Rats demonstrate helping behavior toward a soaked conspecific

Sato, Nobuya; Tan, Ling Ling; Tate, Kazushi; Okada, Maya

doi:10.1007/s10071-015-0872-2

Cited by 193 publications

(236 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…This was further attributed to social contact but again it poses the possibility that social contact was empathic in nature. Assuming that the social contact explanation was true, rats will be motivated to open restrainers and trap doors for distressed and non-distress cagemates indiscriminately, but this is not the case (Ben-Ami Bartal et al, 2014;Sato et al, 2015). It should be realized that a key difference among these various studies is the degree of distress.…”

Section: Prosociality: Helping Others In Distressmentioning

confidence: 96%

Behavioral and mechanistic insight into rodent empathy

Sivaselvachandran

Acland

Abdallah

et al. 2018

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

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Section: Prosociality: Helping Others In Distressmentioning

confidence: 96%

Behavioral and mechanistic insight into rodent empathy

Sivaselvachandran

Acland

Abdallah

et al. 2018

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

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“…Rats will press a bar to lower another rat that is suspended in mid-air, which is interpreted as relieving the suspended animal's distress [118]. Rats helped distressed conspecifics that had been soaked with water, and chose to help the cage mate before obtaining a food reward ( [119] but see [120]). Moreover, rats prefer a mutual reward to a selfish reward [121] and this prosocial choice is motivated by food-seeking behaviour on the part of the other rat [122].…”

Section: (C) How Empathy Motivates Prosocial Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empathy as a driver of prosocial behaviour: highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across species

Decety

Bartal

Uzefovsky

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

540

384

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Empathy reflects the natural ability to perceive and be sensitive to the emotional states of others, coupled with a motivation to care for their well-being. It has evolved in the context of parental care for offspring, as well as within kinship bonds, to help facilitate group living. In this paper, we integrate the perspectives of evolution, animal behaviour, developmental psychology, and social and clinical neuroscience to elucidate our understanding of the proximate mechanisms underlying empathy. We focus, in particular, on processing of signals of distress and need, and their relation to prosocial behaviour. The ability to empathize, both in animals and humans, mediates prosocial behaviour when sensitivity to others' distress is paired with a drive towards their welfare. Disruption or atypical development of the neural circuits that process distress cues and integrate them with decision value leads to callous disregard for others, as is the case in psychopathy. The realization that basic forms of empathy exist in non-human animals is crucial for gaining new insights into the underlying neurobiological and genetic mechanisms of empathy, enabling translation towards therapeutic and pharmacological interventions.

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“…Though this result could be explained in a variety ways (e.g., the monkeys merely avoided doing something that caused an aversive stimulus), a not unreasonable interpretation is that the monkeys recognized and wished to avoid causing distress in others, suggesting some degree of sympathetic concern. Similar pro-social helping behaviours suggestive of empathy and sympathy have been documented in several species, including rats (Bartal et al, 2011;Sato et al, 2015), and chimpanzees, who have been shown to direct consoling behaviours towards losers after fights (de Waal, 1996;Fraser and Aureli, 2008) (2015), all of whom argue that at least a core subset of the psychological capacities that underlie human morality are far from uniquely human, but are rather things that we share with many social animals. Whatever differences may exist between their moral psychologies and moral systems and those of humans-none of these authors deny that there are such differences-should be seen as differences in the extent and sophistication of moral capacity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 57%

“…Though this result could be explained in a variety ways (e.g., the monkeys merely avoided doing something that caused an aversive stimulus), a not unreasonable interpretation is that the monkeys recognized and wished to avoid causing distress in others, suggesting some degree of sympathetic concern. Similar pro-social helping behaviours suggestive of empathy and sympathy have been documented in several species, including rats (Bartal et al, 2011;Sato et al, 2015), and chimpanzees, who have been shown to direct consoling behaviours towards losers after fights (de Waal, 1996;Fraser and Aureli, 2008) and display physiological signs of emotional arousal in response to images of violence or other chimpanzees displaying fearful or distressed facial expressions (reviewed by Rudolf von Rohr et al, 2011).…”

mentioning

confidence: 62%

Animal morality: What is the debate about?

Fitzpatrick

2017

Biol Philos

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Empirical studies of the social lives of non-human primates, cetaceans, and other social animals have prompted scientists and philosophers to debate the question of whether morality and moral cognition exists in non-human animals. Some researchers have argued that morality does exist in several animal species, others that these species may possess various evolutionary building blocks or precursors to morality, but not quite the genuine article, while some have argued that nothing remotely resembling morality can be found in any non-human species. However, these different positions on animal morality generally appear to be motivated more by different conceptions of how the term "morality" is to be defined than on empirical disagreements about animal social behaviour and psychology. After delving deeper into the goals and methodologies of various of the protagonists, I argue that, despite appearances, there are actually two importantly distinct debates over animal morality going on, corresponding to two quite different ways of thinking about what it is to define "morality", "moral cognition", and associated notions. Several apparent skirmishes in the literature are thus cases of researchers simply talking past each other. I then focus on what I take to be the core debate over animal morality, which is concerned with understanding the nature and phylogenetic distribution of morality conceived as a psychological natural kind. I argue that this debate is in fact largely terminological and non-substantive. Finally, I reflect on how this core debate might best be re-framed. 1.Introduction In recent years, there has been much interest in whether morality exists in some non-human animals (henceforth, "animals"), or, put differently, whether some animals possess a moral psychology: whether they possess the requisite psychological capacities to engage in some form of moral cognition and action-for instance, make judgments of moral approval or disapproval about others' behaviour, internalize and enforce moral rules or norms, and act for moral reasons (e.g., act punitively towards another individual because of a moral evaluation of that individual's behaviour).Such questions have been prompted by a burgeoning empirical literature on the remarkably complex and intricate social lives, particularly of our closest primate 2 relatives, but also of other social mammals like elephants, domestic dogs, wolves, whales, dolphins, and rats, and even some non-mammalian species, such as ravens.For example, chimpanzees appear to engage in third-party policing of behaviour, which seems to indicate the existence and enforcement of norms of conduct within their communities (de Waal, 1996(de Waal, , 2014Rudolf von Rohr, et al., 2012). Special place is typically accorded to infants, for instance, such that aggression towards them is met with loud protests and active intervention on the part of uninvolved bystanders (Rudolf von Rohr, et al., 2011. Many other social mammals also appear to enforce various behavioural norms. For instance, m...

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Rats demonstrate helping behavior toward a soaked conspecific

Cited by 193 publications

References 33 publications

Behavioral and mechanistic insight into rodent empathy

Behavioral and mechanistic insight into rodent empathy

Empathy as a driver of prosocial behaviour: highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across species

Animal morality: What is the debate about?

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