Neural underpinnings of the identifiable victim effect: affect shifts preferences for giving

Same allocation proposed by an individual or a group elicits distinct responses: Evidence from event-related potentials and neural oscillation

People tend to perceive the same information differently depending on whether it is expressed in an individual or a group frame. It has also been found that the individual (vs. group) frame of expression tends to lead to more charitable giving and greater tolerance of wealth inequality. However, little is known about whether the same resource allocation in social interactions elicits distinct responses depending on proposer type. Using the second-party punishment task, this study examined whether the same allocation from different proposers (individual vs. group) leads to differences in recipient behavior and the neural mechanisms. Behavioral results showed that reaction times were longer in the unfair (vs. fair) condition, and this difference was more pronounced when the proposer was the individual (vs. group). Neural results showed that proposer type (individual vs. group) influenced early automatic processing (indicated by AN1, P2, and central alpha band), middle processing (indicated by MFN and right frontal theta band), and late elaborative processing (indicated by P3 and parietal alpha band) of fairness in resource allocation. These results revealed more attentional resources were captured by the group proposer in the early stage of fairness processing, and more cognitive resources were consumed by processing group-proposed unfair allocations in the late stage, possibly because group proposers are less identifiable than individual proposers. The findings provide behavioral and neural evidence for the effects of "individual/group" framing leading to cognitive differences. They also deliver insights into social governance issues, such as punishing individual and/or group violations.

Victim identifiability, number of victims, and unit asking in charitable giving

This study examines the identifiable victim effect (being more willing to help an identified victim than an unidentified), the singularity effect (i.e., being more willing to help a single identified victim than a group of identified victims), and unit asking (first asking donors for their willingness to donate for one unit and then asking for donations for multiple units) in charitable giving. In five studies (N = 7996), we vary the level of identifiability, singularity, and group size. We find that unit asking is making people more sensitive to the number of people in need. Further, while the level of identifiability influences affective reactions, this effect does not extend to donations and, thus, is not affected by unit asking. We do, however, find an "emotion asking effect" where asking donors to rate their affect before donating increase donation levels (compared to donors asked to rate affect after). Emotion asking was attenuated when combined with unit asking.

The effect of psilocybin on empathy and prosocial behavior: a proposed mechanism for enduring antidepressant effects

Psilocybin is a serotonergic psychedelic shown to have enduring antidepressant effects. Currently, the mechanism for its enduring effects is not well understood. Empathy and prosocial behavior may be important for understanding the therapeutic benefit of psilocybin. In this article we review the effect of psilocybin on empathy and prosocial behavior. Moreover, we propose that psilocybin may induce a positive feedback loop involving empathy and prosocial behavior which helps explain the observed, enduring antidepressant effects.

The neural mechanisms of identifiable victim effect in prosocial decision-making

The phenomenon known as the "identifiable victim effect" describes how individuals tend to offer more assistance to victims they can identify with than to those who are vague or abstract. The neural underpinnings of this effect, however, remain elusive. Our study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging to delve into how the "identifiable victim effect" influences prosocial decision-making, considering different types of helping costs, across two distinct tasks. Participants were instructed to decide whether to help a victim with personal information shown (i.e., the identifiable victim) and an unidentifiable one by costing their money (task 1) or physical effort (task 2). Behaviorally, we observed a pronounced preference in both tasks for aiding identifiable victims over anonymous ones, highlighting a robust "identifiable victim effect." On a neural level, this effect was associated with heightened activity in brain areas like the bilateral temporoparietal junction (TPJ) when participants confronted anonymous victims, potentially indicating a more intensive mentalizing process for less concrete victims. Additionally, we noted that the TPJ's influence on value judgment processes is mediated through its functional connectivity with the medial prefrontal cortex. These insights contribute significantly to our understanding of the psychological and neural dynamics underlying the identifiable victim effect.

The relationship between charitable giving and emotional facial expressions: Results from affective computing

This study investigated the relationship between emotional states (valence, arousal, and six basic emotions) and donation size in pet charities, and it compared the effectiveness of affective computing and emotion self-report methods in assessing attractiveness. Using FaceReader software and self-report, we measured the emotional states of participants (N = 45) during the donation task. The results showed that sadness, happiness, and anger were significantly related to donation size. Sadness and anger increased donations, whereas happiness decreased them. Arousal was not significantly correlated with the willingness to donate. These results are supported by both methods, whereas the self-reported data regarding the association of surprise, fear, and disgust with donation size are inconclusive. Thus, unpleasant emotions increase donation size, and combining affective computing with self-reported data improves the prediction of the effectiveness of a charity appeal. This study contributes to the understanding of the relationship between emotions and charitable behavior toward pet charities and evaluates the effectiveness of marketing mix elements using affective computing. The limitations include the laboratory setting for this experiment and the lack of measurement of prolonged and repeated exposure to unpleasant charity appeals.

Cultural variation in neural responses to social but not monetary reward outcomes

European Americans view high-intensity, open-mouthed 'excited' smiles more positively than Chinese because they value excitement and other high arousal positive states more. This difference is supported by reward-related neural activity, with European Americans showing greater Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) activity to excited (vs calm) smiles than Chinese. But do these cultural differences generalize to all rewards, and are they related to real-world social behavior? European American (N = 26) and Chinese (N = 27) participants completed social and monetary incentive delay tasks that distinguished between the anticipation and receipt (outcome) of social and monetary rewards while undergoing Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI). The groups did not differ in NAcc activity when anticipating social or monetary rewards. However, as predicted, European Americans showed greater NAcc activity than Chinese when viewing excited smiles during outcome (the receipt of social reward). No cultural differences emerged when participants received monetary outcomes. Individuals who showed increased NAcc activity to excited smiles during outcome had friends with more intense smiles on social media. These findings suggest that culture plays a specific role in modulating reward-related neural responses to excited smiles during outcome, which are associated with real-world relationships.

Neurocomputational Substrates Underlying the Effect of Identifiability on Third-Party Punishment

The identifiable target effect refers to the preference for helping identified victims and punishing identifiable perpetrators compared with equivalent but unidentifiable counterparts. The identifiable target effect is often attributed to the heightened moral emotions evoked by identified targets. However, the specific neurocognitive processes that mediate and/or modulate this effect remain largely unknown. Here, we combined a third-party punishment game with brain imaging and computational modeling to unravel the neurocomputational underpinnings of the identifiable transgressor effect. Human participants (males and females) acted as bystanders and punished identified or anonymous wrongdoers. Participants were more punitive toward identified wrongdoers than anonymous wrongdoers because they took a vicarious perspective of victims and adopted lower reference points of inequity (i.e., more stringent norms) in the identified context than in the unidentified context. Accordingly, there were larger activity of the ventral anterior insula, more distinct multivariate neural patterns in the dorsal anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and lower strength between ventral anterior insula and dorsolateral PFC and between dorsal anterior insula and ventral striatum connectivity in response to identified transgressors than anonymous transgressors. These findings implicate the interplay of expectancy violations, emotions, and self-interest in the identifiability effect. Last, individual differences in the identifiability effect were associated with empathic concern/social dominance orientation, activity in the precuneus/cuneus and temporo-parietal junction, and intrinsic functional connectivity of the dorsolateral PFC. Together, our work is the first to uncover the neurocomputational processes mediating identifiable transgressor effect and to characterize psychophysiological profiles modulating the effect.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The identifiable target effect, more help to identified victims or stronger punishment to identifiable perpetrators, is common in daily life. We examined the neurocomputational mechanisms mediating/modulating the identifiability effect on third-party punishment by bridging literature from economics and cognitive neuroscience. Our findings reveal that identifiable transgressor effect is mediated by lower reference points of inequity (i.e., more stringent norms), which might be associated with a stronger involvement of the emotion processes and a weaker engagement of the analytic/deliberate processes. Furthermore, personality traits, altered brain activity, and intrinsic functional connectivity contribute to the individual variance in the identifiability effect. Overall, our study advances the understanding of the identifiability effect by shedding light on its component processes and modulating factors.

Blame and Praise cross-culturally: An fMRI investigation into causal attribution and moral judgment

People from independent cultures are more likely to causally explain others' behaviors by their disposition [vs. situation] compared to those from interdependent cultures. However, few studies have directly examined how these differences in attribution shape individuals' moral judgment, nor the underlying neural mechanisms of this process. Aiming to address these questions, in the scanner, participants rated the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of protagonists who did either a negative or positive behavior, respectively. These behaviors were pretested and found to be perceived as dispositionally or situationally caused to different extents on average. Regardless of their self-construal, participants showed enhanced dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) activity in response to the behaviors that were evaluated as more situationally caused on average. Importantly, relatively independent participants reduced their blame for the behaviors that they showed greater dmPFC activity to. Relatively interdependent participants reduced blame for the behaviors that they themselves inferred more situational causes for, but dmPFC activity did not explain their blame. These findings suggest that while dmPFC might support relatively independent participants' effortful consideration of situational contributors to a behavior to make moral judgments, relatively interdependent participants might engage in this process automatically and relied less on dmPFC recruitment.

An Asymmetric Effect: Physical and Simulated Confederate's Mere Presence Induce a Preference for Deontological Over Utilitarian Judgment

People may behave differently in a shared physical context due to the mere presence of others. The study examined whether individual moral judgments were subject to the confederate's presence. Experiment 1 supported the hypothesis that the confederate's presence, relative to the control group, increased deontological judgment, disapproving of sacrificing a person's lifetime or interest for preserving the greater good of others. Experiment 2 investigated whether the results extend to mental space. The result revealed that simulating a positive interaction with the confederate significantly increased the preference for deontological judgments relative to the control group. However, the effect disappeared if the participants were required to simulate only the person from the scenario that did not include any additional background contexts. These results demonstrated that the confederate's physical presence and simulated confederate's presence always preferred deontological judgments over utilitarian judgments. The findings suggested that the asymmetric moral effect occurred in the physical realm and mental space.

Children endorse deterrence motivations for third-party punishment but derive higher enjoyment from compensating victims

Children's punishment behavior may be driven by both retribution and deterrence, but the potential primacy of either motive is unknown. Moreover, children's punishment enjoyment and compensation enjoyment have never been directly contrasted. Here, British, Colombian, and Italian 7- to 11-year-old children (N = 123) operated a Justice System in which they viewed different moral transgressions in Minecraft, a globally popular video game, either face-to-face with an experimenter or over the internet. Children could respond to transgressions by punishing transgressors and compensating victims. The purpose of the system was framed in terms of retribution, deterrence, or compensation between participants. Children's performance, endorsement, and enjoyment of punishment and compensation were measured, along with their endorsement of retribution versus deterrence as punishment justifications, during and/or after justice administration. Children overwhelmingly endorsed deterrence over retribution as their punishment justification irrespective of age. When asked to reproduce the presented frame in their own words, children more reliably reproduced the deterrence frame rather than the retribution frame. Punishment enjoyment decreased while compensation enjoyment increased over time. Despite enjoying compensation more, children preferentially endorsed punishment over compensation, especially with increasing age and transgression severity. Reported deterrent justifications, superior reproduction of deterrence framing, lower enjoyment of punishment than of compensation, and higher endorsement of punishment over compensation together suggest that children felt that they ought to mete out punishment as a means to deter future transgressions. Face-to-face and internet-mediated responses were not distinguishable, supporting a route to social psychology research with primary school-aged children unable to physically visit labs.

Altruistic responses to the most vulnerable involve sensorimotor processes

Introduction

Why do people help strangers? Prior research suggests that empathy motivates bystanders to respond to victims in distress. However, this work has revealed relatively little about the role of the motor system in human altruism, even though altruism is thought to have originated as an active, physical response to close others in immediate need. We therefore investigated whether a motor preparatory response contributes to costly helping.

Methods

To accomplish this objective, we contrasted three charity conditions that were more versus less likely to elicit an active motor response, based on the Altruistic Response Model. These conditions described charities that (1) aided neonates versus adults, (2) aided victims requiring immediate versus preparatory support, and (3) provided heroic versus nurturant aid. We hypothesized that observing neonates in immediate need would elicit stronger brain activation in motor-preparatory regions.

Results

Consistent with an evolutionary, caregiving-based theory of altruism, participants donated the most to charities that provided neonates with immediate, nurturant aid. Critically, this three-way donation interaction was associated with increased BOLD signal and gray matter volume in motor-preparatory regions, which we identified in an independent motor retrieval task.

Discussion

These findings advance the field of altruism by shifting the spotlight from passive emotional states toward action processes that evolved to protect the most vulnerable members of our group.

Designing With Pictographs: Envision Topics Without Sacrificing Understanding

Past studies have shown that when a visualization uses pictographs to encode data, they have a positive effect on memory, engagement, and assessment of risk. However, little is known about how pictographs affect one's ability to understand a visualization, beyond memory for values and trends. We conducted two crowdsourced experiments to compare the effectiveness of using pictographs when showing part-to-whole relationships. In Experiment 1, we compared pictograph arrays to more traditional bar and pie charts. We tested participants' ability to generate high-level insights following Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives via 6 free-response questions. We found that accuracy for extracting information and generating insights did not differ overall between the two versions. To explore the motivating differences between the designs, we conducted a second experiment where participants compared charts containing pictograph arrays to more traditional charts on 5 metrics and explained their reasoning. We found that some participants preferred the way that pictographs allowed them to envision the topic more easily, while others preferred traditional bar and pie charts because they seem less cluttered and faster to read. These results suggest that, at least in simple visualizations depicting part-to-whole relationships, the choice of using pictographs has little influence on sensemaking and insight extraction. When deciding whether to use pictograph arrays, designers should consider visual appeal, perceived comprehension time, ease of envisioning the topic, and clutteredness.

Recipient identifiability increases prosocial behavior in young children

Research in adults has established that identifying an individual (e.g., by name or a photograph) increases adults' prosocial behavior toward that individual. However, little is known about the developmental emergence of this "identifiable victim effect." We conducted a preregistered study to assess the effects of identifiability on young children's prosocial behavior. Children aged 3.5 to 6.5 years were given five stickers that they could distribute between themselves and another child, who was either identified by name or unidentified. Across ages, children were more likely to share-and shared more stickers-with the identified recipient than with the unidentified recipient. These results indicate that recipient identifiability promotes prosocial behavior from remarkably early in development.

Wildfire imagery reduces risk information-seeking among homeowners as property wildfire risk increases

Negative imagery of destruction may induce or inhibit action to reduce risks from climate-exacerbated hazards, such as wildfires. This has generated conflicting assumptions among experts who communicate with homeowners: half of surveyed wildfire practitioners perceive a lack of expert agreement about the effect of negative imagery (a burning house) on homeowner behavior, yet most believe negative imagery is more engaging. We tested whether this expectation matched homeowner response in the United States. In an online experiment, homeowners who viewed negative imagery reported more negative emotions but the same behavioral intentions compared to those who viewed status-quo landscape photos. In a pre-registered field experiment, homeowners who received a postcard showing negative imagery were equally likely, overall, to visit a wildfire risk webpage as those whose postcard showed a status quo photo. However, the negative imagery decreased webpage visits as homeowners' wildfire risk increased. These results illustrate the importance of testing assumptions to encourage behavioral adaptation to climate change.

Motivated Down-Regulation of Emotion and Compassion Collapse Revisited

Compassion collapse is a phenomenon where feelings and helping behavior decrease as the number of needy increases. But what are the underlying mechanisms for compassion collapse? Previous research has attempted to pit two explanations: Limitations of the feeling system vs. motivated down-regulation of emotion, against each other. In this article, we critically reexamine a previous study comparing these two accounts published in 2011 and present new data that contest motivated down-regulation of emotion as the primary explanation for compassion collapse.

Human’s Intuitive Mental Models as a Source of Realistic Artificial Intelligence and Engineering

Despite the success of artificial intelligence (AI), we are still far away from AI that model the world as humans do. This study focuses for explaining human behavior from intuitive mental models’ perspectives. We describe how behavior arises in biological systems and how the better understanding of this biological system can lead to advances in the development of human-like AI. Human can build intuitive models from physical, social, and cultural situations. In addition, we follow Bayesian inference to combine intuitive models and new information to make decisions. We should build similar intuitive models and Bayesian algorithms for the new AI. We suggest that the probability calculation in Bayesian sense is sensitive to semantic properties of the objects’ combination formed by observation and prior experience. We call this brain process as computational meaningfulness and it is closer to the Bayesian ideal, when the occurrence of probabilities of these objects are believable. How does the human brain form models of the world and apply these models in its behavior? We outline the answers from three perspectives. First, intuitive models support an individual to use information meaningful ways in a current context. Second, neuroeconomics proposes that the valuation network in the brain has essential role in human decision making. It combines psychological, economical, and neuroscientific approaches to reveal the biological mechanisms by which decisions are made. Then, the brain is an over-parameterized modeling organ and produces optimal behavior in a complex word. Finally, a progress in data analysis techniques in AI has allowed us to decipher how the human brain valuates different options in complex situations. By combining big datasets with machine learning models, it is possible to gain insight from complex neural data beyond what was possible before. We describe these solutions by reviewing the current research from this perspective. In this study, we outline the basic aspects for human-like AI and we discuss on how science can benefit from AI. The better we understand human’s brain mechanisms, the better we can apply this understanding for building new AI. Both development of AI and understanding of human behavior go hand in hand.

Showing Data About People: A Design Space of Anthropographics

When showing data about people, visualization designers and data journalists often use design strategies that presumably help the audience relate to those people. The term anthropographics has been recently coined to refer to this practice and the resulting visualizations. Anthropographics is a rich and growing area, but the work so far has remained scattered. Despite preliminary empirical work and a few web essays written by practitioners, there is a lack of clear language for thinking about and communicating about anthropographics. We address this gap by introducing a conceptual framework and a design space for anthropographics. Our design space consists of seven elementary design dimensions that can be reasonably hypothesized to have some effect on prosocial feelings or behavior. It extends a previous design space and is informed by an analysis of 105 visualizations collected from newspapers, websites, and research articles. We use our conceptual framework and design space to discuss trade-offs, common design strategies, as well as future opportunities for design and research in the area of anthropographics.

Causal Role of the Right Temporoparietal Junction in Selfishness Depends on the Social Partner

The right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) is a hub of the mentalizing network, but its causal role in social decisions remains an area of active investigation. While prior studies using causal neurostimulation methods have confirmed the role of the rTPJ in mentalizing and strategic social interactions, most of the evidence for its role in resource-sharing decisions comes from correlational neuroimaging studies. Further, it remains unclear if the influence of the rTPJ on decisions about sharing resources depends on whether the other person is salient and identifiable. To clarify the causal role of the rTPJ in social decision making, we examined the effects of putatively inhibitory rTPJ transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) on Dictator Game behavior with one partner that was physically present and one that was only minimally identified. Under control conditions, participants tended to create more advantageous inequity toward the partner that was only minimally identified, selfishly keeping more resources themselves. rTPJ TMS reduced this differential treatment of the two partners. Clarifying prior mixed findings, results suggest that the rTPJ may play a role in differentiating between others when deciding how equitably to divide resources, but may not play a general role in reducing selfishness by promoting aversion to advantageous inequity.

Seven (weak and strong) helping effects systematically tested in separate evaluation, joint evaluation and forced choice

In ten studies (N = 9187), I systematically investigated the direction and size of seven helping effects (the identifiable-victim effect, proportion dominance effect, ingroup effect, existence effect, innocence effect, age effect and gender effect). All effects were tested in three decision modes (separate evaluation, joint evaluation and forced choice), and in their weak form (equal efficiency), or strong form (unequal efficiency). Participants read about one, or two, medical help projects and rated the attractiveness of and allocated resources to the project/projects, or choose which project to implement. The results show that the included help-situation attributes vary in their: (1) Evaluability – e.g., rescue proportion is the easiest to evaluate in separate evaluation. (2) Justifiability – e.g., people prefer to save fewer lives now rather than more lives in the future, but not fewer identified lives rather than more statistical lives. (3) Prominence – e.g., people express a preference to help females, but only when forced to choose.

Neurocomputational models of altruistic decision-making and social motives: Advances, pitfalls, and future directions

This article discusses insights from computational models and social neuroscience into motivations, precursors, and mechanisms of altruistic decision-making and other-regard. We introduce theoretical and methodological tools for researchers who wish to adopt a multilevel, computational approach to study behaviors that promote others' welfare. Using examples from recent studies, we outline multiple mental and neural processes relevant to altruism. To this end, we integrate evidence from neuroimaging, psychology, economics, and formalized mathematical models. We introduce basic mechanisms-pertinent to a broad range of value-based decisions-and social emotions and cognitions commonly recruited when our decisions involve other people. Regarding the latter, we discuss how decomposing distinct facets of social processes can advance altruistic models and the development of novel, targeted interventions. We propose that an accelerated synthesis of computational approaches and social neuroscience represents a critical step towards a more comprehensive understanding of altruistic decision-making. We discuss the utility of this approach to study lifespan differences in social preference in late adulthood, a crucial future direction in aging global populations. Finally, we review potential pitfalls and recommendations for researchers interested in applying a computational approach to their research. This article is categorized under: Economics > Interactive Decision-Making Psychology > Emotion and Motivation Neuroscience > Cognition Economics > Individual Decision-Making.

Synchrony with distress in affective empathy and compassion

Sensitivity to suffering of others is a core factor in social cohesion and evolutionary success. The emergence of such sensitivity may occur via two neuro-functional mechanisms. One is sharing the pain and distress of others, which relies on affective empathy. The other involves a caring concern for others' wellbeing, termed compassion. Both affective empathy and compassion are triggered by cues of pain and distress, exhibited by suffering targets. Yet, the mechanisms underlying distress processing in empathy and compassion are not clear. In the current research, we investigated synchrony with a target's distress, as a putative mechanism for continuous processing of distress cues. Participants viewed a video of a target in distress when given two different instructions: they were asked to continuously rate their distress in the affective empathy condition, or their feelings of care in the compassion condition. We used these dynamic ratings as well as participants' autonomic and facial responses to assess multi-channel synchrony with the target's self-rated distress fluctuations. Dynamic ratings and facial corrugator responses were significantly positively synchronized with the target's distress. For the corrugator responses, synchrony with the target was more pronounced than synchrony with participants' own ratings. Autonomic responses exhibited negative synchrony with the target's distress. Synchrony was higher in the affective empathy than in the compassion condition, across channels. These results point to the key role of subjective and physiological synchrony with the target's distress in empathic sharing of negative experiences. They also highlight the attenuation of embodied resonance with distress in compassionate experiences.

Charity preferences and perceived impact moderate charitable giving and associated neural response

Charitable giving depends on individuals' abilities to make altruistic decisions. Previous studies suggest that altruism involves recruitment of neural resources in regions including social processing, reward/reinforcement learning, emotional response, and cognition. Despite evolutionary and social benefits to altruism, we know that humans do not always engage in altruistic behavior, like charitable giving. Understanding the underlying processes leading to decisions to donate is vital to improve prosocial community engagement. The present study examined how characteristics of the charitable giving opportunity influence an individual's decision to give and the neural engagement underlying these features. Twenty-nine participants subjectively rated ten charities on their value, effectiveness, and the subject's personal chance of donating. Participants then completed an fMRI task requiring them to decide to donate to certain charities given the probability of the donation helping, their personal preference for the charity, and whether the donation came at cost to themselves. There was a significant reduction in donating when the probability of helping was low versus high, and subjects were significantly less likely to donate to their lowest-rated charities. Further, probability of a donation being helpful and how much the subject favored a charity moderated PCC and left IFG engagement. Interestingly, reward neurocircuitry did not demonstrate similar sensitivity to these variations. These results may suggest individuals engage motivated reasoning to justify failure to donate, while donations are driven by emotion mentalizing that focuses on the welfare of others. This may provide valuable insight into how to engage individuals in altruistic giving.

The neuroscience of empathy and compassion in pro-social behavior

Research in the scientific literature increasingly demonstrates that empathy consists of multiple dimensions, and that defining empathy as a single encompassing term may be imprecise. Recent calls have been made for increasing empathy as means to increase pro-social behavior. However, contradictory evidence exists that empathy may reduce pro-social behavior. This debate has sparked confusion around what is empathy, along with the value of empathy in promoting pro-social behavior. This paper will examine recent advances in affective neuroscience to better understand the construct of empathy and its relationship to pro-social behavior. Individuals' responses to affective empathy, seeing the suffering of others can result in personal distress or empathic concern, which may then subsequently affect motivation for pro-social behavior. Current research in affective neuroscience suggests that combining compassion interventions in conjunction with both affective and cognitive empathy offers the most optimal likelihood that individuals will engage in pro-social behavior.

A Feature-Based Network Analysis and fMRI Meta-Analysis Reveal Three Distinct Types of Prosocial Decisions

Tasks that measure correlates of prosocial decision-making share one common feature: agents can make choices that increase the welfare of a beneficiary. However, prosocial decisions vary widely as a function of other task features. The diverse ways that prosociality is defined and the heterogeneity of prosocial decisions have created challenges for interpreting findings across studies and identifying their neural correlates. To overcome these challenges, we aimed to organize the prosocial decision-making task space of neuroimaging studies. We conducted a systematic search for studies in which participants made decisions to increase the welfare of others during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We identified shared and distinct features of these tasks and employed an unsupervised graph-based approach to assess how various forms of prosocial decision-making are related in terms of their low-level components (e.g. task features like potential cost to the agent or potential for reciprocity). Analyses uncovered three clusters of prosocial decisions, which we labeled as cooperation, equity and altruism. This feature-based representation of the task structure was supported by results of a neuroimaging meta-analysis that each type of prosocial decisions recruited diverging neural systems. Results clarify some of the existing heterogeneity in how prosociality is conceptualized and generate insight for future research and task paradigm development.

Happy to help-if it's not too sad: The effect of mood on helping identifiable and unidentifiable victims

People's preference to help single victims about whom they have some information is known as the identifiable victim effect. Previous research suggests that this effect stems from an intensive emotional reaction toward specific victims. The findings of two studies consistently show that the identifiability effect is attenuated when the subject is in a positive mood. Study 1 (along with a pilot study) demonstrate causal relationships between mood and identifiability, while using different manipulations to induce moods. In both studies, donations to identified victims exceeded donations to unidentified people-in the Negative Mood manipulations-while participants in the Positive Mood conditions showed no such preference. In Study 2, individual differences in people's moods interacted with the recipient's identifiability in predicting donations, demonstrating that the identifiability effect is attenuated by a positive mood. In addition, emotional reactions toward the victims replicate the donation pattern, suggesting emotions as a possible explanation for the observed donation pattern.

The More Who Die, the Less We Care: Evidence from Natural Language Analysis of Online News Articles and Social Media Posts

Considerable amount of laboratory and survey-based research finds that people show disproportional compassionate and affective response to the scope of human mortality risk. According to research on "psychic numbing," it is often the case that the more who die, the less we care. In the present article, we examine the extent of this phenomenon in verbal behavior, using large corpora of natural language to quantify the affective reactions to loss of life. We analyze valence, arousal, and specific emotional content of over 100,000 mentions of death in news articles and social media posts, and find that language shows an increase in valence (i.e., decreased negative affect) and a decrease in arousal when describing mortality of larger numbers of people. These patterns are most clearly reflected in specific emotions of joy and (in a reverse fashion) of fear and anger. Our results showcase a novel methodology for studying affective decision making, and highlight the robustness and real-world relevance of psychic numbing. They also offer new insights regarding the psychological underpinnings of psychic numbing, as well as possible interventions for reducing psychic numbing and overcoming social and psychological barriers to action in the face of the world's most serious threats.

The Consumer Contextual Decision-Making Model

Consumers can have difficulty expressing their buying intentions on an explicit level. The most common explanation for this intention-action gap is that consumers have many cognitive biases that interfere with rational decision-making. The current resource-rational approach to understanding human cognition, however, suggests that brain environment interactions lead consumers to minimize the expenditure of cognitive energy according to the principle of Occam’s Razor. This means that the consumer seeks as simple of a solution as possible for a problem requiring decision-making. In addition, this resource-rational approach to decision-making emphasizes the role of inductive inference and Bayesian reasoning. Together, the principle of Occam’s Razor, inductive inference, and Bayesian reasoning illuminate the dynamic human-environment relationship. This paper analyzes these concepts from a contextual perspective and introduces the Consumer Contextual Decision-Making Model (CCDMM). Based on the CCDMM, two hypothetical strategies of consumer decision-making will be presented. First, the SIMilarity-Strategy (SIMS) is one in which most of a consumer’s decisions in a real-life context are based on prior beliefs about the role of a commodities specific to real-life situation being encountered. Because beliefs are based on previous experiences, consumers are already aware of the most likely consequences of their actions. At the same time, they do not waste time on developing contingencies for what, based on previous experience, is unlikely to happen. Second, the What-is-Out-there-in-the-World-Strategy (WOWS) is one in which prior beliefs do not work in a real-life situation, requiring consumers to update their beliefs. The principle argument being made is that most experimental consumer research describes decision-making based on the WOWS, when participants cannot apply their previous knowledge and situation-based strategy to problems. The article analyzes sensory and cognitive biases described by behavioral economists from a CCDMM perspective, followed by a description and explanation of the typical intention-action gap based on the model. Prior to a section dedicated to discussion, the neuroeconomic approach will be described along with the valuation network of the brain, which has evolved to solve problems that the human has previously encountered in an information-rich environment. The principles of brain function will also be compared to CCDMM. Finally, different approaches and the future direction of consumer research from a contextual point of view will be presented.

Helping when the desire is low: Expectancy as a booster

One might assume that the desire to help (here described as Want) is the essential driver of helping declarations and/or behaviors. However, even if desire to help (Want) is low, intention to help may still occur if the expectancy regarding the perceived effectiveness of helping is high. We tested these predictions in a set of three experimental studies. In all three, we measured the desire to help (Want) and the Expectancy that the aid would be impactful for the victim; in addition, we manipulated Expectancy in Study 3. In Studies 1 and 3, we measured the participants’ declaration to help while in Study 2, their helping behavior was examined. In all three studies, we used variations of the same story about a victim. The results supported our hypothesis. Thus, the studies help to tease apart the determinants of helping under conditions of lowered desire to do so, an issue of great importance in public policymaking.

Brain imaging evidence for why we are numbed by numbers

We as humans do not value lives consistently. While we are willing to act for one victim, we often become numb as the number of victims increases. The empathic ability to adopt others’ perspectives is essential for motivating help. However, the perspective-taking ability in our brains seems limited. Using functional MRI, we demonstrated that the core empathy network including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was more engaged for events happening to a single person than those happening to many people, no matter whether the events were emotionally neutral or negative. In particular, the perspective-taking-related mPFC showed greater and more extended activations for events about one person than those about many people. The mPFC may be the neural marker of why we feel indifferent to the suffering of large numbers of people in humanitarian disasters.

Neural reward related-reactions to monetar gains for self and charity are associated with donating behavior in adolescence

The aim of the current study was to examine neural signatures of gaining money for self and charity in adolescence. Participants (N = 160, aged 11–21) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging-scanning while performing a zero-sum vicarious reward task in which they could either earn money for themselves at the expense of charity, for a self-chosen charity at the expense of themselves, or for both parties. Afterwards, they could donate money to charity, which we used as a behavioral index of giving. Gaining for self and for both parties resulted in activity in the ventral striatum (specifically in the NAcc), but not gaining for charity. Interestingly, striatal activity when gaining for charity was positively related to individual differences in donation behavior and perspective taking. Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, insula and precentral gyrus were active when gaining only for self, and temporal-parietal junction when gaining only for charity, relative to gaining for both parties (i.e. under equity deviation). Taken together, these findings show that striatal activity during vicarious gaining for charity depends on levels of perspective taking and predicts future acts of giving to charity. These findings provide insight in the individual differences in the subjective value of prosocial outcomes.

Comparing the effect of rational and emotional appeals on donation behavior

We present evidence from a pre-registered experiment indicating that a philosophical argument – a type of rational appeal – can persuade people to make charitable donations. The rational appeal we used follows Singer’s “shallow pond” argument (1972), while incorporating an evolutionary debunking argument (Paxton, Ungar and Greene, 2012) against favoring nearby victims over distant ones. The effectiveness of this rational appeal did not differ significantly from that of a well-tested emotional appeal involving an image of a single child in need (Small, Loewenstein and Slovic, 2007). This is a surprising result, given evidence that emotions are the primary drivers of moral action, a view that has been very influential in the work of development organizations. We found no support for our hypothesis that combining our rational and emotional appeals would have a stronger effect than either appeal in isolation. However, our finding that both kinds of appeal can increase charitable donations is cause for optimism, especially concerning the potential efficacy of well-designed rational appeals. We consider the significance of these findings for moral psychology, ethics, and the work of organizations aiming to alleviate severe poverty.

Opportunity Cost in Monetary Donation Decisions to Non-identified and Identified Victims

Do people consider alternative uses of money (i.e., opportunity cost) when asked to donate to a charitable cause? To answer this question, we examined the effect of providing versus not providing participants with an opportunity cost reminder when they are asked to donate money to causes with identified and non-identified victims. The results of two studies show that when making one-time donation decisions, people become less willing to donate to charity when reminded of opportunity cost, but mainly for non-identified victims. Moreover, framing the opportunity cost reminder as prosocial versus proself did not influence willingness to donate. Overall, our evidence suggests that opportunity cost reminders influence people's donation behavior depending on whether charities identify supported victims or not.

A role for the medial temporal lobe subsystem in guiding prosociality: the effect of episodic processes on willingness to help others

Why are we willing to help others? Recent behavioral work on episodic processes (i.e. the ability to represent an event that is specific in time and place) suggests that imagining and remembering scenes of helping a person in need increases intentions to help. Here, we provide insight into the cognitive and neural mechanisms that enhance prosocial intentions via episodic simulation and memory. In Experiment 1, we scanned participants using functional neuroimaging as they imagined and remembered helping episodes, and completed non-episodic control conditions accounting for exposure to the story of need and conceptual priming of helping. Analyses revealed that activity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) subsystem, as well as the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) predicted the effect of conditions on the strength of prosocial intentions. In Experiment 2, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt activity in the RTPJ, and better isolate the contribution of MTL subsystem to prosocial intentions. The effect of conditions on willingness to help remained even when activity in the RTPJ was disrupted, suggesting that activity in the MTL subsystem may primarily support this prosocial effect. It seems our willingness to help may be guided, in part, by how easily we can construct imagined and remembered helping episodes.

Altruistic behaviors relieve physical pain

Engaging in altruistic behaviors is costly, but it contributes to the health and well-being of the performer of such behaviors. The present research offers a take on how this paradox can be understood. Across 2 pilot studies and 3 experiments, we showed a pain-relieving effect of performing altruistic behaviors. Acting altruistically relieved not only acutely induced physical pain among healthy adults but also chronic pain among cancer patients. Using functional MRI, we found that after individuals performed altruistic actions brain activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and bilateral insula in response to a painful shock was significantly reduced. This reduced pain-induced activation in the right insula was mediated by the neural activity in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), while the activation of the VMPFC was positively correlated with the performer's experienced meaningfulness from his or her altruistic behavior. Our findings suggest that incurring personal costs to help others may buffer the performers from unpleasant conditions.

Empathic concern for children and the gender-donations gap

This study uses a dictator game with a charitable organization as the donation recipient to test whether empathic concern explains persistent gender differences in charitable giving. We first explore whether we can evoke empathic concern by varying the content of a real-world charitable appeal video that highlights children's stories of struggle with access to clean water. Then we examine whether the evoked feelings help explain gender differences in donations. Despite no gender differences in donation behavior in a baseline control group, we find that females donate 63% more than males in treatments that include the personal stories from children. These treatment videos increase self-reported feelings of empathic concern towards children among both males and females relative to the control; however, the empathic concern that results from the treatment videos increases average donations among females but not males. Causal mediation methods show that empathic concern explains 17% of the observed gender differences in giving. While the treatments evoke other emotions in addition to empathic concern, none of them explain observed gender differences in donations. Our study sheds light on the role of children's personal stories and empathic concern for children in explaining gender-donation gaps.

The Role of Empathy and Compassion in Conflict Resolution

Empathy and empathy-related processes, such as compassion and personal distress, are recognized to play a key role in social relations. This review examines the role of empathy in interpersonal and intergroup relations, including intractable conflicts. Despite the limitations of empathy, there is growing evidence that empathy and compassion are associated with more prosocial behavior in interpersonal relations. Furthermore, empathy and compassion have been associated with more favorable attitudes and higher readiness for reconciliation across a range of intergroup settings. This review ends by summarizing recent evidence for the beneficial effects of compassion training on interpersonal and intergroup relations and by outlining new avenues for future research on how compassion training could reduce intergroup conflicts.

How does social information affect charitable giving?: Empathic concern promotes support for underdog recipient

Charitable giving represents a unique cooperative characteristic of humans. In today's environment with social media, our charitable decisions seem to be influenced by social information such as a project's popularity. Here we report three experiments that examined people's reactions to social information about a charitable endeavor and their psychophysiological underpinnings. Participants were first solicited to make donations to either the Africa or Syria project of UNICEF. Then participants were provided an opportunity to learn social information (i.e., how much each project had raised from previous participants) and change their decision if desired. Contrary to expectation, participants who learned that their initial preferences were consistent with the majority of previous participants' choices exhibited a sizable tendency to switch to the less popular project in their final choices. This anti-conformity pattern was robust across the three experiments. Eye-tracking data (gaze bias and pupil dilation) indicated that these "Changers" were more physiologically aroused and formed more differential valuations between the two charity projects, compared to "Keepers" who retained their initial preferences after viewing the social information. These results suggest that social information about relative popularity may evoke empathic concern for the worse-off target, in line with the human tendency to avoid unequal distributions.

How decision context changes the balance between cost and benefit increasing charitable donations

Recent research on charitable donations shows that donors evaluate both the impact of helping and its cost. We asked whether these evaluations were affected by the context of alternative charitable causes. We found that presenting two donation appeals in joint evaluation, as compared to separate evaluation, increased the perceived benefit of the cause ranked as more important (Study 1), and decreased its perceived cost, regardless of the relative actual costs (Study 2). Finally, we try to reconcile an explanation based on perceived cost and benefit with previous work on charitable donations.

Experimentally-enhanced perceptions of meaning confer resilience to the interpersonal adversity implicated in suicide risk

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

The interpersonal theory of suicide proposes that perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness (PB-TB) are proximal causes of suicidal desire. Here we test whether experimentally induced perceptions of meaningfulness can confer resilience against interpersonal adversity and enhance persistence, the erosion of which is a potential antecedent to suicide risk.

METHODS

Undergraduate university students (N = 93) were randomly allocated to complete a team task under conditions of high or low task-extrinsic meaning and high or low PB-TB. Participants in the high task-extrinsic meaning condition were given the opportunity to donate to a charity as part of their experimental participation, whereas those in the low task-extrinsic meaning condition were not.

RESULTS

Consistent with the buffering hypothesis that suicide resilience is active only when adversity is heightened, participants in the high task-extrinsic meaning condition who reported higher levels of perceived meaningfulness displayed greater willingness to persist in the face of experimentally-induced high PB and TB compared to those in the low task-extrinsic meaning condition and those in conditions where the interpersonal adversity was not induced (low PB and TB).

LIMITATIONS

The meaning induction was effective only in a subset of participants. The dual induction of PB and TB also precludes inferences about their independent causal effects on willingness to persist.

CONCLUSIONS

Meaning-making interventions may attenuate the impact of proximal interpersonal antecedents of suicidal desire. Enhancing resilience in this manner can potentially improve the efficacy of prevention efforts beyond the direct amelioration of suicide risk factors.

The elusive power of the individual victim: Failure to find a difference in the effectiveness of charitable appeals focused on one compared to many victims

Previous research has offered conflicting findings regarding the influence of help appeals that feature an individual victim compared to a group of victims. Studies examining emotional responses and donation behavior have generally found that help appeals focusing on a single victim elicit more prosocial responses, while studies examining policy support have found the opposite. The present studies investigate these effects while addressing potential confounds that may have arisen in previous research. Study 1 (N = 924) compares the effects of help appeals that focus on either a) an identified individual, b) an identified group, c) statistics describing many individuals, or d) statistics paired with an individual. Study 1 also examines how the location of the individual(s) in need moderates observed effects. Study 2 (N = 1,085) compares the effects of help appeals that describe either an identified individual or statistics about many individuals, while fully crossing the text manipulation with either a) no imagery, b) an image of an individual, or c) a map indicating areas of poverty. In both Study 1 and Study 2 no significant differences were found between the individual and the group conditions.

Neurocultural evidence that ideal affect match promotes giving

Why do people give to strangers? We propose that people trust and give more to those whose emotional expressions match how they ideally want to feel ("ideal affect match"). European Americans and Koreans played multiple trials of the Dictator Game with recipients who varied in emotional expression (excited, calm), race (White, Asian) and sex (male, female). Consistent with their culture's valued affect, European Americans trusted and gave more to excited than calm recipients, whereas Koreans trusted and gave more to calm than excited recipients. These findings held regardless of recipient race and sex. We then used fMRI to probe potential affective and mentalizing mechanisms. Increased activity in the nucleus accumbens (associated with reward anticipation) predicted giving, as did decreased activity in the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ; associated with reduced belief prediction error). Ideal affect match decreased rTPJ activity, suggesting that people may trust and give more to strangers whom they perceive to share their affective values.