Evolution and altruism: Combining psychological mediators with naturally selected tendencies

نویسنده

  • Daniel J. Kruger
چکیده

This study integrates psychological predictors of helping intentions and naturally selected tendencies enhancing inclusive fitness for a more comprehensive understanding of altruism. Psychological mediators of helping intentions, empathic concern and oneness, and psychological processes facilitating kin selection and reciprocal altruism were combined in a structural equation model to predict participants’ (N = 643) intentions to perform a risky rescue behavior. The tendency for reciprocal altruism and kinship were the strongest predictors of rescue intentions. Confirming previous research, empathic concern made a significant but small contribution in predicting helping intentions. Proximate mechanisms currently in the psychological literature did not entirely account for the effect of kinship on helping intentions. D 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

برای دانلود رایگان متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

The roots of human altruism.

Human infants as young as 14 to 18 months of age help others attain their goals, for example, by helping them to fetch out-of-reach objects or opening cabinets for them. They do this irrespective of any reward from adults (indeed external rewards undermine the tendency), and very likely with no concern for such things as reciprocation and reputation, which serve to maintain altruism in older ch...

متن کامل

Relationship between Religious Attitude and Prosocial Behavior Considering the Mediating Role of Empathy and Altruism in Nursing and Medical Students

Background and purpose: Prosocial behavior can offer clinical, psychological, and biological applications to improve the health of patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of religious attitude on prosocial behavior considering the mediating roles of empathy and altruism in nursing and medical students. Materials and methods: A descriptive-correlational study was perfo...

متن کامل

The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism

A model is presented to account for the natural selection of what is termed reciprocally altruistic behavior. The model shows how selection can operate -against the cheater (non-reciprocator) in the system. Three instances of altruistic behavior are discussed, the evolution of which the model can explain: (1) behavior involved in cleaning symbioses; (2) warning cries in birds: and (3) human rec...

متن کامل

Evolution, altruism and cognitive architecture: a critique of Sober and Wilson’s argument for psychological altruism

Sober and Wilson have propose a cluster of arguments for the conclusion that ‘‘natural selection is unlikely to have given us purely egoistic motives’’ and thus that psychological altruism is true. I maintain that none of these arguments is convincing. However, the most powerful of their arguments raises deep issues about what egoists and altruists are claiming and about the assumptions they ma...

متن کامل

Harm to self outweighs benefit to others in moral decision making.

How we make decisions that have direct consequences for ourselves and others forms the moral foundation of our society. Whereas economic theory contends that humans aim at maximizing their own gains, recent seminal psychological work suggests that our behavior is instead hyperaltruistic: We are more willing to sacrifice gains to spare others from harm than to spare ourselves from harm. To inves...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2003