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, 2014
Module Convenor and Tutor: Tom Farsides
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)
There's nothing more dangerous than a shallow-thinking compassionate person. God, he can
cause a lot of trouble (Garrett Hardin)
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. (Ayn Rand)
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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.
Module Tutor
Location:
Telephone:
E-mail:
Twitter:
Office Hours
Pevensey 1, 1C7
67 8886
[email protected]
@TomFarsides
Wednesday & Thursday, 12-1
Timetable
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Lecture: All about altruism
Seminar: Academic altruism
Seminar: Real world altruism
Seminar: Conception and measurement
Seminar: Genes, Evolution, and Neurophysiology
Seminar: Mind-reading and Morality
Seminar: Passion and Emotion
Seminar: Individual and other differences
Seminar: Triggers and Intervention
Seminar: Barriers and Impediments
Seminar: Sustained altruism
Interactive lecture: Essays
Please access Sussex Direct to see where and when your lectures and seminars will
be: https://direct.sussex.ac.uk
Assessment
Autumn Term assessed ‘presentation’ (30%) – See Appendix 1
One 3000-word essay (70%) – See Appendix 2
Please access Sussex Direct for assessment deadlines: https://direct.sussex.ac.uk
Please see Appendix 4 for important information on late submissions, mitigating
evidence, and academic misconduct.
The Altruism Option Blog
http://tomfarsides.blogspot.co.uk/
Please see end of this Handbook for further administrative and other details
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WEEK 1 LECTURE: ALL ABOUT ALTRUISM
A lecture in Week 1 will provide all sorts of essential information. After Week 1, the tutor is
likely to respond to many questions with the answer, “We dealt with that in the first lecture.”
Before or after the lecture, you are advised to read as many posts as you can on The Altruism
Option blog: http://tomfarsides.blogspot.co.uk/
To hear a fascinating example of how words’ definitions can have life-or-death significance,
listen to Radiolab Season 12, Episode 7: “60 words” http://www.radiolab.org/story/60-words/
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WEEK 2 SEMINAR: ACADEMIC ALTRUISM
In preparation for this seminar, all students should have:
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Attended the Week 1 lecture.
Read Appendix1 of this Handbook: Seminars and Assessed ‘Presentations’.
Read Appendix 3 of this Handbook: Overview of Seminars 4 - 11.
Read the Week 3 entry of this Handbook: Real World Altruism.
In the seminar, we will:
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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. Anything else
labelled “altruism” in the literature is of interest only to the extent that it can be used
to illuminate altruism as just defined. Things that are not called “altruism” in the
literature will be of interest if they are forms of altruism as just defined.
Decide how best to deal with the tutor’s prosopagnosia.
Get to know each other a little, especially about any reasons students may have for
being particularly interested in altruism.
Decide who is going to give which assessed ‘presentation’ and when.
Discuss the qualities that lead to better or worse assessed ‘presentations’.
Discuss the format of seminars 4 – 11:
o ‘Presenters’ are in charge of most of what happens in these seminars.
o This includes largely controlling the tutor’s contribution.
o It may also include assigning preparatory work, e.g., advance reading(s).
o All students should be prepared and motivated to make an active contribution
to all seminars. Anyone who is not prepared or motivated may be invited by
the tutor to leave the seminar and engage in private study.
Discuss how students should prepare for seminars in which they are not giving
assessed ‘presentations’.
Discuss the tutor’s rationale for running this module the way he does.
Clarify what it means to be “critical” and why it is important.
Critically evaluate the possibility of everyone in the seminar group committing to
develop habits of being critical (generally) and altruistic (to each other) during this
module.
Clarify what preparation is required for Week 3’s seminar activity.
Address any questions and concerns anyone may have.
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WEEK 3 SEMINAR: REAL WORLD ALTRUISM
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 should choose a behaviour that might be, at least sometimes or in part,
motivated by concern for the positive welfare of others, e.g., adoption, blood donation, bodypart (e.g., organ) donation, business practices, caring, citizenship, courageous resistance
(including whistle-blowing), courtesy, driving, environmentalism and animal welfare,
heroism and emergency intervention, honesty, internet behaviour, liberalism, lying, mercy
killing, philanthropy (charitable giving), religious action, rescuing, sexual behaviour,
shopping, social activism, surrogacy, tax-paying, terrorism, tipping, vaccination,
volunteering, working, etc.
Having chosen a type of behaviour, 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 questions such as these: ‘Can psychology explain
what is going on here?’ ‘Can it make predictions?’ ‘Does it offer possibilities for influencing
how much, when, and how people engage in this 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 him when writing reports on students’
behaviour in seminars. Please note, though, that this poster does not contribute to formal
assessment of students’ performance on this module.
Essay Questions
1. To what extent is understanding people’s concern for the positive welfare of others
(altruism) useful for understanding and promoting other-benefiting (helping)
behaviours?
2. Choose one behaviour listed in paragraph 2, above, i.e., of this Week entry to the
Handbook. To what extent is this behaviour motivated by people’s concern for the
positive welfare of others (altruism)?
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WEEK 4 SEMINAR: CONCEPTION AND MEASUREMENT
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.
Reading Guide
Do not try to read all of the works referenced below. Read whatever you want (from below or
elsewhere) that is topic-relevant until you find something you find interesting. Then read that
closely and critically. If you are giving an assessed ‘presentation’, consider whether what you
have read can be useful for that. If you are not, think about how you could explain – should
the opportunity arise - what is interesting about what you have read to others in your seminar
group or to the tutor. Repeat this process as time allows. I have provided brief annotations for
each reference to guide your initial reading. Don’t be afraid to read things not on the list at
all. If you want an easy but important first reading, I’d recommend starting (critically) with
Levine (2003).
Essay Questions
1. Compare and contrast ‘altruism’ and ‘aggression’.
2. In what ways, if any, is altruism necessarily costly for the altruist?
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Essay tip: Psychology essays should nearly always be answered “making reference to
relevant empirical literature”, even if that is not explicitly stated in the question.
Potential 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.
Tom’s summary: This is an extended re-presentation of Batson’s (1994) claim that there
are 4 motives for the common good: egoism, altruism, collectivism, and principlism.
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.
Tom’s summary: An important demonstration that motives to benefit others can clash
with each other as well as with motives to benefit the self. Here, concern for a particular other
undermines a concern to benefit the collective.
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.
Tom’s summary: Clark differentiates communal and exchange relationships. Pure
exchange relationships involve trades and may seek personal profit. Pure communal relationships
seek the good of others or of the relationship itself. In the 6-month honeymoon period of new
love, people are largely communal and do not consider things they do for their partner as
personally costly.
Clavien, C., & Chapuisat, M. (2013). Altruism across disciplines: One word, multiple
meanings. Biology & Philosophy, 28(1), 125-140.
Tom’s summary: The authors differentiate the altruism studied in this module
(“psychological altruism”) from three other uses of the term “altruism” in academic literature.
DeScioli, P., & Krishna, S. (2012). Giving to whom? Altruism in different types of
relationships. Journal of Economic Psychology, 34, 218-228.
Tom’s summary: People “donate” money for different reasons, e.g., to help, appease, or repay
others. Think about the implications of this for interpreting donations as indicators of altruism (or
anything else).
Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes
happiness. Science, 319, 1687-1688.
Tom’s summary: Dunn and her collaborators are prolific in producing papers arguing that
donating money to others makes you happy. This is an early and important example. Read it critically!
Farsides, T. L. (2013). Super altruism. The Psychologist [probably the October issue].
Tom’s summary. Identifies various ways to be super-altruistic and suggests that no behaviour
can be considered super-altruistic in every conceivable way.
Farsides, T. L. (2007). The psychology of altruism. The Psychologist, 20, 474-477.
Tom’s summary: An overview of most of what I believe about altruism.
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.
Tom’s summary: Lists 7 motives for helping and 7 for not doing so.
Folbre, N., & Goodin, R. E. (2004). Revealing altruism. Review of Social Economy, 62, 1-25.
Tom’s summary: The best bits of this paper are not mentioned in its abstract. It’s key point,
for me, anyway, is that altruists want good things for those they care about .
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.
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Tom’s summary: Sometimes we help because we are altruistic and this can be tremendously
satisfying. Sometimes we help because we feel pressured into doing so and this can lead to feelings of
frustration and resentment, or worse.
Gilbert, D. T., & Silvera, D. H. (1996). Overhelping. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 70, 678-690.
Tom’s notes: Sometimes we ‘help’ to make ourselves look good, to make other’s look or feel
stupid, or both. I would argue that this is not “helping”!
Goetz, J. L., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010). Compassion: An evolutionary analysis
and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 136 (3), 351-374.
Tom’s summary: This was an “essential reading” when I set such things. It is a fantastically
long and detailed account of compassion which, I think, is either a form or a precursor of much
altruism.
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.
Tom’s summary: People who help because they want to benefit others (altruistically) can be
more motivated, persistent, and productive than people who help for other reasons, e.g., to get paid.
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.
Tom’s summary: Reminding altruistic people about the consequences of their actions for
others can strengthen their helping behaviours.
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.
Tom’s summary: When we care about others, their perceived fate impacts on our
psychological well-being.
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.
Tom’s summary: Altruistic helping can foster relationship quality. Costly instrumental helping
(e.g., to avoid an argument) can damage relationship quality.
Levine, R. V. (2003). The kindness of strangers. American Scientist, 91, 226-233.
Tom’s summary: This was an “essential reading” when I set such things. It is a very readable
and interesting account of cross-cultural differences in various types of helping. It also provides a
warning about how difficult it can be to identify an unproblematic behavioural measure of altruism.
McGuire, A. M. (1994). Helping behaviors in the natural environment: Dimensions and
correlates of helping. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 45-56.
Tom’s summary: An attempted typology/taxonomy of helping. Students’ self-reported helping
behaviours factored into casual helping, substantial personal helping, emotional helping, and
emergency helping. Evaluations of those behaviours factored into costs, benefits, and frequency of
helping
Nimmons, D., & Folkman, S. (1999). Other-sensitive motivation for safer-sex among gay
men: Expanding paradigms for HIV prevention. Aids and Behavior, 3, 313-324.
Tom’s summary: Altruism is one of several motivations for engaging in safer sex.
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.
Tom’s summary: An important but relatively neglected paper. High empathy can reduce
attempted helping appears to be making things worse for those people are trying to help.
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.
Tom’s summary: Altruistic and moral (here fairness) concerns can lead to similar outcomes,
e.g., helping behaviours. They are distinct motives, however, and can operate alone or interact.
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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.
Tom’s summary: An attempted typology/taxonomy of helping. Adds personal vs. anonymous
helping to Pearce-Amato’s (1980) planned vs. spontaneous; serious vs. not-serious; giving vs. doing
helping taxonomy.
Potential Readings – Focus on measurement
Aquino, K., & Reed, A. II. (2002). The self-importance of moral identity. Journal of
Personality & Social Psychology, 83, 1423-1440.
Tom’s summary: The six-item ‘internalisation’ sub-scale of their moral identity scale assesses
the extent to which people aspire to be someone who is “Caring, Compassionate, Fair, Friendly,
Generous, Helpful, Hardworking, Honest, and Kind”
Bélanger, J. J., Caouette,J., Sharvit, K., & Dugas, M. (2014). The psychology of martyrdom:
Making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of a cause. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 107(3):494-515.
Tom’s summary: Individual differences in martyrdom: readiness to sacrifice for a cause. Cf.
Altruism (towards a cause).
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.
Tom’s summary: Presents a 16-item measure of individual differences in people’s selfreported dispositional empathy/altruism/helpfulness. Not widely used other than by Caprara.
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.
Tom’s summary: Presents a 14-item measure of individual differences in people’s
“Communal orientation’, part of which is being empathic/altruistic/helpful.
Goldberg, L. R. (2008). International personality item pool: A scientific collaboratory for the
development of advanced measures of personality traits and other individual
differences. Retrieved July 11, 2008, from http://ipip.ori.org
Tom’s summary: Has free measures corresponding to those within the ‘Five Factor Model’ of
personality for self-reported ‘altruism’, ‘sympathy’, and ‘agreeableness’, The first of these, in
particular, seems to measure something close to concern for the welfare of others (altruism) in general.
Gurven, M., & Winking, J. (2008). Collective action in action: prosocial behavior in and out
of the laboratory. American Anthropologist, 110 (2), 179-190.
Tom’s summary: Finds that behaviour in economic games often used to measure ‘altruism’ is
a poor predictor of various real-world prosocial behaviors among Bolivian forager-horticulturalists.
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.
Tom’s summary: Includes and extends and slightly adapts Rushton et al.’s (1991) measure of
self-reported frequency of past helping. Its 56-items includes measures of work-place and risky
helping.
Murphy, R. O., & Ackermann, K. A. (2013). Social Value Orientation: Theoretical and
measurement issues in the study of social preferences. Personality and Social
Psychology Review, X (X), 1-29.
Tom’s summary: Provides a masterclass in many measurement issues and how key measures
are often woefully inadequate to underpin theoretical claims.
Romer, D., Gruder, C. L., & Lizzadro, T. (1986). A person-situation approach to altruistic
behavior. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 51, 1001-1012.
Tom’s summary: Attempts to categorise people into one of 4 helping types based on what they
say they would do in hypothetical situations. Much to be constructively critical about!
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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.
Tom’s summary: Fairly widely used. A 20-item measure of self-reported frequency of past
helping.
Sprecher, S., & Fehr, B. (2005). Compassionate love for close others and humanity. Journal
of Social and Personal Relationships, 22, 629-651.
Tom’s summary: Two similar 21-item self-report measures of “compassionate love”, either
for close others or for strangers/humanity. The latter is arguably close to being a measure of individual
differences in generalised trait altruism.
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WEEK 5 SEMINAR: GENES, EVOLUTION, AND
NEUROPHYSIOLOGY
There are several ways that understanding biology may help understanding people’s concern
for the positive welfare of others. Humans may have evolved various forms of or
predispositions towards such concern. Individual differences in such concern, or components
of it, may be genetic. Such concern may be triggered by (or result in) various neurological or
physiological events. In each case, our interest is whether understanding biological aspects of
altruism can help us understand and perhaps promote (and perhaps undermine) concern for
the positive welfare of others.[Note: Biological aspects will also be focal in other weeks. For
example, neurological and physiological aspects will be considered in Weeks 6 and 7; animal
altruism will be considered in Week 8; etc.]
Reading Guide
Do not try to read all of the works referenced below. Read whatever you want (from below or
elsewhere) that is topic-relevant until you find something you find interesting. Then read that
closely and critically. If you are giving an assessed ‘presentation’, consider whether what you
have read can be useful for that. If you are not, think about how you could explain – should
the opportunity arise - what is interesting about what you have read to others in your seminar
group or to the tutor. Repeat this process as time allows. I have provided brief annotations for
each reference to guide your initial reading. Don’t be afraid to read things not on the list at
all. In particular, there are some extremely good resources on the internet.
Where I would start reading from scratch would differ according to which area of biological
aspects of caring about the positive welfare of others (altruism) I wanted to focus on.
Contenders would include Okasha (2013) or West et al. (2007).
Essay Questions
1. What contribution can biological ‘altruism’ make to understanding concern for the
positive welfare of others (altruism)?
2. To what extent is concern for the positive welfare of others (altruism) determined by
genes?
Essay tip: Undergraduate essays should almost always include balanced assessment of cited
texts and research. They should also make an argument and reach a conclusion. Doing such
things helps to demonstrate your “critical thinking”.
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Potential readings – Focus on 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, 773789.
Tom’s summary: Victim need is taken seriously in everyday helping but virility and kinship is
more strongly favoured in life-and-death helping.
Clavien, C., & Chapuisat, M. (2013). Altruism across disciplines: One word, multiple
meanings. Biology & Philosophy, 28(1), 125-140.
Tom’s summary: Also a possible reading’ from Week 4.
Dawkins, R. (2006). The selfish gene (30th Anniversary Edition). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Tom’s summary: A must-read for anyone discussing the evolution of altruism. Dawkins’
argument is much misunderstood, including occasionally by Dawkins! That genes are ‘selfish’ is true
by definition but says nothing about (a) how much genes influence behaviour, or (b) whether
genetically-influenced behaviour is altruistic or aggressive, prosocial or antisocial, cooperative or
competitive, etc.
Eisler, R., & Levine, D. S. (2002). Nurture, nature, and caring: We are not prisoners of our
genes. Brain and Mind, 3, 9-52.
Tom’s summary: Previously an ‘essential reading’. Counters, with explanations, the claim that
“genetic” means determined”, “unchanging”, etc.
Gould, S. J. (1978). Sociobiology: The art of storytelling. New Scientist, 530-533.
Tom’s summary: In my view, no one should be allowed to present or write on evolutionary
theory until they have read Gould (who writes wonderfully). Here he lists some of the problems with
telling “Just-So” stories to ‘explain’ behavioural traits (let alone individual behaviours) using
evolutionary theory.
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.
Tom’s summary: One of a swath of popular papers on “are altruists attractive?” Here, at least,
the answer is “sometimes/in some circumstances/in interaction with other things”.
Korchmaros, J. D., & Kenny, D. A. (2006). An evolutionary and close relationship model of
helping. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 23, 21-43.
Tom’s summary: Genetic relatedness predicts familiarity, which predicts sense of closeness
and obligation, which predict a willingness to help. The key question is, “Is each ‘cause’ in this chain
the only cause of its effect?” If not, how necessary or useful is evolutionary theory in explaining caring
and helping?
Okasha, S. (2013). Biological altruism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopaedia of
Philosophy (Online Edition, Fall):
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/altruism-biological/
Tom’s summary: Among the many excellent points are these: Biological ‘altruism’ focuses on
consequences (often inferred), including loss of ‘fitness’ to the ‘helper’. You’ve got some work to do if
you want to argue that explanations of that phenomenon illuminates understanding of people’s
concerns for the positive welfare of others…
West, S. A., Griffin, A. S., & Gardner, A. (2007). Evolutionary explanations for cooperation.
Review. Current Biology, 17, R661 – R672.
Tom’s summary. West is the man to go to when seeking to understand evolution and altruism
within it. Although other and more recent papers of his are relevant and useful, this is a particularly
fine introduction and critique to evolutionary theory and altruism.
Wilson, D. S. (1992). On the relationship between evolutionary and psychological definitions
of altruism and selfishness. Biology and Philosophy, 7, 61-68.
Tom’s summary. Evolutionary altruism, based on fitness effects, can be proximately caused
by psychological selfishness or psychological altruism, each based on actor motives.
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Zuberbühler, K., Jenny, D., & Bshary, R. (2011). The predator deterrence function of primate
alarm calls. Ethology, 105 (6), 477-490.
Tom’s summary: Evolutionary “Just-so” stories often assume that certain behaviours are
genetically costly. They need to present evidence. Here, for example, it is claimed that alarm calls may
aid personal survival. Also, “alarm calls” are not a unitary phenomenon – explaining chimp warnings
may require different explanations than for leopard warnings. So, if you are attracted to evolutionary
accounts, be specific about what behaviour you are accounting for and in what ways it is evolutionarily
beneficial or costly (with evidence).
Possible readings – Focus on genetics, neurology, and physiology
Insel, T. R. (2010). The challenge of translation in social neuroscience: A review of oxytocin,
vasopressin, and affiliative behaviour. Neuron, 65 (6), 768-779.
Tom’s summary: Good on limits of neuroscience, genome mapping claims, and similar.
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.
Tom’s summary (from abstract only): The presence of oxytocin transmitter AVPR1a and its
corresponding receptor is associated with costly giving in the Dictator game.
Jarrett, C. (2014, August 5). What’s different about the brains of
heroes?http://www.wired.com/2014/08/hero-brains/
Tom’s summary: Emergency rescuers and non-rescuers in VR experience had different fMRI
scan patterns. Interpreting the meaning of the latter (and the validity of the former) nearly impossible.
Jarrett, C. (2013, December 13). A calm look at the most hyped concept in neuroscience –
mirror neurons. http://www.wired.com/2013/12/a-calm-look-at-the-most-hypedconcept-in-neuroscience-mirror-neurons/
Tom’s summary: Most research on monkeys; very limited and mixed on humans – even that
they exist. There are many different types of monkey mirror neurons, with very different patterns of
activation/suppression. The function is partly dependent on activity elsewhere in the brain that provides
meaning information – they exist and operate in networks. They are not the only route to otherunderstanding, let along compassion or concern.
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.
Tom’s summary (from abstract only): University students with the long version of the
arginine vasopressin 1a (AVPR1a) RS3 receptor (important for facilitative behaviour in voles)
allocated more money to the other in a Dictator game than did participants with the short version of
that gene. They also scored higher on benevolence and universalism Schwartz scales.
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.
Tom’s summary (from abstract only): Positive parenting predicts mothers’ ratings of
children’s prosocial behaviour – but only for kids with the 7-repeat allele of dopamine receptor D4.
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.
Tom’s summary (from abstract and secondary accounts only): Individuals with the GG allele
of an oxytocin receptor (rs53576 SNP) were judged as more altruistic than individuals with the AA
variant and more exhibiting of affiliative body language.
13
‘Neuroskeptic’ (2014, July 31). Functional neuroimaging’s Neymar Problem.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2014/07/31/neymar-zombiefootballer/#.U-35rPlF3lK
Tom’s summary: Scan differences across samples could indicate more (or less) of that area’s
function (e.g., more empathy) in one group or it could indicate less (or more) efficient functioning (e.g.,
having to work harder at being empathic). This is separate from reverse inference and holds even if we
know the unique one-to-one correspondence.
Poulin, M. J., Holman, E. A., & Buffone, A. (2012). The neurogenetics of nice: Receptor
genes for oxytocin and vasopressin interact with threat to predict prosocial
behavior. Psychological Science, 23(5), 446-452.doi:10.1177/0956797611428471
Tom’s summary (from abstract only): Under threat, different alleles of oxytocin and
vasopressin genes were associated with different amounts of charitable activities and civic duty.
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.
Tom’s summary (from abstract only): Participants with at least one dopamine Val (CONT
Val158Met SNP) allele donated twice as much of their earnings to a poor child than did those without.
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.
Tom’s summary (from abstract only): One variant of dopamine DRD4 receptor leads to
religion primes triggering prosociality. Other variant; no prime effect.
Strobel, A., Anacker, K., Enge, S., Reif, A., & Lesch, K. (2014). Dopamine D4 receptor gene
variation influences self-reported altruism. Personality and Individual
Differences, 60, S11.
Tom’s summary (from abstract only): People with the 7-repeat allele of dopamine D4 receptor
gene DRD4 reported less trait altruism than people without that allele, explaining about 2% of the
variance.
14
WEEK 6 SEMINAR: MIND-READING AND MORALITY
It is possible to think about another as a particular person or as an example of a larger
category, e.g., humanity. We might not want our friend Jane to suffer and/or we might think
that no person should suffer like Jane. It is possible to think of the former situation (being
concerned about the positive welfare of a specific other) as being an instance of altruism and
the latter (being concerned about the positive welfare of any human) being one of morality.
Is this topic we ask if understanding another’s situation – as a unique individual or as a
member of a group whose members deserve consideration – is necessary or sufficient for
altruism?
Various – sometimes overlapping – mechanisms and processes have been suggested as means
to understand specific other individuals’ situations. These include (cognitive) empathy,
emotional contagion, imagination, imitation/mimicking, inference, mentalising, mirrorneurons, perspective-taking, theory-of-mind, and projection. Such mechanisms and processes
are thought to help us understand either what the other person is experiencing and/or what we
would experience were we in the other person’s situation. In turn, such understanding is often
claimed to evoke concern for the other’s positive welfare. It is also sometimes claimed to be
necessary to evoke such concern.
Moral judgements (if that is the right word) stem from some mix of reasoning, intuition, and
feeling (if those are the right words). On reasoning, people learn to think about others’
welfare in particular ways and reach conclusions that certain things should or should not
happen. Utilitarianism (seeking the greatest happiness for the greatest number) and
deontology (provided by rules such as the 10 Commandments) are two common schemes that
guide people’s moral judgements in this way. However, people also sometimes ‘just feel’ or
‘immediately know’ (without prior reasoning) that something is (morally) right or wrong,
e.g., a tortured baby’s suffering. Moral reasoning may lead to concerns for others’ positive
welfare that are broader than concerns for the welfare of any given specific other.
Reading Guide
Do not try to read all of the works referenced below. Read whatever you want (from below or
elsewhere) that is topic-relevant until you find something you find interesting. Then read that
closely and critically. If you are giving an assessed ‘presentation’, consider whether what you
have read can be useful for that. If you are not, think about how you could explain – should
the opportunity arise - what is interesting about what you have read to others in your seminar
group or to the tutor. Repeat this process as time allows. I have provided brief annotations for
each reference to guide your initial reading. Don’t be afraid to read things not on the list at
all.
For those seeking to learn about other-understanding (‘cognitive empathy’ and the like),
Decety and Batson (2007) might be a good place to start. For those interested in moralunderstanding, Haidt et al. (1993) is a fun read to start with.
15
Essay Questions
1. What role does understanding a specific other-individual’s situation play in evoking
concern for the positive welfare of that other (altruism)?
2. When do people feel they SHOULD help others and what relation does this have with
concern for the positive welfare of others (altruism)?
Essay tip: Final-year undergraduate essays are not where you should be exploring
experimental creative writing methods. Structure your essays with a clear beginning
(Introduction), Middle (critically evaluated evidence and the development of your argument),
and End (your conclusion and considerations of its implications).
Possible readings – Focus on mind-reading
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.
Tom’s summary: When another is perceived as similar, we perspective-take by projecting self
into other. When they are dissimilar, we stereotype.
Artinger, F., Exadaktylos, F., Koppel, H., & Sääksvuori, L. (2014). In others' shoes: Do
individual differences in empathy and theory of mind shape social preferences? PloS
one, 9(4), e92844.
Tom’s summary: Empathy does not guarantee altruism: ToM promotes selfish and altruistic
goals.
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.
Tom’s summary: ‘Pain’ neurons light up when witnessing another’s pain – even among
people with no experience of pain! Other-understanding without shared experience.
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.
Tom’s summary: Can gain some appreciation and concern for other’s pain without pain
experience oneself, but such experience improves other-understanding and other-concern.
Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a
multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 113126.
Tom’s summary: There are a lot of ropey ‘empathy’ measures out there. This is one of the
best and most widely used. Has 7-item sub-scale of self-reported perspective taking, empathic concern
(cf. altruism), personal distress, and fantasy.
Decety, J., & Batson, C. D. (2007). Social neuroscience approaches to interpersonal
sensitivity. Social Neuroscience, 2, 151-157.
Tom’s summary: This would be an essential reading if I were setting such things. The first
part of the paper makes many really important distinctions among types of or routes to empathy.
Interpersonal knowledge includes basic ToM (knowing that others are experiencing something),
empathic accuracy (knowing what they are experiencing), and advanced ToM (knowing how we know
what others are experiencing, e.g., theory-theory vs. simulation). Interpersonal sensitivity includes
emotional contagion (‘feeling as’: ‘matching through catching’), sympathy/compassion/empathic
concern (‘feeling for’), and caring or concern for (e.g., altruism)
Diamond, D. (2008). Empathy and identification in von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 56 (3), 811-832.
16
Tom’s summary: The hero experiences embodied simulation at the couple’s caresses and from
there gets to empathy, then identification, then altruism.
Gerdes, K. E., Segal, E. A., & Lietz, C. A. (2010). Conceptualising and measuring empathy.
British Journal of Social Work, 40 (7), 2326-2343.
Tom’s summary: What I’d want to read after Decety and Batson (2007). A really impressive
and sensitive summary of the mess that is psychological (and neurological) investigations of ‘empathy’
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.
Tom’s summary: Perspective-taking is not universal. We are more willing and able to do it
with liked and/or similar others. We can intentionally curtail how much we do it, too.
Håkansson, J., & Montgomery, H. (2003). Empathy as an interpersonal phenomenon. Journal
of Social and Personal Relationships, 20, 267-284.
Tom’s summary: Makes the important point that ‘empathy’ is often the result of discussion
involving best-guesses and correction in a quest to achieve shared understanding.
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.
Tom’s summary: Employing ToM is an effortful process, requiring motivation and resources.
Preston, S. D., Hofelich, A. J., & Stansfield, R. B. (2013). The ethology of empathy: A
taxonomy of real-world targets of need and their effect on observers. Frontiers in
Human Neuroscience, 7.
Tom’s summary: People express need in various ways, including hiding it. This has
differential effects on observers’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Things are much more
complicated than victim pain → observation or shared feeling of pain → helping.
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.
Tom’s summary: We perspective-take (and judge!) by imagining how we would experience
and act in another’s situation and then adjusting for how we are different to them. Accuracy is badly
affected by judging when unemotional and under-estimating how important emotions are in situ. Cf.
New Year’s resolutions.
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.
Tom’s summary: A classic and so-far largely futile attempt to get psychologists to be clear
about other-understanding, concern for others’ positive welfare, and the relation between the two.
Zaki, J. (forthcoming). Empathy: A motivated account. Psychological Bulletin, Versions
available online - Search Google.
Tom’s summary: Empathy is sometimes automatic and sometimes the result of (possibly a
balance of potentially competing) motives.
Possible readings – Focus on morality
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.
Tom’s summary: There are many ways to be concerned about others’ welfare and each form
of concern is likely to be complex. This study suggests that sometimes emotions are evoked, sometimes
people need to decide what to do, and sometimes both.
Gray, H. M., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2007). Dimensions of mind perception. Science,
315, 619.
Tom’s summary: Previously an essential reading. Perceiving others’ ability to experience
confers moral rights and perceiving them to have agency confers moral responsibility.
17
Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Moytl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., && Ditto, P.H. (2013).
Moral Foundations Theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. Advances in
Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 55-130.
Tom’s summary: Claims that there are 5 universally available (but variably developed) sets of
moral intuitions: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and
Purity/Sanctity.
Greene, J., & Haidt, J. (2002). How (and where) does moral judgment work? Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 6 (12), 517-523.
Tom’s summary: Greene describes this as an “increasingly dated” review. One of the best
papers to start with to get an appreciation of where the bits of the brain are that have been identified as
associated with different functions.
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.
Tom’s summary: The classic text that brought ‘intuitionism’ to psychology.
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.
Tom’s summary: “Do not” rules (e.g., do no harm) are thought more unambiguous and
compulsory than are “Do” rules (e.g., do good).
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.
Tom’s summary: A reminder of how difficult neuro-data is to interpret. Compassionate
helping lights same area as altruistic killing. Area may signify “appropriateness” and/or ethical
decision making and/or empathy/ compassion/ altruism/ etc.
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
Tom’s summary: Can be conflict between urgent impulses and often difficult moral reasoning.
Packer, D. J. (2008). Identifying systematic disobedience in Milgram’s obedience
experiments: a meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3 (4),
301-304.
Tom’s summary: Disobedience came, if at all, as awareness of the victim’s (autonomy) rights
conflicted with obedience (to the experimenter/duty to science) obligations. It did not come from
awareness of the other’s pain, per se.
Stone, V. (2006). The moral dimension of human social intelligence: Domain-specific and
domain-general mechanisms. Philosophical Explorations, 9, 55-68.
Tom’s summary: Previously an essential reading. Argues that compassion and cruelty,
extremes of moral behaviour, are possible only because of uniquely human cognitive abilities, “layered
on top of phylogenetically older social capacities and emotions” (p. 56), i.e., empathy and aggression.
Uniquely human cognitive abilities include “language, which gives us the capacity for symbolic [and
abstract] representation” (p. 56); theory of mind, the capacity to infer the explicit content of others'
mental states; and executive function, the ability to choose among behavioural alternatives and selfregulate to achieve it..
Tetlock, P. E., & Mitchell, G. (2010). Situated social identities constrain morally defensible
choices: comment on Bennis, Medin, and Bartels. Perspectives on Psychological
Science, 5 (3), 206-208.
Tom’s summary: People make “moral judgements” for all sorts of reasons: utilitarian,
deontological, situation- and identity-appropriateness, accountability concerns, etc..
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.
Tom’s summary: People have differing conceptions of what is ‘good’ or ‘right’. Something
being ‘good’ in some way does not mean that it is good overall or necessarily be motivating.
18
WEEK 7 SEMINAR: PASSION AND EMOTION
Last week was primarily about how people understand others’ experiences and how they
think about morality. This week is primarily about people’s emotional reactions to others’
situations. This division may well be an artificial one.
Lots of emotions (and things claimed to be emotions) have the potential for motivating
helping behaviour. To make things manageable and not too daunting, I have focused on a
fairly narrow selection of such things in the module handbook. As always, feel free to study
anything relevant (i.e., other emotions) in your own reading.
One focus below is on texts that I think are particularly important in conveying my thoughts
on Batson’s so-called ‘Empathy-altruism hypothesis’. This has been enormously influential
in the psychology of altruism and has lead, I believe, to enormous amounts of confusion and
wasted effort.
Another, albeit lesser focus below is on guilt (and anticipated guilt – which is probably not an
emotion) and its relationship with concern for the positive welfare of another.
Finally, there is a bit of a rag-bag section loosely entitled “passion”. I have two reasons for
including it. First, it serves as a collecting-place for other emotions that might promote
helping behaviour or mediate the relationship between other things (e.g., moral concerns) and
helping behaviour, e.g., anger. Second, this section allows me to make explicit a very old idea
currently being re-discovered by psychology, i.e., that a combination of beliefs (e.g., moral
beliefs, beliefs about others’ actual and possible welfare, beliefs about one’s ability to
provide effective help, etc.) and passions (e.g., love, compassion, desire, etc.) may be
required for a full understanding of concerns for the positive welfare of others (altruism).
Reading Guide
Do not try to read all of the works referenced below. Read whatever you want (from below or
elsewhere) that is topic-relevant until you find something you find interesting. Then read that
closely and critically. If you are giving an assessed ‘presentation’, consider whether what you
have read can be useful for that. If you are not, think about how you could explain – should
the opportunity arise - what is interesting about what you have read to others in your seminar
group or to the tutor. Repeat this process as time allows. I have provided brief annotations for
each reference to guide your initial reading. Don’t be afraid to read things not on the list at
all.
Batson (1990) is an excellent ‘first-read’ when trying to understand the empathy-altruism
hypothesis, but make sure you read at least my ‘summaries’ of the other texts in the relevant
section below, too. Lindsay (2005) is an interesting and impressive read on anticipated guilt,
albeit less influential than the rather more questionable paper by Tangney (1991). Zakrzewski
(2012) is awesome 
19
Essay questions
1. To what extent is the ‘empathy’ in Batson’s ‘empathy-altruism’ hypothesis a form of
concern for the positive welfare of others (altruism)?
2. What are “moral” or “positive” emotions and what relation do they have to acting to
try to improve the welfare of others?
Essay tip: The conclusion of academic essays is rarely definitive. Even if not invited
explicitly in the essay title, try to specify to what extent your conclusion is valid. Be clear how
supportive the evidence is. Enumerate qualifications and caveats. Detail what would be
needed to make the conclusion stronger.
Additional reading – Focus on compassion (and the ‘empathy-altruism hypothesis’)
Batson, C. D. (1990). How social an animal? The human capacity for caring. American
Psychologist, 45, 336-346.
Tom’s summary: As Batson notes on p. 339, no one doubts that that feeling compassionate
towards needy others can promote attempts to help them. The crux of his incredibly influential
‘empathy-altruism hypothesis’ is rather that this is ‘altruistic’ helping rather than ‘egoistic. Be very
(constructively) critical!
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.
Tom’s summary: Most important is study 1, in which Batson demonstrates that people
concerned with the welfare of distressed others are pleased when that distress is alleviated, even when
those concerned did not provide the help. I think this reveals their true (personal) concern: improved
other welfare rather than a (‘selfless’) desire to help, per se. Cf. My summary of Batson and Weeks
(1996), just below, and Hepach et al (2013), in Week 8.
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.
Tom’s summary: This is an incredibly important milestone in the ‘development’ of Batson’s
‘Empathy-altruism hypothesis’ (EAH). It shows that caring about another’s welfare leads people to be
compassionate when they are distressed and sometimes to attempts to help them. This both suggests
both limits to the EAH (we may not feel compassionate towards or help those we don’t care about) and
extensions to it (we may appreciate the improved welfare of those we care about even when they are
not in distress, we are not feeling compassionate, and we are not the source of their improved welfare).
Personally, I think debate centred around this paper marked the beginning of the end for the EAH.
Batson, C. D., & Weeks, J. L. (1996). Mood effects of unsuccessful helping: Another test of
the empathy-altruism hypothesis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22,
148-157).
Tom’s summary: People concerned with others’ positive welfare continue to feel bad if the
others remain in distress, even if justified in not helping them. Cf. My summary of Batson et al. (1988).
Blair, J., Marsh, A. A., Finger, E., Blair, K. S., & Luo, J. (2006). Neuro-cognitive systems
involved in morality. Philosophical Explorations, 9, 13-27.
Tom’s summary: Big claim is that “relatively separable neuro-cognitive systems … mediate
particular types of [moral] reasoning” (p. 13), i.e., justice/fairness, social convention, disgust-based
morality, and care-based morality, with the latter having two forms, distress based and happiness based
(Fig. 1, p. 14). Activation of the amygdala and orbital frontal cortex is distinctive during altruistic
concern.
Bloom, P. (2014, August 26). Against empathy. Boston Review,
http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/paul-bloom-against-empathy
20
Tom’s summary. A consideration of the relative importance of ‘affect’ (‘empathy’) and
‘cognition’ (moral thinking’) in motivating attempted helping. Written for the general public and so
introductory only. With responses by Peter Singer, Sam Harris, and Sacha Baron-Cohen among others.
Goetz, J. L., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010). Compassion: An evolutionary analysis
and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 136 (3), 351-374.
Tom’s summary: Repeated from Week 4 because it is that good.
Schoenrade, P. A., Batson, C. D., Brandt, J. R., & Loud, R. E. (1986). Attachment,
accountability, and motivation to benefit another not in distress. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 557-563.
Tom’s summary: Makes the incredibly important and astonishingly neglected point that, if we
care about someone, we can be concerned with their positive welfare even when they are not in need.
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.
Tom’s summary: If you care about distressed others, you will in some circumstances want to
help them, even if in some ways it is easy not to do so.
Additional reading – Focus on guilt
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.
Tom’s summary: Guilt can motivate attempted (restorative) helping, sometimes at the expense
of the welfare of others one does not feel guilty towards. Note that other-concern for particular others
(altruism, unlike some forms of morality) is necessarily partial.
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.
Tom’s summary: In some situations, people can help others to avoid feelings of guilt they
anticipate if they do not.
Tangney, J. P. (1991). Moral affect: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 61, 598-607.
Tom’s summary: Guilt (defined as feeling bad because of a specific act) motivates concern
with reparation. Shame (defined as global feelings of low self-worth) leads to self-absorption and
undermines other-concern. Note: guilt and shame do not have to be defined this way and often aren’t!
Additional reading – Focus on passion
Algoe, S., & Haidt, J., (2009). Witnessing excellence in action: the other-praising emotions of
elevation, admiration, and gratitude. Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 105-127.
Tom’s summary: On his ‘Elevation’ webpage, Haidt reports this as being “the major
empirical article on the emotion of moral elevation.”
Loewenstein, G., & Small, D. A. (2007). The Scarecrow and the Tin Man: The vicissitudes of
human sympathy and caring. Review of General Psychology, 11, 112-126.
Tom’s summary: The philosopher Hume said something like, “Desire/passion without reason
is blind. Reason without passion is inert.” The current paper discusses these options – the scarecrow
and the tin man, respectively – with respect to motivating altruistic behaviour.
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.
21
Tom’s summary: Supporting others you care about and opposing those you disapprove of
arouses passion. Support and opposition is mediated by such passion. Supporting others you care about
is personally pleasing.
Nichols, S. (2001). Mindreading and the cognitive architecture underlying altruistic
motivation. Mind and Language, 16, 425-455.
Tom’s summary: We have the capacity to care without engaging in deep perspective-taking.
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.
Tom’s summary: Reviews neuropsychology to conclude that the callous are aware of but not
aroused by the distress of others (or themselves).
Vitaglione, G. D., & Barnett, M. A. (2003). Assessing a new dimension of empathy:
Empathic anger as a predictor of helping and punishing desires. Motivation and
Emotion, 27, 301-325.
Tom’s summary: People can get angry at the perceived mistreatment of others, even if those
others are not themselves angry (which suggests “vicarious” might be less misleading than “empathic”
as a prefix for “anger.) This anger can motivate attempts to help the slighted party and hostility towards
the perceived perpetrator.
Zakrzewski., V. (2012). An awesome way to make kids less self-absorbed. Greater Good, 28
November.
Tom’s summary: A summary of Keltner’s work on awe and includes links to awesome photos
and music.
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WEEK 8 SEMINAR: INDIVIDUAL & OTHER DIFFERENCES
This week, we can explore how people differ, or don’t, from each other, from animals, from
other ‘types’ of individual, at different ages, etc. The aim is to see whether the similarities
and differences found illuminate where concern for the positive welfare of others comes from
and the extent to which it can be fostered or inhibited, and how.
Reading Guide
Do not try to read all of the works referenced below. Read whatever you want (from below or
elsewhere) that is topic-relevant until you find something you find interesting. Then read that
closely and critically. If you are giving an assessed ‘presentation’, consider whether what you
have read can be useful for that. If you are not, think about how you could explain – should
the opportunity arise - what is interesting about what you have read to others in your seminar
group or to the tutor. Repeat this process as time allows. I have provided brief annotations for
each reference to guide your initial reading. Don’t be afraid to read things not on the list at
all.
This topic is too broad for me to sensibly provide suggestions for possible places to start.
Follow your interests!
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 concern
for the positive welfare of others (altruism)?
Essay tip: Edit your essay. If possible, do so multiple times. Adopt a “cutting” frame of
mind. Ask yourself, what will be lost if I take out this word, sentence, or paragraph?
Everything you take out gives you an opportunity to insert something more useful. Initial
drafts are just that. Editing is a key element of effective writing.
Possible readings – Comparative psychology
Bartal, I. B-A., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2011). Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats.
Science, 334 (6061), 1427-1430.
Tom’s summary: An instantly hugely influential study. The authors claim that a (relatively)
free rat will ‘free a trapped rat’ for the specific reason of alleviating its distress, even when (a) they
don’t get to interact with the liberated rat and (b) they end up ‘sharing’ chocolate they could have eaten
alone. Critics have argued with more or less every possible aspect of this claim. It is well worth looking
at some of the accompanying videos on YouTube. There is also an excellent commentary here:
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/animal-rights/empathy-and-altruism-rats
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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.
Tom’s summary: (Especially mother) Elephants are very sensitive to the distress of others
(especially that of calves, and especially their own calf) and remarkably capable of anticipating and
preventing such distress.
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
Tom’s summary: Wild chimps sometimes adopt and care for orphaned infants.
Brosnan, S. F. (2012). Introduction to ‘Justice in animals’. Social Justice Research. Special
issue: Justice in animals, 25(2), 109-121.
Tom’s summary: Makes a number of important points about the conditions under which
animals relative to humans are said to show evidence of concern for the welfare of others (altruism) or
concern for equity (morality). “Morgan’s cannon” is used a lot more in animal than human studies, i.e.,
ascribe the simplest possible mechanism to explain behaviour.
Brosnan, S. F., Houser, D., Leimgruber, K., Xiao, E., Chen, T., & De Waal, F. B. M. (2010).
Competing demands of prosociality and equity in monkeys. Evolution and Human
Behavior, 31(4), 279-288.
Tom’s summary: Capuchin monkeys chose options benefiting another relatively frequently,
even when the other received more than the self – but stopped doing so when the discrepancy got too
big.
Burkart, J. M., Allon, O., Amici, F., Fichtel, C, Finkenworth, C., Heschl, A. et al. (2014). The
evolutionary origin of human hyper-cooperation. Nature Communications, 5 (4747).
doi:10.1038/ncomms5747
Tom’s summary: Across 15 species, cooperative care of infants is the best predictor of nonrewarded helping behaviour
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
Tom’s summary: Pet dogs demonstrated behaviours consistent with compassion and
attempted comforting. Significantly more dogs looked at, approached and touched (often submissively)
apparently crying humans than did so for humming humans (potentially interesting to dogs) and all the
dogs ignored talking humans. Applying Morgan’s cannon (see Brosnan, 2012), this was interpreted as
emotional contagion (‘catching’ sadness) coupled with learned reward-seeking (vulnerable humans do
nice things for me if I approach like this!”).
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
Tom’s summary: Close to being a must-watch, if only to be amused at indignant monkey
behaviour.
Dingfelder, S. F. (2009). Nice by nature? APA Monitor, 40 (8), 58-61.
Tom’s summary: Very readable and up-to-date account of cooperation, fairness, and altruism
in current comparative research. In brief, lots of species share, and have a sense of personally receiving
injustice, but only humans notice and care when someone else has been treated with injustice. Human
altruism is also a little more reliable.
Sapolsky, R. M. (2007). Peace among primates. Greater Good, IV(2), 34-37.
Tom’s summary: Genes are only ‘for’ particular environments. Radically change the
environment and the behaviour can change dramatically. Kummer’s exchanged baboons learned local
customs within an hour. De Waal’s rhesus macaques learned and maintained reconciliation traits.
Sapolsky & Share’s baboon troop learned and sustained non-aggressive norms.
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,109(9), 3588-3592.
Tom’s summary: As they say in the abstract, “Chimpanzees can understand conspecifics'
goals and demonstrate cognitively advanced targeted helping as long as they are able to visually
evaluate their conspecifics' predicament. However, they will seldom help others without direct request
for help”
24
Yamamoto, S., & Takimoto, A. (2012). Empathy and fairness: Psychological mechanisms for
eliciting and maintaining prosociality and cooperation in primates. Social Justice
Research, 25(3), 233-255.
Tom’s summary: A really useful review of altruism research in primates. Two methods
commonly used. ‘Prosocial choice’ involves choosing an option where another benefits (1) more often
than the alternative option(s), and (ii) more often when the other is present rather than absent.
‘Targeted helping’ involves helping another who seeks to complete a task but requires something from
a helper to be able to do so. Concludes that “humans appear to be unique in their proactive targeted
helping” (p. 239).
Possible 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.
Tom’s summary: Infants understand others’ intentions from 9 months. They also develop
appreciation and more positive responses (e.g., tolerance) to benign (rather than malicious) intentions
that result in personally disadvantageous outcomes.
Freund, A. M., & Blanchard-Fields, F. (2013). Age-related differences in altruism across
adulthood: Making personal financial gain versus contributing to the public good.
Developmental Psychology, 50(4), 1125-1136.
Tom’s summary: Presents evidence of diminishing concern with materialism and increasing
concern for self-transcendence with age, but read critically.
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.
Tom’s summary: Among 2-year-olds, high empathy can be associated with highaggressiveness, but the aggressive are not too ‘bothered’ by others’ distress. Cf ‘Power’ section of in
Week 9.
Hepach, R., Vaish, A., & Tomasello, M. (2013). A new look at children’s prosocial
motivation. Infancy, 18 (1), 67-90.
Tom’s summary: Reviews three studies to argue that young children sometimes help because
they want to, especially if the other is in distress, and their motivation is to bring about improvements
in the other’s welfare (rather than necessarily be the person bringing that about). As always, read
critically.
Martin, A., & Olson, K. R. (2013). When kids know better: Paternalistic helping in 3-yearold children. Developmental Psychology, 49(11), 2071.
Tom’s summary: A fabulous set of studies. Three year-olds refuse requests for objects that,
unbeknownst to the adult requester, will not help them fulfil their apparent task (e.g., a cup that leaks).
Paulus, M. (2014). The emergence of prosocial behavior: Why do infants and toddlers help,
comfort, and share? Child Development Perspectives, 8(2), 77-81.
Shaw, A., Montinari, N., Piovesan, M., Olson, K. R., Gino, F., & Norton, M. I. (2014).
Children develop a veil of fairness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,
143(1), 363-375.
Tom’s summary: As children age, they show an increased concern and ability to appear
concerned with fairness, even when seeking personal benefit. Cf. Batson’s work on ‘moral hypocrisy’
and Smith et al. (2013) just below.
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.
Tom’s summary: Older people, as they mature, increasingly associate altruistic and moral
behaviour with autonomy.
Smith, C. E., Blake, P. R., & Harris, P. L. (2013). I should but I won’t: Why young children
endorse norms of fair sharing but do not follow them. PloS one,8(3), e59510.
25
Tom’s summary: Knowing one ‘ought’ (or that someone else will benefit) is not always
reason enough to do it, especially for the very young. Cf. Batson’s work on ‘moral hypocrisy’ and
Shaw et al. (2014) just above.
Thompson, C., Barresi, J., & Moore, C. (1997). The development of future-oriented prudence
and altruism in preschoolers. Cognitive Development, 12, 199-212.
Tom’s summary: Helping behaviour requires a sense that one possible future is better than
another for someone else, just as prudence requires a sense that one possible future is better than
another for the (future) self. Development of this sense and an ability (and willingness) to act on it
seems to normally develop between ages 3 and 4.
Thompson, R. A., & Newton, E. K. (2013). Baby altruists? Examining the complexity of
prosocial motivation in young children. Infancy,18 (1), 120-133.
Tom’s summary: Says there is not enough evidence to support the claims of people like
Bloom or Tomasello that babies are “born altruistic”. Argus that babies do have various innate
preferences and abilities but that these are critically shaped by variable early experiences.
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.
Tom’s summary: Toddlers reacted with prosocial behaviour, mediated by expressions of
concern, when they saw an adult harmed but not express distress.
Warneken, F., Hare, B., Melis, A.P., Hanus, D., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Spontaneous
altruism by chimpanzees and young children. PLoS Biology, 5, e184, 1414.
Tom’s summary: As always with this sort of study, the videos are incredibly useful (and
fascinating and fun) and must be watched. What follows is part of my notes to myself about Study 1:
“The big picture for chimps seems to be that they will pass non-food to people about 42% of the time
upon request. The big question is whether one wants to call this “helping”.... The big picture for infants
seems to be that (when involved in an attractive game) they will help about one time in five with no
reaching and about half the time when the need is clearer – irrespective of (further) rewards. More
importantly, it looks much more like helping in response to indications of need/desire, rather than
obliging in response to direct requests.”
Warneken, F.& Tomasello, M. (2007). Helping and cooperation at 14 months of age. Infancy,
11, 271-294.
Tom’s summary: Kids aged just over a year old more or less reliably handed out-of-reach
objects to others needing them to complete a task but did not help in situations with presumably more
complex goals. Of most interest to me are the reasons the authors give for ruling out the possibility that
the kids here were simply ‘passing an object’, not deliberately ‘helping in goal-directed behaviour’.
These reasons seem to me to speak directly to the chimp behaviour in Warneken, F.& Tomasello, M.
(2006).
Warneken, F.& Tomasello, M. (2006). Altruistic helping in human infants and young
chimpanzees. Science, 311, 1301-1303.
Tom’s summary: 18-month old kids spontaneously help. This allegedly demonstrates ToM
and desires to improve the welfare of others (altruistically motivated action). The videos are very much
a must-watch.
Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Varieties of altruism in children and chimpanzees.
Trends in Cognitive Science, 13 (9), 397-402.
Tom’s summary: An easy but very good review piece on various aspects of lots of interesting stuff.
Williams. C, & Bybee, J. (1994). What do children feel guilty about? Developmental and
gender differences. Developmental Psychology, 30, 617-623.
Tom’s summary: Guilt for situations not of one’s making declines with age; but guilt for
inappropriate inaction, thinking or inconsideration increases. There are also growing gender
differences: males feel increasing guilt for actions; females for omissions.
Zahn-Waxler, C., Radke-Yarrow, M., Wagner, E., & Chapman, M. (1992). Development of
concern for others. Developmental Psychology, 28, 126-136.
Tom’s summary: Indicators of concern and helping behaviours become increasingly
associated from 1 year old. Two year olds show concern for and do a lot to try to help distressed others.
26
Possible readings – Personality (‘individual’) differences
Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., & Son, C. (2000). Honesty as the sixth factor of personality:
Correlations with Machiavellianism, primary psychopathy, and social adroitness.
European Journal of Personality, 14, 359-368.
Tom’s summary: This was a seminar reading on the second year module, Individuals and
Groups. It shows that the Agreeableness factor of the Five Factor Model of Personality (FFM)
essentially splits into two: Honesty-Humility and (and more narrowly defined) Agreeableness. Both
correlate with IPIP altruism and IPIP sympathy (see Week 4) and the latter is close to being a measure
of trait generalised concern for the possible welfare of others.
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.
Tom’s summary: The main finding, for me, is that agreeableness and self-transcendence
promote prosociality only to the extent that people have “empathic self-efficacy beliefs. To be
voluntarily helpful, you have to want to be and believe you can.
Cloninger, C. R., Svrakic, D. M. & Przybeck, T. R. (1993).A psychobiological model of
temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50, 975 –990.
Tom’s summary: Most ‘personality’ theory in psychology is now dominated by the Five
Factor Model. Cloninger provides an important alternative or complement. This model suggests that
three dimensions of character develop in adulthood: self-directedness, cooperativeness, and selftranscendence. The relevance to the current topic should be clear.
Cohen, T. R., Panter, A. T., Turan, N., Morse, L. A., & Kim, Y. (in press). Moral character in
the workplace. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2428540
Tom’s summary: Altruism is part of a larger coherent set of stable characteristics in people of
high moral character (which can be measured using self-report).
Eisenberg, N., Carlo, G., Murphy, B. C., & van Court, P. (1995). Prosocial development in
late adolescence: A longitudinal study. Child Development, 66, 1179-1197.
Tom’s summary: A coherent complex of prosocial personality (or not) becomes increasing
marked with increasing age.
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.
Tom’s summary: Stability in network of characteristics from aged 4-5 to adulthood.
Spontaneous sharing by preschoolers (at least temporarily giving something he or she was playing with
to someone else, without being asked to) correlated with a constellation of prosocial attributes
(particularly sympathy and prosocial behaviour) across the next 17 years.
Possible 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.
Tom’s summary: Relative to the other gender, men are typically socialised to valued being
agentic (doers) over being communal (carers), with the opposite for women.
Eagly, A., & Crowley, M. (1986). Gender and helping behaviour: A meta-analytic review.
Psychological Bulletin, 100, 283-308.
Tom’s summary: Although there are some reliable sex/gender differences in helping, such
differences tend to be small and inconsistent across studies and largely explicable in terms of
conformity to gendered societal expectations.
27
Goldenberg, M. (1996). Lessons learned from gentle heroism: Women’s Holocaust
narratives. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 548, 7893.
Tom’s summary: Memoirs suggest sex/gender differences during the holocaust, with women
exemplifying caring and cooperation.
Hyde, J. S. (2007). New directions in the study of gender similarities and differences. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 16(5), 259-263.
Tom’s summary: Examination of multiple meta-analyses support Eagly’s earlier work. Gender
differences in helping are marked to the extent that there are (a) strongly gendered societal
expectations, and (b) witnesses. Remove either and sex/gender differences can plummet.
Taylor, S. E., Klein, L. C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T.L., Gurung, P. A. R., & Updegraff, J.
A. (2000). Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: Tend-and-befriend, not fightor-flight. Psychological Review, 107, 411-429.
Tom’s summary:Everyone responds to stress with fight-or-flight physiologically, but women
respond to that behaviourally with tend-and-befriend, largely because of their hormones.
Possible readings – Psychopathology: Autism
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.
Tom’s summary: People with autism (and to an extent men) lack ‘empathy’, an amalgam of
perspective-taking, personal distress when others’ suffering, and compassion for their suffering.
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.
Tom’s summary: Compared to several reference groups, 3-4 year-old kids with autism are
impaired on social orientation, joint attention, and attention to others’ distress.
Hirvelä, S., & Helkama, K. (2011). Empathy, values, morality and Asperger’s
syndrome. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 52, 560-572.
Tom’s summary: People with autism value morals ‘despite’ poor perspective taking and affect
recognition.
Hobson, J.A., Harris, R., García-Pérez, R., & Hobson, R. P. (2009). Anticipatory concern: a
study in autism. Developmental Science, 12 (2), 249-263.
Tom’s summary: Kids with autism showed less concern than typically developing kids when
an adult had a picture (rather than blank paper) ripped by someone else but had not yet shown any
distress. Autism interferes with inference as well with affect recognition, awareness of other minds, etc.
Mathersul, D., McDonald, S., & Rushby, J. A. (2013). Understanding advanced theory of
mind and empathy in high-functioning adults with autism spectrum disorder. Journal
of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 35(6), 655-668.
Tom’s summary: .
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.
Tom’s summary: In judging moral acts, people with autism rely more heavily than typically
developing people on negative consequences and less heavily on actors’ intentions.
Possible readings – Psychopathology: Psychopathy
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.
28
Tom’s summary: Like the title says!
Gray, K., Jenkins, A., Heberlein, A., & Wegner, D. (2010). Distortions of mind perception in
psychopathology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (2), 477479.
Tom’s summary: Relative to others, people with autism have reduced ability to fully
appreciate that others have goals (agency) and people with psychopathy have reduced ability to fully
appreciate others’ subjective experiences.
Schaich Borg, J., Kahn, R. E., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Kurzban, R., Robinson, P. H., &
Kiehl, K. A. (2013). Subcomponents of psychopathy have opposing correlations with
punishment judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(4), 667.
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.
Tom’s summary: Affective-impersonal aspects of psychopathy traits in the general public are
associated with attenuated emotional reactions and rapid decision-making in moral dilemmas. Cf.
Claims of greater ‘emotional regulation’ among certain people.
White, B. A. (2014). Who cares when nobody is watching? Psychopathic traits and empathy
in prosocial behaviors. Personality and Individual Differences, 56, 116-121.
Tom’s summary: Affective callousness aspect of psychopathy associated with greater
(empathy-mediated) public helping but lesser (empathy-mediated) private helping
Zaki, J. (2013, August 9). Empathy as a choice 2: Autism and psychopathy. Scientific
American’s The Moral Universe [Web Log Post]. Retrieved from
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/moral-universe/2013/08/09/empathy-as-a-choicepart-2-autism-and-psychopathy/Tom’s summary: Explores the possibility that people with
autism or psychopathy may have more ability to understand and care about others’ mental states than is
commonly claimed – but either do not spontaneously do so or actively choose not to, perhaps because
doing so is or has been relatively unrewarding or punishing. Cites key supportive studies.
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WEEK 9 SEMINAR: TRIGGERS & INTERVENTION
This week we will consider situational factors associated with triggering caring for the
positive welfare of others, helping, or both. Often, this will be in the context of interventions
to do this deliberately. Broadly, such factors tend to be considered within ‘Social
Psychology’ and related disciplines.
There are many, many things that can promote altruism and similar phenomena in specific
circumstances. Some of these are at least implied by material considered earlier in this
module, e.g., administering drugs. Those will (mostly) not be reconsidered this week. Other
things will be at least implied by material that will to be considered later in the module, e.g.,
things which prevent or reduce depersonalisation or dehumanisation. Again, those will
(mostly) not be considered this week.
The sub-headings below give only one organisation of illustrative triggers of altruism. There
are many, many more triggers and many different ways they could be organised. Subheadings I could have included but have not include: asking, contact, media, meditation,
mimicking, modelling, need, pledging, self-affirmation, threat... As always, use the readings
given below if and how you want to.
Reading Guide
Do not try to read all of the works referenced below. Read whatever you want (from below or
elsewhere) that is topic-relevant until you find something you find interesting. Then read that
closely and critically. If you are giving an assessed ‘presentation’, consider whether what you
have read can be useful for that. If you are not, think about how you could explain – should
the opportunity arise - what is interesting about what you have read to others in your seminar
group or to the tutor. Repeat this process as time allows. I have provided brief annotations for
each reference to guide your initial reading. Don’t be afraid to read things not on the list at
all.
Essay Questions
1. To what extent and how can concern for the positive welfare of others (altruism) be
deliberate elicited by ‘social engineers’?
2. Critically compare and contrast any two or more methods of eliciting concern for the
positive welfare of others (altruism).
Essay tip: Make things as easy as possible for your reader. Do not make them guess what
you are arguing, how strong your evidence is, what the implications are of your essay, etc.
Assume the reader is interested but quite possibly tired and has read multiple essays on
similar topics. Consider it your responsibility to make sure that what you are saying is
crystal clear. Consider it your job to make sure that the reader misses and misunderstands
nothing important.
30
Additional reading - Categorisation
Dovidio, J. F., Gaertner, S. L., Validzic, A., Matoka, K., Johnson, B., & Frazier, S. (1997).
Extending the benefits of recategorization: Evaluations, self-disclosure, and helping.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33, 401-420.
Tom’s summary: Deciding who to exclude leads to broader concern than deciding who to
include, with lasting effects.
Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. F., Banker, B. S., Houlette, M., Johnson, K. M., & McGlynn, E.
A. (2000). Reducing intergroup conflict: From superordinate goals to
decategorization, recategorization, and mutual differentiation. Group Dynamics,4, 98114.
Tom’s summary: All three categorization strategies can work (at different times).
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.
Tom’s summary: Common ingroup categorization can improve intergroup attitudes and
behaviour, including helping behaviour.
Leonardelli, G. J., & Toh, S. M. (2011). Perceiving expatriate coworkers as foreigners
encourages aid: Social categorization and procedural justice together improve
intergroup cooperation and dual identity. Psychological Science, 22 (1), 110-7.
Tom’s summary: Two points: (1) Multiple routes to any outcome, e.g., justice or solidarity to
decent treatment. (2) Common in-group categorisation is not the only route to decent attitudes (etc.)
and intergroup categorisation and identity can be accompanied by decent attitudes (etc.).
Additional reading - Disinhibition
Hirsh, J. B., Galinsky, A. D., & Zhong, C. B. (2011). Drunk, powerful, and in the dark: How
general processes of disinhibition produce both prosocial and antisocial behavior.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6 (5), 415-427.
Tom’s summary: Disinhibition facilitates “the most salient response in any given situation”
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.
Tom’s summary: Reduced self-regulation increases conformity to descriptive norms but
reduces conformity to prescriptive norms.
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.
Tom’s summary: Remembering a time when one acted without inhibition makes one feel bad
about being inhibited from acting morally and more willing to stand up for what’s right
Additional reading – Framing and Norms
Batson, C. D., & Moran, T. (1999). Empathy-induced altruism in a prisoner's dilemma.
European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 909-924.
Tom’s summary: “Business frame” yields less cooperation in Prisoner’s Dilemma than does
“social exchange” frame – but not among empathic.
31
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.
Tom’s summary: In-group norms can promote intergroup altruism.
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.
Tom’s summary: Labelling a PD game as the “Community Game” vs. the “Wall Street Game”
had huge effects.
Schultz, P. W., Nolan, J. M., Cialdini, R. B., Goldstein, N. J., & Griskevicius, V. (2007). The
constructive, destructive, and reconstructive power of social norms. Psychological
Science, 18 (5), 429-434.
Tom’s summary: We comply to norms we approve of but (a) can react against those we don’t,
and (b) can use as comparative information to behave less well than before.
Additional reading – Mood manipulation
Batson, C. D., Turk, C. L., Shaw, L. L., & Klein, T. R. (1995). Information function of
empathic emotion: Learning that we value the other's welfare. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 68, 300-313.
Tom’s summary: Sympathy promotes altruistic concern that can outlast the emotion.
Cotte, J., Coulter, R. A., & Moore, M. (2005). Enhancing or disrupting guilt: The role of ad
credibility and perceived manipulative intent. Journal of Business Research, 58(3),
361-368.
Tom’s summary: Guilt ads can work but will backfire if thought manipulative.
Izard, C. E. (2002). Translating emotion theory and research into preventive interventions.
Psychological Bulletin, 128, 796-824.
Tom’s summary: People benefit from positive emotions, helped by others’ nurturance. Some
negative emotions can result from and lead to altruism and related processes. Appropriate emotional
expression and self-regulation is optimal. Automatic and controlled processes need separate attention.
Vile childhoods lead to long-term damage. Emotions develop before cognitions (evolutionarily and
developmentally) and therefore need to be taken very seriously.
Additional reading - Miscellaneous
Arieli, S., Grant, A. M., & Sagiv, L. (2014). Convincing yourself to care about others: An
intervention for enhancing benevolence values. Journal of Personality, 82(1), 15-24.
Tom’s summary: Emphasizing the importance of helping others can be persuasive and
effective.
Ersner-Hershfield, H., Galinsky, A. D., Kray, L. J., & King, B. G. (2010). Company, country,
connections: Counterfactual origins increase organizational commitment, patriotism,
and social investment. Psychological Science, 21 (10), 1479-1486.
Tom’s summary: Thinking how (valued?) things (people, organisations, etc.) might have
‘turned out differently’ increases commitment.
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.
Tom’s summary: “DONATING=LOVING” sign triggers more money donated than
“DONATING=HELPING”. But why...?
Rosenberg, R. S., Baughman, S. L., & Bailenson, J. N. (2013). Virtual superheroes: Using
superpowers in virtual reality to encourage prosocial behavior. PLOS ONE, 8(1),
e55003.
32
Tom’s summary: Relative to playing a helicopter passenger on a rescue mission, playing
Superman on a rescue mission in a virtual reality game resulted in more subsequent helping.
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.
Tom’s summary: “God” (and other moral concepts) elicit greater fund allocation to strangers.
Vohs, K. D., Mead, N. L., & Goode, M. R. (2006). The psychological consequences of
money. Science, 314, 1154-1156.
Tom’s summary: Money primes make people more isolated and less prosocial.
33
WEEK 10 SEMINAR: BARRIERS & IMPEDIMENTS
Altruism may be absent under two circumstances: when concern for the positive welfare of
others is not present or when its presence is silenced or overridden by contrary forces. These
are the foci of attention this week.
There are many such barriers and impediments. Several have been considered earlier in the
module or are implicit in the topics covered, e.g., lack of concern stemming from failures to
appreciate or care about others’ welfare, perhaps because of egocentrism, ethnocentrism, or
similar. These will not be explicitly considered again here.
The sub-headings below give only one organisation of illustrative barriers and impediments.
There are many, many more and they could be organised in different ways. As always, use
the readings given how and if you want to.
Reading Guide
Do not try to read all of the works referenced below. Read whatever you want (from below or
elsewhere) that is topic-relevant until you find something you find interesting. Then read that
closely and critically. If you are giving an assessed ‘presentation’, consider whether what you
have read can be useful for that. If you are not, think about how you could explain – should
the opportunity arise - what is interesting about what you have read to others in your seminar
group or to the tutor. Repeat this process as time allows. I have provided brief annotations for
each reference to guide your initial reading. Don’t be afraid to read things not on the list at
all.
Essay Questions
1. How could unresponsive bystanders be encouraged to help?
2. Evaluate evidence that people want to be ‘altruistic enough’; no more, no less.
Essay tip: Take special care with the final sentence of your introduction (e.g., “In this essay
I will argue that...”) and the first sentence of every paragraph after that. Make sure that the
main elements of your argument come across if someone were to read only these parts of
your essay!
Possible readings – General
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.
Tom’s summary: Best read as a review of ‘barriers’ to helping or excuses for not doing so.
34
Edgren, H. (Ed.) (2012). Looking at the onlookers and bystanders: Interdisciplinary
approaches to the causes and consequences of passivity. Periodical Booklet #
13:2012. The Living History Forum
http://www.levandehistoria.se/sites/default/files/material_file/skriftserie_13_looking_
at_the_onlookers_and_bystanders.pdf
Tom’s summary: An edited book, available for free online, with a number of important
contributors, including Kahn’s “Norm shifting and bystander intervention” and Slovic’s “If I look at
the mass...”. Probably an excellent place to start reading.
Possible readings – Conflicting concerns
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.
Tom’s summary: Demonstrates that altruism can cause deviations from justice. Implication is
that people can have all sorts of sometimes conflicting concerns, with unbridled ‘self-interest’ being
only one of them.
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
Tom’s summary: Social [outcome] preferences (and the balance between them) change across
situations and agency/autonomy/control is one factor that can have this effect.
Hui, C. M., Finkel, E. J., Fitzsimons, G. M., Kumashiro, M., & Hofmann, W. (2013). The
Manhattan Effect: When relationship commitment fails to promote support for
partners’ interests. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(4), 546-70.
Tom’s summary: Commitment to relationship can over-ride commitment to valued others’
welfare.
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.
Tom’s summary: Sometimes we feel the need to harm others ‘in the greater good’ (just as we
sometimes accept personal harm for the same reason). The general point is again that we have multiple
motives that sometimes conflict. Cf., Batson, 1994 – or Freud! Sometimes we feel it is necessary not to
psychologically distance ourselves from the harm we are doing.
Possible readings – Overjustification
Batson, C. D., Coke, J. S., Jasnoski, M. L., & Hanson, M. (1978). Buying kindness: Effect of
an intrinsic incentive for helping on perceived altruism. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 4, 86-91.
Tom’s summary: Promised payment undermines self-attribution of altruism for engaging in
that act (but unexpected payment does not).
Batson, C. D., Fultz, J., Schoenrade, P. A., & Paduano, A. (1987). Critical self-reflection and
self-perceived altruism: When self-reward fails. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 53, 594-602.
Tom’s summary: Wondering about motives can undermine self-attributions of altruism (or
moral conduct more generally), especially (but not exclusively) when self-rewards for helping are
apparent.
Batson, C. D., Harris, A. C., McCaul, K. D., Davis, M., & Schmidt, T. (1979). Compassion
or compliance: Alternative dispositional attributions for one’s helping behavior.
Social Psychology Quarterly, 42, 405-409.
35
Tom’s summary: Self-attributions of altruistic helping promote subsequent helping while selfattributions of compliant helping undermine subsequent helping.
Bénabou, R., & Tirole, J. (2006). Incentives and prosocial behavior. American Economic
Review, 96, 1652-1678.
Tom’s summary: Factors that undermine self-attributions of altruism make subsequent
altruistic helping less likely.
Gneezy, U., & Rustichini, A. (2000). A fine is a price. The Journal of Legal Studies, 29 (1),
1-17.
Tom’s summary: Fines provided an incentive – not a deterrence - to pick up kids late,
transforming consideration/reputation concerns into an acceptable contract. Cf. BBC (2014, August 8).
'Sharp rise' in parental fines for term-time holidays. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-28687541
Kamenica, E. (2012). Behavioral economics and psychology of incentives. Annual Review of
Economics, 4(1), 427-452.
Tom’s summary: Rewards and promised rewards have complicated effects depending on
initial motivation and how the rewards are interpreted, e.g., as appreciation or payment.
Possible readings – Constraints, distractions, and complacency
Anderson, C. J. (2003). The psychology of doing nothing: Forms of decision avoidance result
from reason and emotion. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 139-167. [Student text]
Tom’s summary: When things are tricky can put off making or acting on a decision, prefer
inaction to (potentially worse) action, or just get overwhelmed.
Oceja, L., Ambrona, T., López-Pérez, B., Salgado, S., & Villegas, M. (2010). When the
victim is one among others: Empathy, awareness of others and motivational
ambivalence. Motivation and Emotion, 34 (2), 110-119.
Tom’s summary: Conflicting motives may undermine the power of each of them.
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.
Tom's summary: Salient moral rules promote morality.
Zhou, X., Zheng, L., Zhou, L., & Guo, N. (2009). The act of rejection reduces the desire to
reconnect: Evidence for a cognitive dissonance account. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 45 (1), 45-50.
Tom’s summary: Rejecting others for dodgy reasons leads to rationalisation and a reduced
inclination to reconnect, i.e., bystanding self-perpetuates.
Possible readings – Self-interest protection and pursuit
Berman, J.Z., & Small, D. A. (2012). Self-interest without selfishness: The hedonic benefit of
imposed self-interest. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1193-1199.
Tom’s summary: Permission to be selfish can promote other-disregarding self-interest.
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.
Tom’s summary: People sometimes strategically reduce the compassion they feel, e.g., for
self-protection.
MacAskill, W. (2014, August 18). The cold, hard truth about the ice bucket challenge.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/08/18/comment-cold-hard-truth-about-icebucket-challenge
36
Tom’s summary: If looking good more important than doing/being good, potentially trivial
public acts will seem enough, potentially undermining genuine altruism and commitment.
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.
Tom’s summary: Resenting those who do the right thing can be easier than emulating them.
Cf. Reactions to public figures who try to do good.
Newman, G. E., & Cain, D. M. (2014). Tainted altruism: When doing some good is evaluated
as worse than doing no good at all. Psychological Science,25(3), 648-655.
Tom’s summary: Charitable behaviour that is also seen as self-beneficial is considered worse
than not behaving charitably.
Possible readings – Other-interest disregard: Power
Chen, S., Lee-Chai, A. Y., & Bargh, J. A. (2001). Relationship orientation as moderator of
the effects of social power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 183187.
Tom’s summary: Priming ‘power’ enhances enactment of existing
goals/preferences/tendencies.
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.
Tom’s summary: power helps the altruistic empathise
Kraus, M. W., Piff, P. K., Mendoza-Denton, R., Rheinschmidt, M. L., & Keltner, D. (2012).
Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor.
Psychological Review, 119 (3), 546-572.
Tom’s summary: Review of class/wealth literature.
Piff, P. K., Kraus, M. W., Côté, S., Cheng, B. H., & Keltner, D. (2010). Having less, giving
more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 99 (5), 771-784.
Tom’s summary: ‘Lower class’ more ‘moral’ than ‘upper-class’, in part because of (a)
necessity, and (b) what they think is appropriate.
Piff, P. K., Stancato, D. M., Côte, S., Mendoza-Denton, R., & Keltner, D. (2012). Higher
social class predicts increased unethical behaviour. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 109 (11), 4086-4091.
Tom’s summary: ‘Upper-class’ more ‘immoral’ than ‘lower-class’, in part because they don’t
think it immoral.
Stellar, J.E., Manzo, V.M., Kraus, M.W., & Keltner, D. (2012). Class and compassion:
Socioeconomic factors predict responses to suffering. Emotion, 12 (3), 449-459.
Tom’s summary: ‘Lower-class’ more attuned to and caring of others’ suffering than ‘upperclass’
Trautmann, S. T., van de Kuilen, G., & Zeckhauser, R. J. (2013). Social class and (un) ethical
behaviour: A framework, with evidence from a large population sample. Perspectives
on Psychological Science, 8(5), 487-497.doi: 10.1177/1745691613491272
Tom’s summary: The ‘classes’ (variously conceived) differ in moral values, costs and benefits
of various actions, social orientation.
van Kleef, G. A., Oveis, C., van der Löwe, I., LuoKogan, A., Goetz, J., & Keltner, D. (2009).
Power, distress, and compassion: Turning a blind eye to the suffering of others.
Psychological Science, 19 (12), 1315-1322.
Tom’s summary: ‘Upper-class’ less disturbed and influenced by others’ suffering than ‘lowerclass’. Cf Gill and Calkins (2003), in Week 8.
37
Possible readings – Other-interest derogation: Prejudice
Andrighetto, L., Baldissarri, C., Lattanzio, S., Loughnan, S., &Volpato, C. (2014).
Human‐itarian aid? Two forms of dehumanization and willingness to help after
natural disasters. British Journal of Social Psychology. doi:10.1111/bjso.12066
Tom’s summary: Different nationals in dire need dehumanised differently, both leading to
reduced help, mediated by reduced empathy.
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.
Tom’s summary: Stereotype-endorsing media images elicited (negative) stereotypes which
reduced empathy and increased support of harsh treatment
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.
Tom’s summary: Aversion to blacks among whites increases as level of emergency increases,
leading to relatively lower judgements of emergency severity, felt responsibility for helping, and speed
and quality of helping
38
WEEK 11 SEMINAR: SUSTAINED ALTRUISM
The big question this week is whether enduring ad relatively inclusive commitment to the
positive welfare of others be deliberated promoted, in others and in ourselves?” What
controllable events and processes tend to make people more or less routinely altruistic?
(Don’t forget that there is lots of relevant material to this topic throughout this document.)
Reading Guide
Do not try to read all of the works referenced below. Read whatever you want (from below or
elsewhere) that is topic-relevant until you find something you find interesting. Then read that
closely and critically. If you are giving an assessed ‘presentation’, consider whether what you
have read can be useful for that. If you are not, think about how you could explain – should
the opportunity arise - what is interesting about what you have read to others in your seminar
group or to the tutor. Repeat this process as time allows. I have provided brief annotations for
each reference to guide your initial reading. Don’t be afraid to read things not on the list at
all.
I have not structured the readings into categories. Instead, I have chosen ‘illustrative’
readings of lots and lots of areas or approaches. I recommend finding a paper you like and
making good use of features such as “cited by” in Google Scholar!
Essay Questions
1. How can people successfully choose to become more concerned for the positive
welfare of others (altruistic)?
2. To what extent can altruistic traits be encouraged in others?
Essay tip: The more you work on your essay, the harder it will be to spot ‘silly mistakes’. Ask
others to read a near-final draft and point out to you typos and where they were confused.
Thank them and then do whatever needs to be done to make it better for the next reader.
Possible readings
Aquino, K., Freeman, D., Reed, A. II, Lim, V. K. G., & Felps, W. (2009). Testing a socialcognitive model of moral behavior: the interactive influence of situations and moral
identity certainty. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 123-141.
Tom’s summary: Situations trigger identity commitments.
39
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.
Tom’s summary: A review suggesting that altruistic values may best be fostered alongside
other dispositions and skills.
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.
Tom’s summary: Well-established (e.g., cooperative) goals can be primed non-consciously
and then regulate behaviour and show both persistence and resumption of interrupted tasks.
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.
Tom’s summary: Arguing for or against a value inoculates them from attack. Generating and
contemplating provided reasons have additive effects.
Boninger, D. S., Krosnick, J. A., & Berent, M. K. (1995). Origins of attitude importance:
Self-interest, social identification, and value relevance. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 68, 61-80.
Tom’s summary: Another reminder of equifinality: Attitude importance (e.g., ‘be nice’) can
be influenced by self-interest, reference groups/individuals, and cherished values.
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.
Tom’s summary: Nurturing parents promote kind kids who encourage nurturing parenting
which results in terrific teens.
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.
Tom’s summary: Opting in leads to more commitment and positive self-attribution than does
opting out.
Clary, E. G., & Miller, J. (1986). Socialization and situational influences on sustained
altruism. Child Development, 57, 1358-1369.
Tom’s summary: Consistently altruistic people had nurturant parents. Nurturant parents
produce autonomously altruistic people, relatively unaffected in their altruism by consequences. Nonnurtured people will help when they enjoy it.
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.
Tom’s summary: Claims that ‘essentialist’ beliefs about personality inhibit positive behaviour
and change but ‘malleable’ can ones encourage them. Be critical!
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.
Tom’s summary: Altruistic or egoistic rhetoric can bring about and sustain self-fulfilling
language and practices.
Frey, B. S., Savage, D. A., & Torgler, B. (2010). Noblesse oblige? Determinants of survival
in a life-and-death situation. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 74(1), 111.
Tom’s summary: “Women and crew members first” and “I’d rather die than be impolite”!
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 selfinterest.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,101 (1), 149-163.
Tom’s summary: Agency (A) and Communion (C) will be found as mutually antagonistic if
defined thus and they will, in fact, often be independent. In moral exemplars, however, A will pursue C
or on behalf of those one feels C with.
40
Juujärvi, S. (2006). Care-reasoning in real-life conflicts. Journal of Moral Education, 35 (2),
197-211.
Tom’s summary: People with different levels of other-concern (and/or self-in-relation-toother-concern) perceive different situations as morally-relevant.
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.
Tom’s summary: Forgiveness may be included among a cluster of traits comprising ‘the
altruistic personality’.
Kay, A. C., Wheeler, S. C., Bargh, J. A., & Ross, L. (2004). Material priming: The influence
of mundane physical objects on situational construal and competitive behavioral
choice. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 95 (1), 83-96
Tom’s summary: Especially when there are no strong ‘internal’ or ‘normative’ drivers of
behaviour, ‘business’ primes can evoke competitiveness orientations (that counteract altruism and
helping. Placed this week (rather than in Barriers and Impediments) because of the possibility that
much day-to-day living involves encountering ‘business’ primes in ‘weak’ situations.
Lois, J. (1999). Socialization to heroism: individualism and collectivism in a voluntary search
and rescue group. Social Psychology Quarterly, 62, 117-135.
Tom’s summary: Groups (here altruistically helpful ones) shape increasing commitment to
ingroup values and behaviours.
McLean, K. C., Pasupathi, M., & Pals, J. L. (2007). Selves creating stories creating selves: A
process model of self-development. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(3),
262-268.
Tom’s summary: The stories we are told and tell ourselves about ourselves influence our
subsequent development.
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.
Tom’s summary: A summary of their work, followed by commentaries and their response to
them. The paper title is a good one-line summary.
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.
Tom’s summary: Dispositional and/or situationally-evoked secure attachment promotes
seemingly-genuinely altruistic feelings, intentions to help, and actual helping, even when alternate
mood-enhancement methods available and when recipient will not feel happy (because chronically
depressed). Anxious attachment leads to personal distress. Avoidant attachment reduces empathic
concern and helping.
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.
Tom’s summary: Tell kids (at least) that they are able and/or keen to be altruistic and maybe
they will prove you right.
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.
Tom’s summary: Young American undergraduates relatively high in wanting to be moral
think it is relatively ethically appropriate (or sometimes at least ethically acceptable) to show concern
towards unknown and/or dissimilar others, even ones potentially sociodemographically linked with
perpetuators of inhumanities towards the in-group.
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
Tom’s summary: Citizenship can be enhanced by encouraging key psychological
characteristics: Responsibility, Solidarity, and Autonomy. Any others? 
41
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.
Tom’s summary: 1. People sympathise and give more to identifiable than statistical needy
targets. 2. When they learn this, they reduce the former rather than increase the latter – they discount
their sympathy rather than letting it ignite their rationality.
Trotschel, R., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2007). Implementation intentions and the wilful pursuit of
prosocial goals in negotiations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 579598.
Tom’s summary: Planning helps prosocial goal attainment (and therefore may make for more
effective altruists than those unable or unwilling to plan).
vanDellen, M. R., & Hoyle, R. H. (2008). Possible selves as behavioral standards in selfregulation. Self and Identity, 7 (3), 295-304.
Tom’s summary: Possible selves motivate only of (i) have resources, and (ii) dissatisfied with
current self.
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.
Tom’s summary: Expected utility models work well in relatively asocial situations, when
personal gain is relatively cued, and when deliberation is relatively encouraged (p. 284). In some
situations (novel, social), a logic of appropriateness involves categorizing the situation and seeking
rules for people like the actor: “What does someone like me (identity) do (rule) here (situation)?” as
well as/instead of “What would be the consequences for…?”
Wilhelm, M. O., & Bekkers, R. (2010). Helping behaviour, dispositional empathic concern,
and the principle of care. Social Psychology Quarterly, 73(1), 11-32.
Tom’s summary: Concern for the positive welfare of others (care) mediates sympathy-helping
and directly motivates much non-sympathy-initiated helping”
42
APPENDIX 1: Seminars and Assessed ‘Presentations’
Seminars will be held in Weeks 2 – 11. Each lasts 1 hour and 50 minutes. See Sussex Direct
for details of when and where your seminars are timetabled.
All students should have done adequate preparation to contribute positively to each
week’s seminar. This includes (a) doing any advance reading or preparation suggested by the
tutor or by the student(s) doing their assessed ‘presentation’; (b) having done a reasonable
amount of further reading of relevant sources; and (c) being able to summarise and critically
evaluate that reading. Students appearing not to have prepared suitably may be invited by the
tutor to leave the seminar and work independently.
Seminars are largely facilitated by the student(s) doing their assessed ‘presentation’ that
week. Each student will be scheduled to give an assessed ‘presentation’ during an Autumn
Term seminar.Thirty per cent (30%) of the mark students get for this module will be
determined by the mark they get for their assessed ‘presentations’.
Grades for the assessed ‘presentation’ will mostly reflect the extent to which the
seminar was engaging and educational for everyone prepared and motivated to learn –
however this is achieved. This is why ‘presentation’ is in ‘scare quotes’ - giving a formal
(e.g., Powerpoint) presentation will be neither necessary nor sufficient to get a good grade.
Presenters do not have to cover every aspect of the week’s topic. Indeed, they would be
unwise to attempt to do so. Instead, they should choose any relevant content that they think
they can deal with in such a way as to engage and educate everyone prepared and motivated
to learn. In general, I (Tom) advise them to “say a lot about a little” rather than “ a little about
a lot”. In particular, they need to demonstrate and encourage critical thinking if they want
higher grades.
Similarly, class members do not have to read everything on a week’s reading list. Again, they
would be unwise to attempt to do so. Rather, they should find and critically read anything
relevant that they think will be engaging and educational if they bring it to the attention of
others in their class. If everyone does this, we can collaboratively learn broadly and ‘deeply’.
Before or on the day of an assessed ‘presentation’, the student being assessed must send the
tutor a copy of all materials used in the presentation, via email wherever possible. This
should include things like any recommended reading or ‘homework’ set for other class
members; Power Point Slides (if used); handouts; descriptions of in-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., what is planned 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 student being assessed must produce a handout and send or give a copy of this to each
class member.
Each student being assessed must submit to the Psychology Office a sheet of paper
documenting the day that their assessed presentation occurred, and its title.
43
Presenters must 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.
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
44
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.
45
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.”
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.
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.
46
APPENDIX 2: Assessed Essay
Seventy per cent (70%) of your module 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 above 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 late and less than one week late there will be a penalty of
10%. If submitted more than one week late but before the published final submission
deadline, it will be marked with a capped maximum of 40% awarded. If submitted after the
published final submission deadline, it will automatically receive a mark of 0%.
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 programme 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.
47
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.
48
APPENDIX 3: Overview of Seminars 4 - 11
Reminder: “Altruism” on this course is the phenomenon of (cognitive, emotional, or
physical expression of) concern for the positive welfare of another.
Week 4: Conception and measurement
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 5: Biology
Evolutionary aspects: Examining the relationship between evolutionary processes
(including biological ‘altruism’) and concern for the positive welfare of others.
Genetic aspects: Looking at the role of genes in affecting individual differences in
concern for the positive welfare of others.
Neurological and physiological causes, correlates, and consequences of concern for
the positive welfare of others.
[Note: Biological aspects will also be focal in other weeks. For example, neurological
and physiological aspects will be considered in Weeks 6 and 7; animal altruism will
be considered in Week 8; etc.]
Week 6: Understanding
Understanding specific 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.
49
Week 7: 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 8: 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 9: 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 10: 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 11: 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.?
50
APPENDIX 4: Other important stuff
Late Submissions and Mitigating Evidence
What happens if I miss an assessment deadline?
Where applicable you may still submit the assessment within 7 days of the published
deadline. This will incur a penalty, as follows:
•
Work submitted up to 24 hours late shall incur a penalty deduction of 5 percentage
points (not 5% of the actual mark).
•
Work submitted after 24 hours and up to 7 days late shall incur a penalty deduction of
10 percentage points ( not 10% of the actual mark)
•
No work shall be accepted after the 7 day penalty period has elapsed
Please consult your assessment deadlines timetable on Sussex Direct;
https://direct.sussex.ac.uk
For any piece of late work where the student wishes to claim mitigating circumstances or
impairment a MEC claim needs to be completed and submitted to the Student Life Centre.
Please access the links for further information.


http://www.sussex.ac.uk/studentlifecentre/mitigation
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/academicoffice/documentsandpolicies/examinationandassess
menthandbooks
Plagiarism and Collusion
Plagiarism is the use, without acknowledgement, of the intellectual work of other people and
the act of representing the ideas or discoveries of another as one’s own written work
submitted for assessment.
Collusion is the preparation or production of work for assessment jointly with another person
or persons unless explicitly permitted by the examiners. An act of collusion is understood to
encompass those who actively assist others as well as those who derive benefit from others.
Information on how to avoid plagiarism and collusion can be found here;
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/s3/?id=33
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/academicoffice/documentsandpolicies/examinationandassessmentha
ndbooks
51
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 such 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:



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 (the extended essay and seminar ‘presentation’) 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.
Essay tip: If your essay looks untidy, littered with typos and deviations from APA style, etc.,
readers may infer that you have not cared much about producing a good-quality essay. That
is unlikely to work in your favour!
52
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.
53
Presentation assessment guide, Autumn 2014
Tom Farsides: Altruism and helping behaviour (C8014)
Student Name:
Topic (Week):
Day/Date/Time:
Words and phrases underlined below (perhaps in black) indicate particular strengths: words or phrases
circled (perhaps in red) indicate areas where particular opportunities for improvement exist.
1.
Understanding
Class-ish ________
Own. Conveyed.
2.
Critical
Class-ish ________
Argument (Introduction, Evidence, Conclusion). Evaluation. Implications.
NOT: Superficial. Derivative. Descriptive. List-y. Unsubstantiated
3.
Engaging
Class-ish ________
Prepared. Focused. Inclusive. Imaginative. Novel. Insightful. Inspiring.
NOT: Disorganised. Lost. Waffling. Dull. Trite. Egocentric.
4.
Materials (A-V Aids, handouts, exercises)
Class-ish ________
Clear. Concise. Educational. Stimulating. Helpful. Enhancing.
NOT: Messy. Irrelevant. Pointless. Confusing. Discordant..
5.
Delivery
Class-ish ________
Clear, appropriate volume, appropriate pace, confident, engaging, audience-concerned.
NOT: Mumbling, whispering, shouting, hesitant, rushed, boring, unengaged with audience.
Provisional Grade
%(Subject to Exam Board ratification).
There may be additional comments overleaf
54
The Psychology of Altruism (C8014) Assessed Presentations, 2014
(1) Mon2-4
Pev 1, 1B2
(2) Tue 4-6
Pev 1, 2D2
(3) Thu 3-5
Pev 1, 2A3
Everybody
Everybody
________________
________________
________________
________________
Week 3: Real world altruism
Everybody
Week 4: Conception and measurement
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 6: Genes, Evolution, and Neurophysiology
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
________________
Week 7: Mind-reading and Morality
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 8: Passion and Emotion
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 9: Individual and other differences
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 10: Triggers and Interventions
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 11: Barriers and Impediments
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Week 12: Sustained altruism
Presenter 1: ________________
Presenter 2: ________________
Unallocated
55