Altruism under Stress: Cortisol Negatively Predicts Charitable Giving and Neural Value Representations Depending on Mentalizing Capacity

Schulreich, Stefan; Tusche, Anita; Kanske, Philipp; Schwabe, Lars

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.1870-21.2022

Cited by 25 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…Our study extends previous findings demonstrating the importance of individual differences in empathy (31), mentalising (33), and Social Value Orientation (34) in predicting prosocial responses under acute stress. However, it is not yet clear when acute stress accentuates or supresses existing prosocial tendencies.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Similarly, Speer et al (32) showed that acute stress can accentuate existing differences in dishonesty (cf. 33,34). Thus, our study also aimed to test whether individual differences in participants' trait prosocial tendencies, as measured by Social Value Orientation (SVO; 29), modulated the impact of acute stress on effortful prosocial behaviour.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Acute stress reduces effortful prosocial behaviour

Forbes¹,

Aydogan²,

Braunstein³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Acute stress can change our cognition and emotions, but what specific consequences this has for prosocial behaviour is unclear. Previous studies have mainly investigated prosociality with financial transfers in economic games and produced conflicting results. We examined how acute stress changes our willingness to exert effort for others, which is a core feature of many types of real-life prosocial behaviour. Participants – half of whom were put under acute stress – made decisions whether to exert physical effort to gain money for themselves or another person. With this design, we could independently assess the effects of acute stress on prosocial, compared to self-benefitting, effortful behaviour. Compared to controls, stressed participants chose to exert effort more often for self- than for other-benefitting rewards. This was particularly pronounced for more selfish participants. Neuroimaging combined with computational modelling revealed a putative neural mechanism underlying these effects: more stressed participants showed increased activation to subjective value in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula when they themselves could benefit from their exerted effort relative to when someone else could. Activation differences in the dACC mediated the effect of perceived stress on effortful prosocial behaviour. Using effort-based paradigms to better approximate real-life prosocial behaviour and incorporating trait differences in prosocial tendencies could be key to understanding how acute stress affects prosociality. Considering the importance of such behaviours for our individual relationships and social cohesion, this highlights the need to tackle the sources of stress and help people better cope with stress when it occurs.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acute stress reduces effortful prosocial behaviour

Forbes¹,

Aydogan²,

Braunstein³

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Mechanistically, emerging evidence indicates a role of acute stress, including increased cortisol release, in reducing prosocial behavior [ 65 ], charitable giving [ 66 , 67 ], and performance in Theory of Mind tasks [ 68 ], while increasing egoistic choices in moral dilemmas as levels of cortisol rise [ 69 ]. Such findings are relevant since sleep loss increases autonomic physiological arousal related to greater sympathetic nervous system dominance [ 29 ] as well as increases hypothalamic-adrenal stress axis (HPA) activation leading to higher cortisol levels [ 70 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sleep loss leads to the withdrawal of human helping across individuals, groups, and large-scale societies

et al. 2022

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Humans help each other. This fundamental feature of homo sapiens has been one of the most powerful forces sculpting the advent of modern civilizations. But what determines whether humans choose to help one another? Across 3 replicating studies, here, we demonstrate that sleep loss represents one previously unrecognized factor dictating whether humans choose to help each other, observed at 3 different scales (within individuals, across individuals, and across societies). First, at an individual level, 1 night of sleep loss triggers the withdrawal of help from one individual to another. Moreover, fMRI findings revealed that the withdrawal of human helping is associated with deactivation of key nodes within the social cognition brain network that facilitates prosociality. Second, at a group level, ecological night-to-night reductions in sleep across several nights predict corresponding next-day reductions in the choice to help others during day-to-day interactions. Third, at a large-scale national level, we demonstrate that 1 h of lost sleep opportunity, inflicted by the transition to Daylight Saving Time, reduces real-world altruistic helping through the act of donation giving, established through the analysis of over 3 million charitable donations. Therefore, inadequate sleep represents a significant influential force determining whether humans choose to help one another, observable across micro- and macroscopic levels of civilized interaction. The implications of this effect may be non-trivial when considering the essentiality of human helping in the maintenance of cooperative, civil society, combined with the reported decline in sufficient sleep in many first-world nations.

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“…That we do not find reliable evidence of differential effects due to delay in our moderator analysis might indicate that the glucocorticoid response does not play a crucial role in the effects of acute stress on social decision making (in either direction), or that other factors might moderate this association (cf. Azulay et al, 2022;Schulreich et al, 2022;Schweda et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2019). This is further corroborated by the findings that the type of stressor did not influence prosociality (at least not in the experimental designs included in current meta-analysis).…”

Section: Variations In Stressor Typesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Stress Make Us More—or Less—Prosocial? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Acute Stress on Prosocial Behaviours Using Economic Games.

Nitschke¹,

Forbes²,

Lamm³

2022

Preprint

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Prosocial behaviour is fundamental for our social togetherness. Yet, how acute stress, a common everyday occurrence, influences our behaviours towards one another is still unclear. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we aimed to quantitatively investigate the effect of experimentally induced acute stress on prosocial behaviours in economic games. We also probed possible moderators to explain differences in findings. We included 23 studies, 77 individual effects, and 2197 participants in the meta-analysis and found no overall differences between stress and control groups in prosocial behaviours (SMD=-0.04), or costly punishment (SMD=-0.11). While we found significant heterogeneity in the reported research findings, there were no moderating effects of participants’ gender/sex, paradigm design-choices, and the type of stressor did not play a role in explaining divergent effects. The results of this meta-analysis suggest that there is currently no clear answer to the question of whether or not stress increases or decreases prosociality. We highlight important open questions and suggest where the field should go next.

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Altruism under Stress: Cortisol Negatively Predicts Charitable Giving and Neural Value Representations Depending on Mentalizing Capacity

Abstract: Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable giving and neural value representations depending on mentalizing capacity

Cited by 25 publications

References 68 publications

Acute stress reduces effortful prosocial behaviour

Acute stress reduces effortful prosocial behaviour

Sleep loss leads to the withdrawal of human helping across individuals, groups, and large-scale societies

Does Stress Make Us More—or Less—Prosocial? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Acute Stress on Prosocial Behaviours Using Economic Games.

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