Windows to the Social Brain

 There are many forms of pro-social behavior.

 VERY IMPORTANT FOR THE MIDTERM= Always keep in mind the ultimate causes of a
behavior and proximate mechanisms_____.
 Prosocial Behavior= Actions intended to assist another individual (i.e. caring, sharing,
grooming, helping, cooperation, mutualism, self-sacrifice, parental care, reciprocity,
military service, tit-for-tat(I give you something, you give it back (definition=literally, “to
trade services”).
 Prosocial behavior stem from mechanisms that have evolved through different
processes, ecological pressures, and are designed in various ways.
 Reciprocal altruism- An ecological interaction that benefits both parties involved. (The
big fish (the client) v.s. the Cleaner Fish (the little fish)- The cleaner fish will get his teeth
and skin clean. In return, they are getting food.)
o Third party punishment-
 For reciprocal altruism to work, there is no need for the two individuals to be relatives,
nor do they even need to be members of the same species.
 However, it is necessary that individuals should interact more than once, and have the
ability to recognize individuals with whom they have interacted in the past.
 Example of prosocial behavior=
o “It was a dramatic rescue attempt: A half-buried individual called for help and
her sisters came running. First, they tried pulling at her legs, then they
attempted to dig her out. Their digging exposed the problem—their sister was
ensnared by a nylon thread that had been tied to a piece of fi…”
 Ants use directed rescue behavior to free entrapped victims and carefully
discriminate between individuals in distress, offering aid only to
nestmates (i.e. In the study, when realizing their sister was trapped in a
sand snare, her sister ants came to her aid, using directed rescue
behavior to free their entrapped sister.)
 All prosocial behavior is biased towards the in-group.

 Kin selection and inclusive fitness

o Predicts that animals are more likely to behave altruistically towards their
relatives than towards unrelated members of their species.
o Predicts that the degree of altruism will be greater, the closer the relationship.
o Does not require the ability to discriminate relatives from relatives from non-
relatives.
 Caring and nurturing offspring are biological necessity.
o Why has her behavior evolved? Is an ultimate cause. They cannot survive
without care.
 Proximate mechanisms
o The level of care varies, but the underlying neural circuitry for responding to
infants (especially signals of vulnerability and need) seems to be universally
present and highly conserved across species.
 o Example=
 Parental care is the most highly motivated social behavior (i.e. Study in
which maternal rats will cross electrical grids to retrieve pups, and will
choose pups over food.)
 Postpartum female rats (rats following childbirth) prefer a cage that is
associated with their pups’ odor over a cage that is associated with
cocaine.
 Infant cues such as smiling or even crying expressions are powerful motivators of human
parental behavior, which activate reward circuits in the brain associated with dopamine.
o Mothers with secure attachment- Study in which mothers are shown pictures of
their baby vs. pictures of other people’s babies.
 If the mother+baby are secularly attached-___, will predict health,
outcomes, way you act with your boyfriend, etc.
 Increased activation of mesocorticolimbic reward system on viewing their
own infants.
 Peripheral oxytocin response after episodes of mother-infant interaction
predicts activation in striatum in response to own-infant faces.
 Hormones are regulators of social behavior.
o Testosterone
o Oxytocin
o Prolactin
 Hormones are silent drivers of behavior.
o Their molecular fingerprints are on everything from attraction to appetite.
 Example= Reading the mind in the eyes (test)
Which word best describes what the person in the picture is feeling?
-convinced,
-flustered,
-lust,
-joking)
 Administration of oxytocin in male volunteers improves performance in RMET (Reading
Mind in the Eyes)
 Administration of testosterone in female leads to a significant impairment in the ability
to infer emotions and other mental states from the eye region.

 Lower levels of male testosterone are associated with pair-bonding and parental care.

o Fathers with lower levels of testosterone are more sympathetic and feel a
greater need to respond to infant cries.
o Fathers with more prior interactive experience caring for infants have lower
testosterone and higher prolactin levels than do fathers that have their first baby
(who have less prior interactive experience caring for infants).
 Testosterone mediates tradeoffs between mating and parenting in humans, as seen in
other species in which fathers care for young.
 o Single non fathers with greater testosterone(T) at baseline were more likely to
become newly partnered.
o Once these men entered a stable relationship and became new fathers, they
experienced a large decline in testosterone.
o Men reporting 1-3 hours of daily childcare had lower testosterone compared
with fathers reporting not being involved with care (these are proximate
mechanisms).
 Oxytocin and sociality
o (Oxytocin= A 9 amino acid peptide in the brain.)
o Implicated in social bonding.
o Decreases fear and anxiety.
o Increases tolerance to stressful stimuli (i.e. when a female gives birth there is an
increase in oxytocin so it does not hurt as much).
o Induces maternal attachment.
o Down-regulates the HPA axis (*MY NOTE= the “hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal
axis, which is a complex set of direct influences and feedback interactions
among three endocrine glands (the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, &
the adrenal glands)).
o Reduces amygdala activation to fearful/threatening scenes.
o Improves cognitive and emotional empathy in humans.

 Homologue of oxytocin exists since 700 millions years and play a general role in the
modulation (influencing) of social behavior and reproduction.
 Its role in facilitating species-typical social and reproductive behaviors is as
evolutionarily conserved as its structure and expression, although the specific behaviors
that it regulates are quite diverse.
The dark side of altruism
 The process of group selection does not eliminate competition from the evolutionary
process but merely transposes it up one level.
 Group selection can promote within-group niceness, but it can also promote between-
group nastiness.
 There is no automatic link b/t altruism and morality.
o Altruism can induce partiality and can cause people to violate ethical norms.
 We may donate good to members of our own group or burn the crops of
other groups.
 Either way, one helps our own group to do better in the struggle
with other groups.
o Example)=A kin-selected explanation of suicide bombing?-
This extreme form of prosocial behavior (called
“Pathological Altruism”) will go so far as to sacrifice your
life. Why? B/c you want to facilitate your ingroup.

The reciprocity norm- The expectation that helping others will increase the likelihood that they
will help in the future.
  One norm that people learn is the value of helping others- considered a valuable norm
in all societies.
 Because of its survival value, such norm (i.e., the ability to learn and follow social norms
including altruism) may have become genetically based.
-Being nice to others makes us feel good.
-
-
Decision to donate/not to donate to non-profit ORGs
o
o When we give money, it is a cost to ourselves.-the more you activate the
mesolimbic system
IS ONE OF THE PROXIMATE MECHANISMS OF ___SOCIAL BEHAVIOR.
Human fronto-mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation.
 Fronto-mesolimbic reward network is engaged to the same extent when individuals
receive monetary rewards and when they freely choose to donate money to charitable
organizations.
Being observed by others enhances donations and neural activity in striatum during decision-
making.
 In one condition, had the participants be observed->Being observed by others enhances
donations and neural activity in striatum during decision-making. What does this tell
us?=
Reputation=social reward
 Induce a feeling of happiness
 Reinforce pro-social behavior
o motivated to engage in pro-social behaviors when their perception of being
watched by others is enhanced.
Reputation is a social reward.
 There is a link between acquiring a reputation for generosity and an increase in
reproductive success.
 One potential reward for being visibly generous may not just be in developing a good
reputation, but also in directly advertising one’s value to members of the opposite sex,
because women are typically interested in the resources controlled by prospective
mates.

Study= Students at the University of Michigan are significantly more likely to donate to fund-
raising drives if they receive a pin/tag that advertises their participation.
Blood donation occurs at the proximate level because our brain mechanisms make us feel
better when we do any of a wide range of conspicuous (*MY NOTE= attracting
notice/attention) good deeds.

Helping others is not only good for the people that we help.
 It is good for us too.
o Refer to diagram on POWERPOINT=
 MY Q=WHAT DOES THIS ULTIMATELY SHOW?

Being nice and helpful to others has a host of consequence on our _____.
 Anonymous donations are associated with activity in mesolimbic dopaminergic system.
 Donations (costly to the subject) to a food bank are associated with activation in the
ventral striatum.
 Helping buffers the effect of exposure to stressful life events.- has a feedback loop
which is positive.
 Oxytocin, which stimulates caring behaviors, decreases activity in the HPA axis, blood
pressure and cortisol.
The ubiquity (the fact of appearing everywhere/being very common) of early prosocial
behavior
 Empathetic concern/sympathy
 Helping
 Sharing
 Informing
-Natural dispositions
 Emerge very early
 Observed across cultures.

B/c organisms are not consciously trying to increase their evolutionary fitness (the likelihood
that your genes will be passed on to the next generation), ultimate and proximate causes may
be decoupled.
-Recreational sex (sex is totally decoupled from its ultimate goals; ________
-Video-The fact that we care for offspring, why should we do that for someonw from another
species? It triggers the same motivational mechanism) can be disconnected from its ultimate
causes and _____.
Change and differentiation over time
 At 1 year of age, children are spontaneously cooperative and help others non-
discriminatively, this without being rewarded.
 This disposition is then influenced by probable reciprocity judgements and their concern
about how they will be perceived by others.
 With age, prosocial behaviors become more selective, directed to friends and relations,
not all conspecifics.
Once evolved, behavior often gains “motivational autonomy” (i.e. its motivation becomes
independent of ultimate goals)
 Because organisms are not consciously trying to increase their evolutionary fitness,
ultimate and proximate causes may be decoupled.
-Video:
*Motivation + ultimate causes can be disconnected.
Orangutan babysits tiger cubs
Motivational autonomy also applies to altruistic behavior
 Metacognitive abilities and language interact with ancient affective and motivational
systems and expand the range of prosocial behaviors.
THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE<-Q=HOW DOES THIS APPLY???????!?!?!?!? I AM SO
CONFUSED!!?!?!?!?!

Summary
 Many types of prosocial behavior in social species.
 Specific ecological contexts have favored their emergence.
 Different motivations and mechanisms.
 Once evolved, motivation becomes independent of ultimate goal…***PLEASE
KNOW/MEMORIZE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ULTIMATE OR PROXIMATE CAUSES****
In humans, metacognition (*MY NOTE= awareness and understanding of one's own
thought processes) and language interact with ancient motivational systems and expand the
range of prosocial behaviors …(kevin spacey, blowing self up, etc.)
Prosocial behaviors can be studied at different levels of analysis
 Ultimate causes- Selection pressures that have shaped organisms to respond adaptively
in social interaction.
 Proximate explanations- What mechanism and motivations underlie such behaviors.

*MY NOTE= THIS MAY BE HELPUL TO STUDY ULTIMATE AND PROXIMATE MECHANISMS WHICH
WE ARE REQUIRED TO KNOW FOR THE WINDOWS TO THE SOCIAL BRAIN PSYCHOLOGY TEST ON
THURSDAY= https://dishmansbio208.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/proximate-and-ultimate-
mechanisms/