PSYCH C162 Midterm: Warneken & Tomasello Summary
Document Summary
In the empirical article, researchers warneken and tomasello investigated the roots, instances, and mediators of altruistic behavior in human infants and chimpanzees. The researchers de ned altruism across three domains of activity: helping others, sharing goods, and informing others. Regarding the rst domain, human infants and chimpanzees help others to similar degrees in a variety of situations, regardless of whether they"re encouraged or praised. Studies show that material rewards sometimes decrease helping behavior in human infants. This occurrence of the over-justi cation e ect testi es to the intrinsic altruistic values that infant humans possess. Regarding the second domain, studies show that human infants are more generous than chimpanzees. Passive sharing, but will rarely share food with their infants, approach food trades with great distrust, and cannot share in the midst cooperative e orts.
