuel the prosocial fire? Motivational synergy
in predicting persistence, performance, and productivity. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 93, 48-58.
Grant, A. M., & Hofmann, D. A. (2011). It's not all about me: motivating hand hygiene
among health care professionals by focusing on patients. Psychological Science, 22
(12), 1495-1499.
Hirt, E. R., Zillman, D., Erikson, G. A., & Kennedy, C. (1992). Costs and benefits of
allegiance: changes in fans' self-ascribed competencies after team victory versus
defeat. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 724-738.
Hoffman, M. L. (1989). Empathic emotions and justice in society. Social Justice Research, 3
283-311.
Impett, E. A., Gable, S. L., & Peplau, L. A. (2005). Giving up and giving in: the costs and
benefits of daily sacrifice in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 89, 327-344.
McGuire, A. M. (1994). Helping behaviors in the natural environment: dimensions and
correlates of helping. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 45-56.
Nimmons, D., & Folkman, S. (1999). Other-sensitive motivation and safer-sex among gay
men: expanding paradigms for HIV prevention. Aids and Behavior, 3, 313-324.
Sibicky, M. E., Schroeder, D. A., & Dovidio, J. F. (1995). Empathy and helping: considering
the consequences of intervention. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 16, 435-453.
Singer, T. & Steinbeis, N. (2009). Differential roles of fairness- and compassion-based
motivations for cooperation, defection, and punishment. Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences, 1167, 41−50.
Smithson, M., & Amato, P.R. (1982). An unstudied region of helping: an extension of the
Pearce-Amato cognitive taxonomy. Social Psychology Quarterly, 45, 67-76.
Unknown author. (2002). The theology of Isaac Asimov as revealed in the Three Laws of
Robotics: Derived from a sermon by Robert M. Eddy, M Div. Available online at
http://www.uufsc.com/archive/AsimovTheology.pdf
Wentzel, K. R., Filisetti, L., & Looney, L. (2007). Adolescent prosocial behavior: the role of
self-processes and contextual cues. Child Development, 78, 895-910.
Additional Readings – Focus on measurement
Aquino, K., & Reed, A. II. (2002). The self-importance of moral identity. Journal of
Personality & Social Psychology, 83, 1423-1440.
Ariely, D., & Norton, M. (2007). Psychology and experimental economics: a gap in
abstraction. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16 (6), 336-339.
Caprara, G. V., Steca, P., Zelli, A., & Capanna, C. (2005). A new scale for measuring adult
prosocialness. European Journal of Personality Assessment, 21, 77-89.
Clark, M. S., Oullette, R., Powell, M. C., & Milberg, S. (1987). Recipient’s mood,
relationship type, and helping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 94103.
Goldberg, L. R. (2008). International personality item pool: A scientific collaboratory for the
development of advanced measures of personaity traits and other individual
differences. Retrieved July 11, 2008, from http://ipip.ori.org
Gurven, M., & Winking, J. (2008). Collective action in action: prosocial behavior in and out
of the laboratory. American Anthropologist, 110 (2), 179-190.
Iannotti, R. J. (1985). Naturalistic and structured assessments of prosocial behavior in
preschool children: the influence of empathy and perspective taking. Developmental
Psychology, 21, 46-55.
Johnson, R., Danko, G. P., Darvill, T. J., Bochner, S., Bowers, J. K., Huang, Y-H., Park, J.
Y., Rahim, A. R. A., & Pennington, D. (1989). Cross-cultural assessment of altruism
and its correlates. Personality and Individual Differences, 10 (8), 855-868.
Ladd, G. W., & Profilet, S. M. (1996). The child behavior scale: A teacher-report measure of
young children’s aggressive, withdrawn, and prosocial behaviors. Developmental
Psychology, 32, 1008-1024.
Romer, D., Gruder, C. L., & Lizzadro, T. (1986). A person-situation approach to altruistic
behavior. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 51, 1001-1012.
Rushton, J. P., Chrisjohn, R. D., & Fekken, G. C. (1991). The altruistic personality and the
self-report altruism scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 2, 293-302.
Sprecher, S., & Fehr, B. (2005). Compassionate love for close others and humanity. Journal
of Social and Personal Relationships, 22, 629-651.
Van Lange, P. A. M., De Bruin, E. M. N., Otten, W., Joireman, J. A. (1997). Development of
prosocial, individualistic, and competitive orientations: theory and preliminary
evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 733-746.
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WEEK 5: LECTURE
An event will be held in a lecture theatre in Week 5.
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WEEK 6: BIOLOGY
This week’s topic is biological aspects of altruism. One aspects of this is evolutionary theory
and areas of psychology particularly influenced by it. Scholars in these areas often use terms
such as “altruism” in particular, unusual, and contentious ways. During this module, a large
task is to examine how much evolutionary theory can help understand altruism defined as
concern for the positive welfare of someone else.
Note: Some of the biological (and related economic/game theory) papers are very
mathematical. There are often very good media summaries of them available on the internet.
If you come across particularly good ones, please let me know!
Biology is also important when trying to understand the processes by which altruism is
manifest in the brain and the body.
Essential Seminar Reading
1. Morishima, Y., Schunk, D., Bruhin, A., Ruff, C. C. & Fehr, E. (2012). Linking brain
structure and activation in temporoparietal junction to explain the
neurobiology of human altruism. Neuron, 75, 73-79.
2. Okasha, S. (2005: Minor corrections from 2003). Biological altruism. In E. N. Zalta
(Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Online Edition, Spring
2005): http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2005/entries/altruism-biological/
Essay Questions
1. What contribution can ‘biological altruism’ make to understanding altruism?
2. To what extent is altruism determined by genes?
Additional readings – Evolutionary psychology
Burnstein, E., Crandall, C., & Kitayama, S. (1994). Some neo-Darwinian decision rules for
altruism: weighing cues for inclusive fitness as a function of the biological importance
of the decision. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 773-789.
Caporael, L. R., (2001). Evolutionary psychology: toward a unifying theory and a hybrid
science. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 607-652.
Crawford, C. B., & Anderson, J. L. (1989). Sociobiology: an environmentalist discipline?
American Psychologist, 44, 1449-1459.
Dawkins, R. (2006). The selfish gene (30th Anniversary Edition). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Hamilton, W. D. (1963). The evolution of altruistic behavior. American Naturalist, 97 (896),
354-356.
Jensen-Campbell, L. A., Graziano, W. G., West, S. G. (1995). Dominance, prosocial
orientation, and female preferences: do nice guys really finish last? Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 427-440.
Korchmaros, J. D., & Kenny, D. A. (2006). An evolutionary and close relationship model of
helping. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 23, 21-43.
Krebs, D. L. (2003). Fictions and facts about evolutionary approaches to human behavior:
comments on Lickliter and Honeycutt (2003). Psychological Bulletin, 129, 842-847.
MacDonald, K., & MacDonald, T. M. (2011). The peptide that binds: a systematic review of
oxytocin and its prosocial effects in humans. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 18 (1), 1-21.
Panksepp, J., & Panksepp, J. B. (2000). The seven sins of evolutionary psychology. Evolution
and Cognition, 6, 108-131.
Qirko, H. N. (2013). Induced altruism in religious, military, and terrorist
organizations. Cross-Cultural Research, 47(2), 131-161. West, S. A., Griffin, A. S., &
Gardner, A. (2007). Evolutionary explanations for cooperation. Review. Current
Biology, 17, R661 – R672.
Wilson, D. S. (1992). On the relationship between evolutionary and psychological definitions
of altruism and selfishness. Biology and Philosophy, 7, 61-68.
Additional readings – Neuropsychology/physiology
Bartz, J. A., & Hollander, E. (2006). The neuroscience of affiliation: forging links between
basic and clinical research on neuropeptides and social behavior. Hormones and
Behavior, 50, 518-528.
Beckes, L., Coan, J. A., & Hasselmo, K. (2013). Familiarity promotes the blurring of self and
other in the neural representation of threat. Social Cognitive and Affective
Neuroscience, 8 (6): 670-677.
Chiu Loke, I., Evans, A. D., & Lee, K. (2011). The neural correlates of reasoning about
prosocial-helping decisions: an event-related brain potentials study. Brain Research,
1369, 140-148.
Cushing, B.S., Perry, A., Musatov, S., Ogawa, S., & Papademetriou, E. (2008). Estrogen
receptors in the medial amygdala inhibit the expression of male prosocial behavior.
The Journal of Neuroscience, 28(41), 10399-10403.
Han, T., Alders, G. L., Greening, S. G., Neufeld, R. W., & Mitchell, D. G. (2012). Do fearful
eyes activate empathy-related brain regions in individuals with callous traits? Social
Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7 (8), 958-968.
Insel, T. R. (2010). The challenge of translation in social neuroscience: a review of oxytocin,
vasopressin, and affiliative behaviour. Neuron, 65 (6), 768-779.
Israel S, Lerer E, Shalev I, Uzefovsky F, Riebold M, et al. (2009). The oxytocin receptor
(OXTR) contributes to prosocial fund allocations in the dictator game and the social
value orientations task. PLoS ONE 4 (5): e5535.
MacDonald, K., & MacDonald, T. M. (2011). The peptide that binds: a systematic review of
oxytocin and its prosocial effects in humans. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 18 (1), 121.
Reuter, M., Frenzel, C., Walter, N. T., Markett, S., & Montag, C. (2010). Investigating the
genetic basis of altruism: the role of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism. Social
Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 211 (6), 662-668.
Steinneis, N., Bernhardt, B. C., & Singer, T. (2012). Impulse control and underlying
functions of the left DLPFC mediate age-related and age-independent individual
differences in strategic social behavior. Neuron, 73 (5), 1040-1051.
Zak, P. J., Stanton, A. A., & Ahmadi, S. (2007). Oxytocin increases generosity in humans.
PLoS ONE, 2, e1128. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001128
Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2012). The neuroscience of empathy: progress, pitfalls, and promise.
Nature Neuroscience, 15 (5), 675-680.
Additional readings – Genetic inheritance
Eisler, R., & Levine, D. S. (2002). Nurture, nature, and caring: we are not prisoners of our
genes. Brain and Mind, 3, 9-52.
Knafo, A., Israel, S., Darvasi, A., Bachner-Melman, R., Uzefovsky, F., Cohen, L. et al.
(2007). Individual differences in allocation of funds in the dictator game associated
with length of the arginine vasopressin 1a receptor RS3 promoter region and
correlation between RS3 length and hippocampal mRNA. Genes, Brain and Behavior,
7 (3), 266-275.
Knafo, A., Israel, S., & Ebstein, R. P. (2011). Heritability of children's prosocial behavior and
differential susceptibility to parenting by variation in the dopamine receptor D4 gene.
Developmental Psychopathology, 23 (1), 53-67.
Kogan, A., Saslow, L. R., Impett, E. A., Oveis, C., Keltner, D., & Saturn, S. R. (2011). Thinslicing study of the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene and the evaluation and expression
of the prosocial disposition. PNAS, 108 (48), 19189-19192.
Krueger, R. F., Hicks, B. M., & McGue, M. (2001). Altruism and antisocial behaviour:
independent tendencies, unique personality correlates, distinct etiologies.
Psychological Science, 12, 397-402.
Lewis, G. J., & Bates, T. C. (2011). A common heritable factor influences prosocial
obligations across multiple domains. Biology Letters, 7 (4), 567 – 570.
Reuter, M., Frenzel, C., Walter, N. T., Markett, S., & Montag, C. (2010). Investigating the
genetic basis of altruism: the role of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism. Social
Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 211 (6), 662-668.
Sasaki, J. Y., Kim, H. S., Mojaverian, T., Kelley, L. D., Park, I. Y., & Janušonis, S. (2013).
Religion priming differentially increases prosocial behavior among variants of the
dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) gene. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8
(2), 209-215.
WEEK 7: UNDERSTANDING
Empathy by itself . . . is ethically neutral. A good sadist or torturer has to be highly
empathetic to understand what would cause his or her victim maximal pain. Nor, I believe, is
empathy always necessary for compassion: we can have compassion for the sufferings of
non-human animals without being able to put ourselves inside their minds.
Martha Nussbaum (cited in Gallacher, reference below)
Is understanding necessary or sufficient for altruism? If so, what sort of understanding? How
about understanding what it is like to be someone else? Is that even possible? What about
understanding morality? If you understand that someone else has some sort of moral
standing, will that make you altruistic towards them? These are the sorts of questions that will
be addressed this week.
Essential Seminar Readings
1. Gray, H. M., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2007). Dimensions of mind perception.
Science, 315, 619.
2. Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2012). The neuroscience of empathy: Progress, pitfalls, and
promise. Nature Neuroscience, 15 (5), 675-680.
Essay Questions
1. What role does other-understanding play in evoking altruism?
2. When do people feel they should help others and what relation does this have with
altruism?
Additional readings – ‘Cognitive empathy’
Ames, D. (2004). Inside the mind-reader’s toolkit: projection and stereotyping in mental state
inference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 340–53.
Danzinger, N., Paillenot, I., & Peyron, R. (2009). Can we share a pain we never felt? Neural
correlates of empathy in patients with congenital insensitivity to pain. Neuron, 61 (2),
203-212.
Danziger, N., Prkachin, K. M., & Willer, J-C. (2006). Is pain the price of empathy? The
perception of others’ pain in patients with congenital insensitivity to pain. Brain, 129,
2494-2507.
Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: evidence for a
multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 113126.
Diamond, D. (2008). Empathy and identification in von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 56 (3), 811-832.
Gerdes, K. E., Segal, E. A., & Lietz, C. A. (2010). Conceptualising and measuring empathy.
British Journal of Social Work, 40 (7), 2326-2343.
Gutsell, J. N., & Inzlicht, M. (2010). Empathy constrained: prejudice predicts reduced mental
simulation of actions during observation of outgroups. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 46 (5), 841-845.
Kerem, E., Fishman, N., & Josselson, R. (2001). The experience of empathy in everyday
relationships: cognitive and affective elements. Journal of Social and Personal
Relationships, 18, 709-729.
Lin, S., Keysar, B. & Epley, N. (2010). Reflexively mindblind: using theory of mind to
interpret behavior requires effortful attention. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 46, 551-556.
Preis, M. A., Schmidt-Samoa, C., Dechent, P., & Kroener-Herwig, B. (2012). The effects of
prior pain experience on neural correlates of empathy for pain: an fMRI study. Pain.
154 (3), 4-11 – 418.
Thomas, G., & Maio, G. R. (2008). Man, I feel like a woman: when and how gender-role
motivation helps mind-reading. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95 (5),
1165-1179.
Throop, C. J. (2010). Latitudes of loss: on the vicissitudes of empathy. American Ethnologist,
37 (4), 771-782.
Van Boven, L., Loewenstein, G., & Dunning, D. (2005). The illusion of courage in social
predictions: underestimating the fear of embarrassment on other people.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 96, 130-141.
Wispé, L. (1986). The distinction between sympathy and empathy: to call forth a concept, a
word is needed. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 314-421.
Zahavi, D. (2008). Simulation, projection, and empathy. Consciousness and Cognition, 17,
514-522
Zaki, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. (2008). It takes two. The interpersonal nature of empathic
accuracy. Psychological Science, 19 (4), 399-404.
Additional readings – Moral understanding
Greene, J., & Haidt, J. (2002). How (and where) does moral judgement work? Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 6 (12), 517-523.
Janoff-Bulman, R., Sheikh, S., & Hepp, S. (2009). Proscriptive versus prescriptive morality:
two faces of moral regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96 (3),
521-537.
King, J. A., James, R., Mitchell, G. V., Dolan, R. J., & Burgess, N. (2006). Doing the right
thing: a common neural circuit for appropriate violent or compassionate behavior.
NeuroImage, 30, 1069 – 1076.
Navarrete, C.D., McDonald, M., Mott, M., & Asher, B. (2012). Virtual morality: emotion and
action in a simulated three-dimensional “Trolley Problem”. Emotion, 12 (2), 364–370.
See video here: http://www.cdnresearch.net/vr.html
Packer, D. J. (2008). Identifying systematic disobedience in Milgram’s obedience
experiments: a meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3 (4),
301-304.
Rutkowski, G. K., Gruder, C. L., & Romer, D. (1983). Group cohesiveness, social norms, and
bystander intervention. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 545-552.
Stone, V. (2006). The moral dimension of human social intelligence: domain-specific and
domain-general mechanisms. Philosophical Explorations, 9, 55-68.
Tetlock, P. E., Kristel, O. V., Elson, S. B., Green, M. C., & Lerner, J. S. (2000). The
psychology of the unthinkable: taboo trade-offs, forbidden base rates, and heretical
counterfactuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78 (5), 853.
Walker, L. J., & Henning, K. H. (2004). Differing conceptions of moral exemplarity: just,
brave, and caring. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 629-647.
WEEK 8: MOTIVATION AND EMOTION
Sympathies became more tender and widely diffused, so as to extend to the men of all
races, to the imbecile, the maimed, and other useless members of society, and finally to
the lower animals (Darwin, 1874, p. 283).
This week examines the roles of motivation and emotion in altruism. We will examine a
range of emotions that have been claimed to promote altruism under certain circumstances,
including at least one you probably haven’t heard of before! We will also examine a claim
that different emotions give rise to qualitatively different motivations, especially Batson’s
claim that the emotion of motivation gives rise to a form of motivation that is different to our
normal one of self-interest.
Essential Seminar Readings
1. Aquino, K., Freeman, D., Reed, A. II, Lim, V. K. G., & Felps, W. (2009). Testing a
social-cognitive model of moral behavior: the interactive influence of situations and
moral identity certainty. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 123-141.
2. Batson, C. D. (1990). How social an animal? The human capacity for caring.
American Psychologist, 45, 336-346.
Essay questions
1. To what extent is the ‘empathy’ in Batson’s ‘empathy-altruism’ hypothesis a form of
altruism?
2. How justified is the prefix “moral” in “moral emotions”?
Additional reading
Aquino, K., McFerran, B., & Laven, M. (2011). Moral identity and the experience of moral
elevation in response to acts of uncommon goodness. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 100 (4), 703-718.
Batson, C. D., Dyck, J. L., Brandt, J. R., Batson, J. G., Powell, A. L., McMaster, M. R., &
Griffitt, C. (1988). Five studies testing two new egoistic alternatives to the empathyaltruism hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 52-77.
Batson, C. D., Elklund, J. H., Chermok, V. I., Hoyt, J. L., & Ortiz, B. G. (2007). An
additional antecedent of empathic concern: valuing the welfare of the person in need.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 65-74.
Borg, J. S., Hynes, C., Van Horn, J., Grafton, S., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2006).
Consequences, action, and intention as factors in moral judgements: an fMRI
investigation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 803-817.
de Hooge, I. E., Nelissen, R. M. A., Breugelmans, S. M., & Zeelenberg, M. (2011). What is
moral about guilt? Acting “prosocially” at the disadvantage of others. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 100 (3), 462-473.
Lindsey, L. L. M. (2005). Anticipated guilt as behavioral motivation. An examination of
appeals to help unknown others through bone-marrow donation. Human Communication
Research 31, 453-481.
Moll, J., Zahn, R., Pardini, M., de Oliverira-Souza, R., & Grafman, J. (2006). Human frontomesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). 103, 1562315628.
Rozin, P., Lowery, L., Imada, S., & Haidt, J. (1999). The CAD triad hypothesis: a mapping
between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes
(community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76,
574-586.
Shirtcliff, E. A., Vitacco, M. J., Graf, A. R., Gostisha, A. J., Merz, J. L., & Zahn-Waxler, C.
(2009). Neurobiology of empathy and callousness: implications for the development of
antisocial behavior. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 27 (2), 137-171.
Stocks, E. L., Lishner, D. A., & Decker, S. K. (2009). Altruism or psychological escape: why
does empathy promote prosocial behavior? European Journal of Social Psychology, 39
(5), 649-665.
Tangney, J. P. (1991). Moral affect: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 61, 598-607.
Thomas, E. F., McGarthy, C., & Mavor, K. I. (2009). Transforming apathy into movement:
The role of prosocial emotions in motivating action for social change. Personality and
Social Psychology Review, 13 (4), 310-333.
WEEK 9: INDIVIDUAL & OTHER DIFFERENCES
…she has a weak chest and a predisposition to tuberculosis, and I feel that. How
could I not feel it? And the more I drink, the more I feel. That’s the reason for my
drinking. I’m looking for feeling and compassion in it … Not revelry do I seek, but
pure sorrow … I drink, for I desire to suffer doubly!
Marmeladov in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and punishment (p. 16, Penguin Classic)
This topic explores individual and group differences in altruism: what they are, where they
might come from, how amenable to change they might be, and what might be learned from
them.
Essential Seminar Readings
1. Gray, K., Jenkins, A., Heberlein, A., & Wegner, D. (2010). Distortions of mind
perception in psychopathology. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 108 (2), 477-479.
2. Warneken, F., Hare, B., Melis, A.P., Hanus, D., & Tomasello, M. (2007).
Spontaneous altruism by chimpanzees and young children. PLoS Biology, 5,
e184, 1414.
Essay Questions
1. Compare and contrast altruistic maturation in two or more clinical populations.
2. What can comparative psychology (animal behaviour) tell us about human altruism?
Additional readings – Comparative psychology
Bartal, I B-A., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2011). Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats.
Science, 334 (6061), 1427-1430.
Bates, L. A., Lee, P. C., Njiraini, N., Poole, J. H., Sayialel, K., Sayialel, S., Moss, C. J., &
Byrne, R. W. (2008). Do elephants show empathy? Journal of Consciousness Studies,
15, 204–225.
Bekoff, M. (2004). Wild justice and fair play: cooperation, forgiveness, and morality in
animals. Biology and Philosophy, 19, 489-520.
Boehm, C. (2007-8). Political primates. Greater Good, IV(3), 24-26.
Boesch, C., Bolé, C., Eckhardt, N., & Boesch, H. (2010). Altruism in forest chimpanzees:
The case of adoption. PloS ONE, 5 (1), e8901. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0008901
Boesch, C. (2007). What makes us human (Homo Sapiens)? The challenge of cognitive
cross-species comparison. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 121 (3) 227-240.
Brosnan, S. F., Talbot, C., Ahlgren, M., Lambeth, S. P. & Schapiro, S. J. (2010). Mechanisms
underlying the response to inequity in chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes. Animal
Behavior, 79, 1229–1237.
Burkart, J. M., Fehr, E., Efferson, C., & van Schaik, C. P. (2007). Other-regarding
preferences in a non-human primate: Common marmosets provision food
altruistically. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 19762-19766.
Custance, D., & Mayer, J. (2012). Empathic-like responding by domestic dogs (Canis
familiaris) to distress in humans: an exploratory study. Animal Cognition, DOI:
10.1007/s10071-012-0510-1
De Waal, F. B. M. (2012). Moral behaviour in animals. TEDX talk.
http://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals.html
Sapolsky, R. M. (2007). Peace among primates. Greater Good, IV(2), 34-37.
Yamamoto, S., Humle, T., & Tanaka, M. (2012). Chimpanzees’ flexible targeted helping
based on an understanding of conspecifics’ goals. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, http://www.pnas.org/content/109/9/3588.short
Zuberbühler, K., Jenny, D., & Bshary, R. (2011). The predator deterrence function of primate
alarm calls. Ethology, 105 (6), 477-490.
Additional readings – Developmental (age) differences (Maturation)
Behne, T., Carpenter, M., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2005). Unwilling versus unable: infants’
understanding of intentional action. Developmental Psychology, 41 (2), 328-337.
Eisenberg, N., Guthrie, I. K., Murphy, B. C., Shepard, S. A., Cumberland, A., & Carlo, G.
(1999). Consistency and development of prosocial dispositions: a longitudinal study.
Child Development, 70, 1360-1372.
Gill, K. L., & Calkins, S. D. (2003). Do aggressive/destructive toddlers lack concern for
others? Behavioral and physiological indicators of empathic responding in 2-year-old
children. Development and Psychopathology, 15, 55-71.
Hepach, R., Vaish, A., & Tomasello, M. (2013). A new look at children’s prosocial
motivation. Infancy, 18 (1), 67-90.
Paulus, M., & & Moore, C. (2012). Producing and understanding prosocial actions in early
childhood. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 42, 271-306.
Sheldon, K. M., Kasser, T., Houser-Marko, L., Jones, T., & Turban, D. (2005). Doing one’s
duty: chronological age, felt autonomy and subjective well-being. European Journal
of Personality, 19, 97-115.
Thompson, C., Barresi, J., & Moore, C. (1997). The development of future-oriented prudence
and altruism in preschoolers. Cognitive Development, 12, 199-212.
Thompson, R. A., & Newton, E. K. (2013). Baby altruists? Examining the complexity of
prosocial motivation in young children. Infancy 18 (1), 120-133.
Warneken, F. & Tomasello, M. (2007). Helping and cooperation at 14 months of age.
Infancy, 11, 271-294.
Vaish, A., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Sympathy through affective perspective
taking and its relation to prosocial behavior in toddlers. Developmental Psychology,
45 (2), 534-443.
Zahn-Waxler, C., Radke-Yarrow, M., Wagner, E., & Chapman, M. (1992). Development of
concern for others. Developmental Psychology, 28, 126-136.
Additional readings – Personality (‘individual’) differences
Caprara, G.V., Alessandri, G., & Eisenberg, N. (2012). Prosociality: the contribution of traits,
values, and self-efficacy beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102
(6), 1289-1303.
Caputi, M., Lecce, S., Pagnin, A., & Banerjee, R. (2012). Longitudinal effects of theory of
mind on later peer relations: the role of prosocial behavior. Developmental
Psychology, 48 (1), 257-270.
Cloninger, C. R., Svrakic, D. M. & Przybeck, T. R. (1993). A psychobiological model of
temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50, 975 –990.
de St. Aubin, E. (1996). Personal ideology polarity: its emotional foundation and its
manifestation in individual value systems, religiosity, political orientation, and
assumptions concerning human nature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
71, 152-165.
Einolf, C. J. (2010). Does extensivity form a part of the altruistic personality? Social Science
Research, 39 (1), 142-151.
Seara-Cardoso, A., Neumann, C., Roiser, J., McCrory, E., Viding, E. (2012). Investigating
associations between empathy, morality and psychopathic personality traits in the
general population. Personality and Individual Differences, 52 (1), 67-71.
Additional readings – Gender differences
Eagly, A. (2009). The his and hers of prosocial behavior: an examination of the social
psychology of gender. American Psychologist, 64 (8), 644-658.
Eagly, A., & Crowley, M. (1986). Gender and helping behaviour: a meta-analytic review.
Psychological Bulletin, 100, 283-308.
Goldenberg, M. (1996). Lessons learned from gentle heroism: women’s Holocaust narratives.
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 548, 78-93.
Hyde, J. S. (2007). New directions in the study of gender similarities and differences. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 16 (5), 259-263.
Additional readings – Psychopathology
Baron-Cohen, S., & Wheelwright, S. (2004). The empathy-quotient: an investigation of
adults with Asperger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism, and normal sex
differences. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34, 163-175.
Cima, M., Tonnaer, F., & Hauser, M. D. (2010). Psychopaths know right from wrong but
don’t care. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5 (1), 59-67.
Dawson, G., Toth, T., Abbott, R., Osterling, J., Munson, J., Estes, A., & Liaw, J. (2004).
Early social attention impairments in Autism: social orienting, joint attention, and
attention to distress. Developmental Psychology, 40, 271-283.
Hirvelä, S., & Helkama, K. (2011). Empathy, values, morality and Asperger’s
syndrome. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 52, 560-572.
Jones, A. P., Happé, F. G., Gilbert, F., Burnett, S., & Viding, E. (2010). Feeling, caring,
knowing: different types of empathy deficit in boys with psychopathic tendencies and
autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Child Psycholology & Psychiatry, 51 (11),
1188-1197.
Lawrence, E.J., Shaw, P., Baker, D., Patel, M.X., Sierra, M., Medford, N. & David, A.S.
(2007). Empathy and enduring depersonalization: the role of self-related processes.
Social Neuroscience, 2, 292-306.
Moran, J. M., Young, L. L., Saxe, R., Lee, S. M., O'Young, D., Mavros, P. L., & Gabrieli, J.
D. (2011). Impaired theory of mind for moral judgment in high-functioning
autism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (7), 2688-2692.
WEEK 10: BARRIERS
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
And if I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now -- when?
Rabbi Hillel
Altruism may be disappointingly absent under two circumstances: when it wasn’t there in the
first place and when its presence is silenced or overridden by contrary forces. These are the
foci of attention this week.
Essential Seminar Readings
1. Cameron, C. D., & Payne, B. K. (2011). Escaping affect: how motivated emotion
regulation creates insensitivity to mass suffering. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 100 (1), 1-15.
2. Pronin, E.,Olivola, C. Y., & Kennedy, K. A. (2008). Doing unto future selves as you
would do unto others: psychological distance and decision-making.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34 (2), 224-236.
Essay Questions
1. When and why are appeals for help sometimes counter-productive?
2. Evaluate evidence that people want to be altruistic enough: no more, no less.
Additional readings
Bandura, A., Barbaranelli, C., Caprara, G. V., & Pastorelli, C. (1996). Mechanisms of moral
disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 71, 364-374.
Batson, C. D., Klein, T. R., Highberger, L., & Shaw, L. L. (1995). Immorality from empathyinduced altruism: when compassion and justice conflict. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 68, 1042-1054.
Batson, C. D., & Moran, T. (1999). Empathy-induced altruism in a prisoner's dilemma.
European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 909-924.
Batson, C. D., & Thompson, E. R. (2001). Why don’t moral people act morally? Motivational
considerations. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 54-57.
Choshen-Hillel, S., & Yaniv, I. (2011). Agency and the construction of social preference:
between inequality aversion and prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 101 (6), 1253-1261
Côté, S., Kraus, M.W., Cheng, B.H., Oveis, C., van der Lowe, I., Lian, H., & Keltner, D.
(2011). Social power facilitates the effect of prosocial orientation on empathic
accuracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101 (2), 217 – 232.
Johnson, J. D., Bushman, B. J., & Dovidio, J. F. (2008). Support for harmful treatment and
reduction of empathy toward blacks: "remnants" of stereotype activation involving
Hurricane Katrina and "Lil' Kim." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44 (6),
1506-1513.
Kouchaki, M. (2011). Vicarious moral licensing: the influence of others‘ past moral actions
on moral behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101 (4), 702-715.
Kunstman, J. W., & Ashby, P. (2008). Racing to help: racial bias in high emergency helping
situations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95 (6), 1499-1510.
Levine, M., & Crowther, S. (2008). The responsive bystander: how social group membership
and group size can encourage as well as inhibit bystander intervention. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 95 (6), 1429-1439.
Manning, R., Levine, M. & Collins, A. (2007). The Kitty Genovese murder and the social
psychology of helping: the parable of the 38 witnesses. American Psychologist, 62,
555-562.
Margolis, J. D., & Molinsky, A. (2008). Navigating the binds of necessary evils:
psychological engagement and the production of interpersonally sensitive behavior.
Academy of Management Journal, 51 (5), 847-842.
Mazar, N., & Zhong, C-B. (2010). Do green products make us better people? Psychological
Science, 21 (4), 494-498.
Monin, B., Sawyer, P. J., & Marquez, M. J. (2008). The rejection of moral rebels: resenting
those who do the right thing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95 (1),
76-93.
Shu, L. L., Gino, F., & Bazerman, M. H. (2011). Dishonest deed, clear conscience: selfpreservation through moral disengagement and motivated forgetting. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 37 (3), 330-349.
Zitek, E. M., Jordan, A. H., Monin, B., & Leach, F. R. (2010). Victim entitlement to behave
selfishly. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98 (2), 245-255.
WEEK 11: INTERVENTION
Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment.
Jean de La Bruyère
When do specific situations evoke altruism?
Essential Seminar Readings
1. Mikulincer, M., Shaver, P. R., Gillath, O., & Nitzberg, R. A. (2005). Attachment,
caregiving, and altruism: boosting attachment security increases compassion
and helping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 817-839.
2. van den Bos, K., Van Lange, P. A. M., Lind, E. A., Venhoeven, L. A., Beudeker, D.
A., Cramwinckel, F. M., Smulders, L., & van der Laan, J. (2011). On the
benign qualities of behavioral disinhibition: because of the prosocial nature of
people, behavioral disinhibition can weaken pleasure with getting more than
you deserve. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101 (4), 791 –
811.
Essay Questions
1. To what extent and how can altruism be deliberate elicited by ‘social engineers’?
2. Critically compare and contrast any two or more methods of eliciting altruism.
Additional reading
Andari, E., Duhamel, J. R., Zalla, T., Herbrecht, E., Leboyer, M., & Sirigu, A. (2010).
Promoting social behavior with oxytocin in high-functioning autism spectrum
disorders. PNAS, 107 (9), 4389-4394.
Condon, P., Desbordes, G., Miller, W., DeSteno, D. (In press). Meditation increases
compassionate responses to suffering. Psychological Science,
Goldstein, N. J., & Cialdini, R. B. (2007). The spyglass self: a model of vicarious selfperception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 402-417.
Goldstein, T. R., & Winner, E. (2012). Enhancing empathy and theory of mind. Journal of
Cognition and Development, 13 (1), 19-37.
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.
Henderson, M. D., Huang, S. C., & Chang, C.C. (2011). When others cross psychological
distance to help: highlighting prosocial actions toward outgroups encourages
philanthropy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48 (1), 220-225.
Izard, C. E. (2002). Translating emotion theory and research into preventive interventions.
Psychological Bulletin, 128, 796-824.
Jacobson, R. P., Mortensen, C. R., & Cialdini, R. B. (2011). Bodies obliged and unbound:
differentiated response tendencies for injunctive and descriptive social norms. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 100 (3), 433-448.
Kallgren, C. A., Reno, R. R., & Cialdini, R. B. (2000). A focus theory of normative conduct:
when norms do and do not affect behavior. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 26, 1002-1012.
Konijn, E. A., Bijvank, M. N., & Bushman, B. J. (2007). I wish I were a warrior: the role of
wishful identification in effects of violent video games on aggression in adolescent
boys. Developmental Psychology (43), 1038-1044.
Laham, S. M. (2009). Expanding the moral circle: inclusion and exclusion mindsets and the
circle of moral regard. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45 (1), 250-253.
Liberman, V., Samuels, S., & Ross, L. (2004). The name of the game: predictive power of
reputation versus situational labels in determining prisoner's dilemma game moves.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30 (9), 1175-1185.
Lieberg, S., Klimecki, O., & Singer, T. (2011). Short-term compassion training increases
prosocial behavior in a newly developed prosocial game. PLoS One, 6 (3), e17798.
Lockwood, P., & Kunda, Z. (1997). Superstars and me: predicting the impact of role models
on the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73 (1), 91-103.
Ostrov, J. M., Gentile, D. A., & Crick, N. R. (2006). Media exposure, aggression and
prosocial behavior during early childhood: a longitudinal study. Social Development,
15, 612-627.
Ronel, N. (2006). When good overcomes bad: the impact of volunteers on those they help.
Human Relations, 59, 1133-1153.
Shariff, A. F.; Norenzayan, A. (2007). God is watching you: priming God concepts increases
prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18, 803809.
Thomaes, S., Bushman, B. J., de Castro, B. O., & Reijntjes, A. (2012). Arousing "gentle
passions" in young adolescents: sustained experimental effects of value affirmations
on prosocial feelings and behaviors. Developmental Psychology, 48 (1), 103-110.
Vohs, K. D., Mead, N. L., & Goode, M. R. (2006). The psychological consequences of
money. Science, 314, 1154-1156.
Williamson, R. A., Donohue, M. R., & Tully, E. C. (2012). Learning how to help others: twoyear-olds’ social learning of a prosocial act. Journal of Experimental Child
Psychology, 114 (4), 543-550.
WEEK 12: SUSTAINABILITY
The best portion of a good man's life:
his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.
William Wordsworth
It is impossible to conceive anything in the world, or even out of it, which can be
taken as good without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgement,
or any other talents of the mind we may care to name, or courage, resolution, and
constancy of purpose, as qualities of temperament, are without doubt good and
desirable in many respects; but they can also be extremely bad and harmful when the
will is not good which has to make use of these gifts of nature, and which for this
reason has the term “character” applied to its particular quality.
Kant (Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals, trans. H. J. Paton, 1964, p. 61)
The big question this week is, “Can commitment to altruism be deliberated promoted, in
others and in ourselves?” (“What controllable events and processes tend to make people more
or less dispositionally altruistic?” Don’t forget that there is lots of relevant material to this
topic throughout this document.)
Essential Seminar Readings
1. Weber, J. M., Kopelman, S., & Messick, D. M. (2004). A conceptual review of
decision making in social dilemmas: applying a logic of appropriateness.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 281-307.
2. Weinstein, N., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). When helping helps: autonomous motivation
for prosocial behavior and its influence on well-being for the helper and
recipient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98 (2), 222-244.
Essay Questions
1. How can people successfully choose to become more altruistic?
2. To what extent can altruistic traits be encouraged in others?
Additional readings
Althof, W., & Berkowitz, M. W. (2006). Moral education and character education: their
relationship and roles in citizenship education. Journal of Moral Education, 35 (4),
495-518.
Bardi, A., Lee, J.A., Hofmann-Towfigh, N., & Soutar, G. (2009). The structure of
intraindividual value change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97 (5),
913-929.
Bargh, J. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., Lee-Chai, A. Y., Barndollar, K., & Troetschel, R. (2001). The
automated will: nonconscious activation and pursuit of behavioral goals. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 81,1014–1027.
Barnard, M. M., Maio, G. R., & Olson, J. M. (2003). The vulnerability of values to attack:
inoculation of values and value-relevant attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 29, 63-75.
Carlo, G., Mestre, M.V., Samper, P., Tur, A., & Armenta, B.E. (2011). The longitudinal
relations among dimensions of parenting styles, sympathy, prosocial moral reasoning,
and prosocial behaviours. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 35 (2),
116-124.
Cioffi, D., & Garner, R. (1996). On doing the decision: effects of active versus passive choice
on commitment and self-perception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22,
133-147.
Clary, E. G., & Miller, J. (1986). Socialization and situational influences on sustained
altruism. Child Development, 57, 1358-1369.
Crocker, J., & Canevello, A. (2008). Creating and undermining social support in communal
relationships: the role of compassionate and self-image goals. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 95 (3), 555-575.
Dweck, C. S. (2008) Can personality be changed? The role of beliefs in personality and
change. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(6), 391-394.
Ferraro, F., Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, R. I. (2005). Economics language and assumptions: how
theories can become self-fulfilling. Academy of Management Review, 30, 8-24.
Frimer, J. A., Walker, L. J., Dunlop, W. L., Lee, B. H., & Riches, A. (2011). The integration
of agency and communion in moral personality: evidence of enlightened self-interest.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101 (1), 149-163
Grant, A. M., & Dutton, J. E. (2012). Beneficiary or benefactor: the effects of reflecting
about receiving versus giving on prosocial behavior. Psychological Science, 23, 10331039.
Haidt, J., Koller, S. H., & Dias, M. G. (1993). Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to
eat your dog? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 613-628.
Hirschberger, G. (2006). Terror Management and attributions of blame to innocent victims:
reconciling compassionate and defensive responses. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 91, 832-844.
Karremans, J. C., Van Lange, P. A. M., & Holland, R. W. (2005). Forgiveness and its
associations with prosocial thinking, feeling, and doing beyond the relationship with
the offender. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 1315-1326.
Lois, J. (1999). Socialization to heroism: individualism and collectivism in a voluntary search
and rescue group. Social Psychology Quarterly, 62, 117-135.
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Boosting attachment security to promote mental
health, prosocial values, and inter-group tolerance. Psychological Inquiry, 18 (3),
139-156.
Mikulincer, M., Shaver, P. R., Gillath, O., & Nitzberg, R. A. (2005). Attachment, caregiving,
and altruism: boosting attachment security increases compassion and helping. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 817-839.
Miller, R., Brickman, P., & Bolen, D. (1975). Attribution versus persuasion as a means of
modifying behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 430-441.
Nelson, L. D., & Norton, M. I. (2005). From student to superhero: situational primes can
shape future helping. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 423-430.
Reed, A. II., & Aquino, K. F. (2003). Moral identity and the expanding circle of moral regard
toward out-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1270-1286.
Rowson, J., Kalman Mezey, M., & Dellot, B. (2012). Beyond the Big Society: Psychological
Foundations of Active Citizenship. Royal Society of Arts and Commerce. January.
http://www.thersa.org/projects/social-brain/beyond-the-big-society
Small, D. A., Loewenstein, G., & Slovic, P. (2007). Sympathy and callousness: the impact of
deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102, 143-153.
Trotschel, R., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2007). Implementation intentions and the willful pursuit
of prosocial goals in negotiations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43,
579-598.
Tom’s reflections on some particularly good past presentations
When presenters planned to include any ethically sensitive material, they checked them with
me first and went on to employ appropriate practices. E.g., If material was presented or
discussed that was justifiable but potentially upsetting for audience members, audience
members were warned in advance that this would occur and were given dignified alternatives
to participating in that part of the seminar.
Any equipment and materials used were prepared and made ready prior to the presentation
‘proper’ beginning. Handouts were prepared so that they could be distributed with a
minimum of fuss (e.g., multiple-pages were stapled into booklets).
Handouts were given out early in presentations. These contained information helpful to the
audience. Often, they presented extended quotes or complicated diagrams that helped the
audience focus on the topic without fear of failing to write down something of interest or
importance. Sometimes, handouts contained information potentially useful to students and
relevant to the week’s topic but not directly dealt with during the seminar itself. Sometimes
they included reference to web pages and other resources. Sometimes they included exercises
for audience members to complete during class. Sometimes these encouraged audience
members to critique, apply, or otherwise counter the material being presented. Handouts for
good presentations always contained a full References section. They were also always tidy,
easy to use, and engaging. Audience members were clearly grateful to have these handouts.
Presenters made clear how their handouts related to their presentations, especially any
‘lecturing’ part of it. Where handouts were to be used during the seminar, their content
mirrored or otherwise clearly complemented what was going on in class. Audience members
were never confused about how the handout content ‘fit’ into what was happening in class.
As presenters started their presentations, they gave the audience instructions about whether
and when questions and other possible interruptions would be welcomed (e.g., at any time,
only at the end of the presentation section, or whatever).
Early on in the presentation, if not right at the start, presenters gave a formal Introduction.
This stated such things as (i) what presenters intended to cover during the presentation
(sometimes in the form of aims and objectives, sometimes in the form of an ‘agenda’); (ii)
what main critical points they intended to make; and (iii) what conclusion(s) they intended to
reach. Such Introductions made clear both the structure of the presentation and the main
argument(s) to be made.
Soon after the Introduction, and if it was relevant or useful to do so, presenters explained why
they had chosen their topic and/or their method of presenting that topic. Some also
highlighted existing (i.e., in the literature) or anticipated (i.e., in the presentation) areas of
controversy, contention, or disagreement.
Presentations took the form of arguments, at least in part. The main body of the presentations
presented evidence to move linearly and effectively from the stated intentions in the
Introduction to justify promised Conclusions. At the very least, the “presenter’s talk” part of
presentations ended with a Summary. Thus, presentations were more like conference
presentations (making and justifying claims) than they were like lectures (often merely
reporting others’ thoughts and findings).
Expositions in presentations were always there for a clear (and sometimes explicitly stated)
purpose.
Presentations contained exercises and activities to engage and enthuse the audience. Often
these were pairwise, small-group, and/or whole-group exercises. Sometimes there was an
exercise or activity before the “presenter’s talk” part of the presentation. Sometimes the
“presenter’s talk” part of the presentation was interspersed with one or more exercises or
activities. The “presenter’s talk” part of the presentation was always followed by one or more
exercises or activities.
The very best presentations included a variety of exercises and activities that generated
inclusive, engaged, relevant, and high-level discussion. They avoided techniques that may
have been effective earlier in the term but which had become jaded through overuse. Such
exercises included having audience members complete questionnaires or apply their
knowledge (e.g., from the essential readings) to some real-world issue.
Example exercises and activities have included guided discussion of film or literature
excerpts, discussion or reflection questions, self-completion or interviewer-completed
questionnaires, reminiscences or speculations, dramatic reconstructions, debates, “devil’s
advocacy,” and quizzes.
Material generated during an exercise contributes, or is made to contribute, to the academic
purpose of the presentation. Thus, exercises form part of the integral whole of a presentation.
For example, if a presenter asks for feedback about what was discussed during a small group
exercise, the presenter listens hard to that feedback and ‘uses’ it in some constructive way. In
short, there is an academic rationale for and purpose to presentations.
A particular exercise is not employed simply because it has been used successfully in earlier
presentations. There is a sense of enjoyment and interest among the class rather than, “Oh no,
not this again.”
Presentations have integrated psychological theory and research with ‘real-world’ issues and
occurrences. Often, presentations have made use of personal stories: in print, the presenter’s
own, and/or ones volunteered or elicited from members of the audience. These stories have
been engaging but have also been used to make, illustrate, or challenge academic points.
The audience will appear pleased or excited about their experience in the seminar room.
They will appear likely to continue thinking and talking about the content of the presentation
after they have left the seminar room.
Marking Aid for The Psychology of Altruism (C8014) Assessed Presentations, 2013
0 = Inadequate, 3 = Adequate, 5 = Good, 7 = Very Good, 9 = Exceptional (or n/a)
How relevant and helpful to the week’s topic and task were...
The presenter’s selected sub-topics and exposition
Class activities and any accompanying materials
Class discussion
The handout
How good were the following aspects of the presentation’s delivery?
Amount and depth of material covered
Structure and narrative of the presentation
Volume, speed, clarity, and engagingness of the presenter’s voice
Clarity of handout
Clarity of Power Point slides
Clarity of instructions
Clarity of points and arguments made
Readiness of any equipment, materials, etc.
Social interaction
Time management
How good was the apparent understanding and insight of...
The presenter?
Class members, as a result of the presentation?
How well did the presenter evidence critical thinking in their...
Use of content and structure to reach one or more conclusion?
Provision of justification for their claims and conclusions?
Evaluation of others’ claims and evidence?
To what extent did the presentation facilitate class members’ critical thinking?
How engaged did class members seem with...
The process of the presentation?
Important academic issues?
Additional comments may be made overleaf.
Overall Grade
Note 1. The overall grade is determined by the official assessment criteria. Any marks and comments made on
this sheet are intended to help (a) the tutor ascertain the extent to which those criteria were met, and (b) the
presenter critically reflect on how to maintain or improve their presentation skills.
Note 2. The overall grade is provisional and subject to ratification by the relevant Examination Boards.
Name
Topic
Date
The Psychology of Altruism (C8014) Assessed Presentations, 2013
(2) Tue 1-3
Pev 1, 1A3
(3) Thu 1-3
Pev 1, 1A3
(1) Thu 4-6
Pev 1, 1B2
Everybody
Everybody
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Week 3: Real world altruism
Everybody
Week 4: Conception and measurement
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 6: Biology
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 7: Understanding
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 8: Motivation and emotion
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 9: Individual and other differences
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 10: Barriers
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 11: Intervention
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 12: Sustainability
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________