Social Reward and Empathy as Proximal Contributions to Altruism: The Camaraderie Effect

Abstract

Natural selection favors individuals to act in their own interests, implying that wild animals experience a competitive psychology. Animals in the wild also express helping behaviors, presumably at their own expense and suggestive of a more compassionate psychology. This apparent paradox can be partially explained by ultimate mechanisms that include kin selection, reciprocity, and multilevel selection, yet some theorists argue such ultimate explanations may not be sufficient and that an additional “stake in others” is necessary for altruism’s evolution. We suggest this stake is the “camaraderie effect,” a by-product of two highly adaptive psychological experiences: social motivation and empathy. Rodents can derive pleasure from access to others and this appetite for social rewards motivates individuals to live together, a valuable psychology when group living is adaptive. Rodents can also experience empathy, the generation of an affective state more appropriate to the situation of another compared to one’s own. Empathy is not a compassionate feeling but it has useful predictive value. For instance, empathy allows an individual to feel an unperceived danger from social cues. Empathy of another’s stance toward one’s self would predict either social acceptance or ostracism and amplify one’s physiological sensitivity to social isolation, including impaired immune responses and delayed wound healing. By contrast, altruistic behaviors would promote well-being in others and feelings of camaraderie from others, thereby improving one’s own physiological well-being. Together, these affective states engender a stake in others necessary for the expression of altruistic behavior.

The comparative study of empathy: sympathetic concern and empathic perspective‐taking in non‐human animals

“…This capacity is an important adaptive strategy in the maintenance of complex social systems allowing animals to predict others' future behaviour (Waller, Whitehouse & Micheletta, ) and to attend to others' needs in changing circumstances. The affective experiences may help to build, strengthen or repair social bonds, also providing a variety of reproductive benefits (Lahvis, ). The combination of a capacity to respond to others' emotional states with the ability to carry out a cognitive evaluation of the situation will lead to a more robust and flexible behavioural response to an urgent situation (Lahvis, ).…”

“…The affective experiences may help to build, strengthen or repair social bonds, also providing a variety of reproductive benefits (Lahvis, ). The combination of a capacity to respond to others' emotional states with the ability to carry out a cognitive evaluation of the situation will lead to a more robust and flexible behavioural response to an urgent situation (Lahvis, ).…”

Reward sensitivity, affective neuroscience personality, symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, andTPH2-703G/T (rs4570625) genotype

“…Rewards constitute a major incentive in the balance between approach and avoidance, and the sensitivity to rewards should have implications to other fundamental mechanisms guiding behaviour such as basic emotions (e.g. Collins et al, 2017;Lahvis, 2017;. Nevertheless, no investigation has examined the relationship of reward sensitivity to the traits as measured by the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scale (ANPS; Davis et al, 2003;Davis and Panksepp, 2011) which has been constructed bottom up to study traits predicted by the basic neuroscience research in animals (Panksepp, 1998;.…”

A hermeneutic literature review to conceptualise altruism as a value in nursing

“…Batson (: 5–6) then asks the question: ‘As long as a person in need is helped, why worry about the nature of the underlying motivation?’ The author explains that the consistency and predictability of caring behaviour may be affected when motivated by the secondary goal of emotional fulfilment. However, other authors claim that self‐reward as part of altruistic care may strengthen the probability of future altruistic care as it serves as reinforcement.…”