A Summary of Readings
The three studies under analysis focus on the investigation of empathy as a crucial element of social interaction. Hardy and Van Vugt (2006) have based their research on the premise that people are social animals, which presupposes that humans base their behavioral choices on the notions of altruism and selfishness. Scholars note that unlike the majority of other mammals that help one another only within “small kinship groups,” humans can also interact in large social groups (Hardy & Van Vugt, 2006, p. 1402). What is more, these groups do not necessarily include only individuals with whom one is familiar. The authors focus on the analysis of altruism as a form of empathy. According to Hardy and Van Vugt (2006), there is a variety of ways in which people can demonstrate unselfishness. These cases may include charity donations, participation in rescuing activities, supporting one’s motherland in the time of war, and risking one’s life when trying to help others in an emergency. The purpose of Hardy and Van Vugt’s (2006) study is to detect a relationship between altruistic behavior and the development of status hierarchies within communities.
The article by Masten, Morelli and Eisenberger (2011) concentrates on the investigation of empathy for prosocial behavior. Scholars emphasize that researchers interested in the study of empathy have not given sufficient attention to the neuroimaging approach. Meanwhile, as Masten et al. (2011) remark, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has the potential to detect individuals’ empathy during social activities. The authors employed an fMRI scanner during the experiment, which involved the participant observing a person being excluded by two other people from a social situation. Further, the participant was to send an email to the excluded individual, and researchers evaluated how prosocial these messages were. Masten et al. (2011) found that the observation of social exclusion activated the regions of the brain related to mentalizing, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and precuneus. Researchers have concluded that a person’s spontaneous prosocial attitude toward others is likely to be enhanced by empathy-associated neural responses.
As well as Masten et al. (2011), Svetlova, Nichols, and Brownell (2010) have dedicated their study to the analysis of prosocial behavior. However, their research is concentrated not on adults but on young children. The main purpose of Svetlova et al.’s (2010) article is to investigate the alterations in toddlers’ prosocial behavior. Scholars have investigated young children’s behavior in three dimensions: instrumental, emphatic, and altruistic. As Svetlova et al. (2010) report, toddlers find it most difficult to cope with the altruistic form of helping. Findings indicate that at the age of two, children’s prosocial behavior shifts from understanding other’s actions and explicit signs to perceiving subtle signals and hints.
While all of the articles have different focal points of attention, all of them are related due to the major subject of research. Masten et al. (2011) and Svetlova et al. (2010) analyze prosocial behavior and its association with empathy. Meanwhile, Hardy and Van Vugt (2006) study altruism as one of the empathy dimensions. Masten et al. (2011) and Hardy and Van Vugt (2006) have chosen adults as the subjects of their analyses, whereas Svetlova et al. (2010) have based their research on toddlers’ behaviors. What differentiates Masten et al.’s (2011) research from the others is that these scholars have employed fMRI to analyze the participants’ empathy-related behaviors.
Contributions and Limitations of Methods
Each of the three studies has employed a different number of participants and used different procedures to reach their goals. To analyze people’s competitive altruism in a good public dilemma, Hardy and Van Vugt (2006) recruited 66 high school students: 34 males and 32 females, the mean age of the participants being 16.8 years. Every individual was randomly allocated to one of the experimental groups: reputation or no reputation. Overall, there were 11 groups with three participants for each condition (Hardy & Van Vugt, 2006). Upon being divided into groups, participants were presented with a good public dilemma involving the distribution of money between one’s own fund and a group fund. Respondents also had to answer a two-part question aimed at clarifying the choice they made. The second task involved choosing a group leader among the group members. The results indicated that participants in the reputation condition perceived themselves as more visible than those in the no reputation condition.
The second phase of the study involved the evaluation of competitive altruism in a resource dilemma. For that procedure, 150 participants (126 females and 24 males) with a mean age of 19.6 years were recruited and further divided into 50 groups of three people in each. As well as in the first procedure, results indicated that altruists earned less than non-altruists. The third study, titled “costly altruism gives status,” recruited 37 people (27 women and ten men), the mean age of whom was 20.8 years (Hardy & Van Vugt, 2006). The participants were to observe a good public game played by four fake players, and later, they were assigned as the fifth player in these groups. Results indicated that players with low endowment and high contribution were viewed by respondents as the most altruistic.
Masten et al. (2011) recruited 18 people (nine males and nine females), the mean age of whom was 20.22 years. However, after expressing some suspicions, two participants left the study. The procedure involved performing some tasks, such as observing the exclusion of a person from a game while being connected to the fMRI scan. The results indicated that trait empathy was positively associated with prosocial behavior toward the excluded person.
Svetlova et al. (2010) engaged 32 18-month-old (mean age: 18.46 months) and 33 30-month-old (mean age: 30.32 months) children in their research. The experimenter arranged various conditions in which toddlers were involved: action, emotion, and altruism. In each of those tasks, the experimenter pretended to have some difficulty and asked the child to help her with it. Findings indicated that it was the easiest for children to help the experimenter with instrumental and emphatic tasks, but it was difficult for them to perform altruistic deeds.
Despite the considerable contribution that each of the three studies made to the investigation of empathy and altruism, they are not void of some limitations. Hardy and Van Vugt’s (2006) research involved a small amount of money, which made it relatively easy for participants to share. If a bigger sum was used for the experiment, the results could have been rather dissimilar. Masten et al.’s (2011) study had the smallest number of participants, which took away from the reliability of the study due to a small sample. The major limitation of Svetlova et al.’s (2010) research was that there was no action version of the third condition (altruism). Still, it is necessary to emphasize that each of the articles provides an innovative way of analyzing people’s empathy and altruism and makes a solid ground for further investigations in this sphere.
An Area for Future Research
Taking into consideration the benefits and limitations of the three studies under analysis, it seems viable to suggest several dimensions on which future research might be focused. First of all, it would be a good idea to investigate the relationship between empathy and neuroimaging in people from different age groups. The study by Masten et al. (2011) could serve as a basis for such research, which should involve more individuals from age groups other than youths. It would be interesting to analyze the divergences between children’s, adolescents’, and adults’ perceptions of empathy. However, it will be necessary to recruit more participants in such studies in order to gain higher reliability and validity.
Secondly, it would be useful to develop a framework for creating an action version of altruism for toddlers. That way, it would become possible to trace the differences between young children’s perceptions of altruism in two dimensions. Additionally, such research might be performed on toddlers and children aged three-four years old to compare how these groups’ understanding of and reaction toward empathy changes with time.
Finally, it would be interesting to investigate people’s empathic and altruistic endeavors in relation to their occupation. Thus, scholars might focus on analyzing the empathy and altruism of people belonging to different professions. Additionally, it would be useful to make a differentiation of these participants by age range and gender. That way, it would become possible to obtain the most comprehensive picture of people’s tendency to express altruism.
References
Hardy, C. L., & Van Vugt, M. (2006). Nice guys finish first: The competitive altruism hypothesis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(10), 1402-1413.
Masten, C. L., Morelli, S. A., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2011). An fMRI investigation of empathy for ‘social pain’ and subsequent prosocial behavior. NeuroImage, 55(1), 381-388.
Svetlova, M., Nichols, S. R., & Brownell, C. A. (2010). Toddlers’ prosocial behavior: From instrumental to empathic to altruistic helping. Child Development, 81(6), 1814-1827.