Toddlers' preference for prosocial versus antisocial agents: No associations with empathy or attachment security

Like the Good or Bad Guy — Empathy in Antisocial and Prosocial Games

Empathy, prosocial behavior and security of attachment in two years olds

Empathy, the ability to vicariously comprehend the emotional state of another person, develops in the middle of the second year, when children have formed a self-concept that allows them to recognize themselves in a mirror. In previous investigations we demonstrated that most recognizers showed concern and tried to help when confronted with a person in need, whereas non-recognizers showed a per...

Positive affect: phenotypic and etiologic associations with prosocial behaviors and internalizing problems in toddlers

Despite evidence for the associations of positive affect to prosocial behaviors and internalizing problems, relatively little is known about the underlying etiology. The sample comprised over 300 twin pairs at age 3. Positive affect, prosocial behaviors, and internalizing problems were assessed using the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire (Goldsmith, 1996), the Revised Rutter Parent Scal...

Preference or paradigm? Bonobos show no evidence of other-regard in the standard prosocial choice task

Bonobos are the only ape species, other than humans, that have demonstrated prosocial behaviors toward groupmates and strangers. However, bonobos have not been tested in the most frequently used test of prosociality in animals. The current study tested the other-regarding preferences of bonobos in two experiments using the prosocial choice task. In the first experiment subjects preferred a food...

Planning for Multiple Preferences versus Planning with No Preference

Many planning applications must address conflicting plan objectives, such as cost, risk, duration, and resource consumption and decision makers want to know the possible trade-offs. Traditionally, such problems are solved by invoking a single-objective algorithm (such as A*) on multiple, alternative preferences of the objectives to identify non-dominated plans. The less-popular alternative is t...