
Contents
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Introduction Introduction
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Terminology Terminology
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Biological Models of Altruism Biological Models of Altruism
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Origins of Altruism Origins of Altruism
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Animal Evidence for Altruism Animal Evidence for Altruism
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Exchanges Involving Food Sharing and Grooming Exchanges Involving Food Sharing and Grooming
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Consolation Behavior Consolation Behavior
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Proximate Mechanisms Proximate Mechanisms
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Emotions Guide Decisions to Help Emotions Guide Decisions to Help
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Evidence for Human Altruism in Neuroimaging Evidence for Human Altruism in Neuroimaging
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Putting it All Together Putting it All Together
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References References
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38 Altruism
Get accessStephanie D. Preston, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Frans B. M. De Waal is a biologist with a PhD from the University of Utrecht, in the Netherlands. He is C. H. Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory University, and Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, both in Atlanta, GA. He is the author of numerous books, including The age of empathy (Random House, 2009).
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Published:18 September 2012
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Abstract
This chapter reviews the ultimate and proximate levels of analysis on altruism in humans, hoping to create an overarching framework that places each within a larger context that can stimulate human research informed by extensive empirical research in animals. The available neuroscientific evidence will be reviewed at the end, demonstrating consistently that decisions to help are mediated through overlapping decision and reward circuits that integrate emotional and contextual information into a unified somatic state that guides decisions to help. The chapter first defines the important terms, reviews in brief the most common and widely used biological models of altruism, and then provides evidence for these models. After this, the proximate mechanism will be explicated, largely through indirect evidence regarding the motivational and neural circuits thought to underlie decisions to help. The chapter ends with recommendations for future research to provide more direct evidence for the proximate mechanism, using more ecological tasks that elicit altruistic tendencies while being amenable to concurrent recording with neuroscientific tools.
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