PSY 240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Kin Selection, Psy, Psych
24 Sep 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Evan Reed
Psy 240
Social Psych
Spring 2019
Professor Cianci
prosocial behaviour
Why do people help?
● Prosocial behaviour- any act performed w the goal of benefitting another person
● Altruism- the desire to help others, even if it involves a cost to yourself
● Sometimes people act in a prosocial manner out of self-interest
● All participants expressed that they were taking part in these trials bc they wanted to help
the HIV community (might cause further health problems, altruism)
Evolutionary psych
● Any gene that furthers our survival and increases the probability that we will produce
offspring is likely to be passed on from generation to generation
● Genes that lower our chances of survival reduce the chances that we will produce
offspring and are less likely to be passed on
● Kin selection- behaviour that helps a genetic relative is favoured by natural selection
● Natural selection should favour altruism directed towards family
● The closer the genetic link the greater the designated inheritance
● They would be more likely to help genetic relatives than non-relatives in life or death
situations, but not when the situation was non-life threatening
● Fire- much more likely to search for family before exiting the building than friends
● The genes of people who follow this biological importance rule are more likely to survive
than genes of people who do not
● Most likely to help the fam to whom they had the closest emotional ties, rather than those
to whom they were the most closely related
● Norm of reciprocity- expectation that helping others will increase the likelihood that they
will help us in the future
● Completely selfish individuals would have found it more difficult to survive than
cooperative group members
● Most likely to survive= people who developed an understanding w their neighbours about
reciprocity
● Reciprocity has already been detected in infants
○ One third of infants who picked up the toy kept it for themselves
○ Those who were willing to part w it were significantly more likely to give the toy
to the confederate who had intended, but was unable to, give them a toy earlier,
than to the confederate who had been unwilling
● It is highly adaptive for individuals to learn social norms from other members of society
● One norm that people learn is the value of helping others; this is considered to be a
valuable norm in virtually all societies
Document Summary
Prosocial behaviour- any act performed w the goal of benefitting another person. Altruism- the desire to help others, even if it involves a cost to yourself. Sometimes people act in a prosocial manner out of self-interest. All participants expressed that they were taking part in these trials bc they wanted to help the hiv community (might cause further health problems, altruism) Any gene that furthers our survival and increases the probability that we will produce offspring is likely to be passed on from generation to generation. Genes that lower our chances of survival reduce the chances that we will produce offspring and are less likely to be passed on. Kin selection- behaviour that helps a genetic relative is favoured by natural selection. Natural selection should favour altruism directed towards family. The closer the genetic link the greater the designated inheritance.
