Help or flight: Neural defensive circuits promote helping under threat in humans

Helping of conspecifics under threat has been observed across species. In humans, the dominant view proposes that empathy is the key proximal mechanism driving helping motivation in a threatening context, but little is known about how one s own defensive responses to the threat may guide helping decisions. In this pre-registered study, we manipulated threat imminence to activate the entire defensive brain circuitry, and assess the impact of different defensive responses on risky helping behaviour. Forty-nine participants underwent fMRI scanning while making trial-by-trial decisions about whether or not to help a co-participant avoid aversive shocks at the risk of receiving a shock themselves. Helping decisions were prompted under imminent and distal threat, based on the spatiotemporal distance to the administration of the shock to the co-participant. We found that greater engagement of reactive fear circuits (insula, ACC, PAG) during the threat presentation led to helping decisions, whereas engagement of cognitive fear circuits (hippocampus and vmPFC) preceded decisions not to help. Relying on representational similarity analysis, we identified how the defensive circuitry uniquely represented the threat to oneself, and the distress of the co-participant during the task. Importantly, we found that the strength with which the amygdala represented the threat to oneself, and not the other s distress, predicted decisions to help. Our results demonstrate that defensive neural circuits coordinating fast escape from immediate danger may also facilitate decisions to help others, potentially by engaging neurocognitive systems implicated in caregiving across mammals. Taken together, our findings provide novel insights into the proximal basis of altruistic responding, suggesting that defensive responses may play a more important role in helping than previously understood.

The Correlates and Consequences of Believing in Free Will

<p>Research has indicated that weakening people’s belief in free will may likewise weaken their belief in moral responsibility and potentially license them to morally transgress. Recent studies in social psychology suggest that diminished belief in free will is associated with a range of anti-social or otherwise negative outcomes. For example, cheating, unjustified aggression, and less prosocial helping behaviour. In response to these findings, illusionist philosophers have recommended that even if scientists somehow conclusively showed that free will does not exist it might nevertheless be necessary to foster widespread belief as a useful-fiction. In the opposing camp, free will disillusionists maintain that belief in free will has a dark side that we would be better off without. The problem they say, is the close connection between free will and the belief that people justly deserve what they get. So rather than having the instrumental benefits that illusionists claim, belief in free will is too often taken to justify treating people in severe and demeaning ways. Who then is correct? I report empirical results comparing the beliefs and attitudes of free will sceptics and people naïve to the debate. Results are consistent with the claims of disillusionists. Free will sceptics are more compassionate, and are less likely to believe in just deserts and harbour retributive attitudes.</p>

The Correlates and Consequences of Believing in Free Will

<p>Research has indicated that weakening people’s belief in free will may likewise weaken their belief in moral responsibility and potentially license them to morally transgress. Recent studies in social psychology suggest that diminished belief in free will is associated with a range of anti-social or otherwise negative outcomes. For example, cheating, unjustified aggression, and less prosocial helping behaviour. In response to these findings, illusionist philosophers have recommended that even if scientists somehow conclusively showed that free will does not exist it might nevertheless be necessary to foster widespread belief as a useful-fiction. In the opposing camp, free will disillusionists maintain that belief in free will has a dark side that we would be better off without. The problem they say, is the close connection between free will and the belief that people justly deserve what they get. So rather than having the instrumental benefits that illusionists claim, belief in free will is too often taken to justify treating people in severe and demeaning ways. Who then is correct? I report empirical results comparing the beliefs and attitudes of free will sceptics and people naïve to the debate. Results are consistent with the claims of disillusionists. Free will sceptics are more compassionate, and are less likely to believe in just deserts and harbour retributive attitudes.</p>

Visible Markers of Traumatic Brain Injury and their Influence on Affective Reactions and Discriminatory Behaviour: A Comparison of Two Models

<p>Two studies examined the influence visible markers of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) have on two mental health models. The two models examined were The Model of Helping Behaviour (Weiner, 1980) and The Danger Appraisal Model (Corrigan, 2000). A total of 305 participants across two experiments were invited and participated in an online survey to investigate the impact visible markers of brain injury have on their emotional and behavioural responses. Participants were recruited via a link on social media or via the intranet at three New Zealand workplaces. The findings of this study found support for visible markers of TBI influencing both The Model of Helping Behaviour and The Danger Appraisal Model. This study suggested that a higher level of perceived dangerousness and social distance is associated with visible markers of TBI and that TBI markers can significantly increase the level of support participants are willing to provide to brain injured individuals within the workplace. Further findings suggested that participants who reported having familiarity of brain injury had lower negative affective reactions, reduced social distance but less willingness to support TBI individuals within the workplace. Due to the limited research relevant to this field, further studies will need to investigate these findings to ascertain whether this is a true replica of the publics’ emotional and behavioural response towards visible markers of brain injury.</p>

Visible Markers of Traumatic Brain Injury and their Influence on Affective Reactions and Discriminatory Behaviour: A Comparison of Two Models

<p>Two studies examined the influence visible markers of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) have on two mental health models. The two models examined were The Model of Helping Behaviour (Weiner, 1980) and The Danger Appraisal Model (Corrigan, 2000). A total of 305 participants across two experiments were invited and participated in an online survey to investigate the impact visible markers of brain injury have on their emotional and behavioural responses. Participants were recruited via a link on social media or via the intranet at three New Zealand workplaces. The findings of this study found support for visible markers of TBI influencing both The Model of Helping Behaviour and The Danger Appraisal Model. This study suggested that a higher level of perceived dangerousness and social distance is associated with visible markers of TBI and that TBI markers can significantly increase the level of support participants are willing to provide to brain injured individuals within the workplace. Further findings suggested that participants who reported having familiarity of brain injury had lower negative affective reactions, reduced social distance but less willingness to support TBI individuals within the workplace. Due to the limited research relevant to this field, further studies will need to investigate these findings to ascertain whether this is a true replica of the publics’ emotional and behavioural response towards visible markers of brain injury.</p>

An opinion on the interpretation of social release in rats

This commentary concerns a controversial animal model in rodent social release research wherein one rat releases another rat from entrapment in a plastic tube. Release from the plastic tube has been proposed as a model to study empathically motivated behaviour. However, empathic motivations have been contested by others who have provided evidence for social reinforcement motivating release behaviour. Furthermore, helping, or other forms of pro-social behaviour could exist independent of empathy or empathetic motivation and the stimuli occasioning this helping behaviour are not known. In addition, there is a dearth in the citations of published studies whose results fail to support this model. In other words, the controversial aspect of the rodent social release model is often overlooked. This controversy is described in the current opinion piece.

Cooperating to show that you care: costly helping as an honest signal of fitness interdependence

Social organisms often need to know how much to trust others to cooperate. Organisms can expect cooperation from another organism that depends on them (i.e. stake or fitness interdependence), but how do individuals assess fitness interdependence? Here, we extend fitness interdependence into a signalling context: costly helping behaviour can honestly signal one's stake in others, such that those who help are trusted more. We present a mathematical model in which agents help others based on their stake in the recipient's welfare, and recipients use that information to assess whom to trust. At equilibrium, helping is a costly signal of stake: helping is worthwhile for those who value the recipient (and thus will repay any trust), but is not worthwhile for those who do not value the recipient (and thus will betray the trust). Recipients demand signals when they value the signallers less and when the cost of betrayed trust is higher; signal costs are higher when signallers have more incentive to defect. Signalling systems are more likely when the trust games resemble Prisoner's Dilemmas, Stag Hunts or Harmony Games, and are less likely in Snowdrift Games. Furthermore, we find that honest signals need not benefit recipients and can even occur between hostile parties. By signalling their interdependence, organisms benefit from increased trust, even when no future interactions will occur. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’.

Modulating the Activity of the VMPFC With tDCS Alters the Social Framing Effect

Numerous experimental studies have replicated the social framing effect-the observation that people’s decisions related to economic benefits and feelings depend on the method of presentation. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) plays a part in the influence of framing and how individuals think about the feelings of others. Based on this, we used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to modulate neuronal activity in the VMPFC to determine the likelihood of a direct association between VMPFC activity and the social framing effect. Subsequently, in three stimulation treatments, we assessed the presence of the social framing effect, as demonstrated by a disparity between harm degree and help degree. The findings revealed a social framing effect in the participants in the control group and the sham treatment but no social framing effect in the participants in the anodal or cathodal treatments. Furthermore, sex differences were observed in the sham treatment’s social framing effect, whereas no sex differences were observed in the anodal or cathodal treatments. The participants tended to harm the victim after receiving anodal or cathodal tDCS over the VMPFC and did not change their helping behaviour in any stimulations. Consequently, a clear causal link between the behaviour of the VMPFC and the social framing effect was found in the present research.