Psychology 2210A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Guanine, Nucleus Accumbens, Distant Relatives

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2210A/B
• Professor: Krista Macpherson

Document Summary

Behaviour that is helpful or altruistic towards conspecifics. Ex: vampire bats will regurgitate blood for other hungry bats. Humans, in particular, demonstrate a wide range of helpful behaviours from an early age. Darwin: bees (social insects) were a threat to his theory of evolution because of their prosocial behaviour. * cooperation is often used interchangeably with the term prosocial. For our purposes, cooperation specifically refers to instances where two or more individuals work together to achieve a common goal. Traditionally, textbooks have lumped all of these behaviours under a common umbrella. An individuals offspring are part of that individual"s reproductive fitness, or contribution to the gene pool. helping a relative who isn"t your direct offspring ensure at least some of your genes stay in the gene pool. Prosocial behaviour can thus evolve if reproductive success of the kin is enhanced enough to outweigh cost to the individual. Hamilton & price expressed this mathematically through a formula that considers inclusive fitness.