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Prosocial apathy for helping others when effort is required.

ABSTRACT: Prosocial acts - those that are costly to ourselves but benefit others - are a central component of human co-existence1-3. While the financial and moral costs of prosocial behaviours are well understood4-6, everyday prosocial acts do not typically come at such costs. Instead, they require effort. Here, using computational modelling of an effort-based task we show that people are prosocially apathetic. They are less willing to choose to initiate highly effortful acts that benefit others compared to benefitting themselves. Moreover, even when choosing to initiate effortful prosocial acts, people show superficiality, exerting less force into actions that benefit others than themselves. These findings replicated, were present when the other was anonymous or not, and when choices were made to earn rewards or avoid losses. Importantly, the least prosocially motivated people had higher subclinical levels of psychopathy and social apathy. Thus, although people sometimes 'help out', they are less motivated to benefit others and sometimes 'superficially prosocial', which may characterise everyday prosociality and its disruption in social disorders.

SUBMITTER: Lockwood PL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5555390 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Prosocial apathy for helping others when effort is required.

Lockwood Patricia L PL Hamonet Mathilde M Zhang Samuel H SH Ratnavel Anya A Salmony Florentine U FU Husain Masud M Apps Matthew A J MAJ

Nature human behaviour 20170630 7

Prosocial acts - those that are costly to ourselves but benefit others - are a central component of human co-existence1-3. While the financial and moral costs of prosocial behaviours are well understood4-6, everyday prosocial acts do not typically come at such costs. Instead, they require effort. Here, using computational modelling of an effort-based task we show that people are prosocially apathetic. They are less willing to choose to initiate highly effortful acts that benefit others compared ...[more]

PMID: 28819649

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Project description:Apathy is a syndrome of reduced motivation that commonly occurs in patients with cerebral small vessel disease, including those with the early onset form, CADASIL (cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy). The cognitive mechanisms underlying apathy are poorly understood and treatment options are limited. We hypothesized that disrupted effort-based decision-making, the cognitive process by which potential rewards and the effort cost required to obtain them is integrated to drive behaviour, might underlie the apathetic syndrome. Nineteen patients with a genetic diagnosis of CADASIL, as a model of 'pure' vascular cognitive impairment, and 19 matched controls were assessed using two different behavioural paradigms and MRI. On a decision-making task, participants decided whether to accept or reject sequential offers of monetary reward in return for exerting physical effort via handheld dynamometers. Six levels of reward and six levels of effort were manipulated independently so offers spanned the full range of possible combinations. Choice, decision time and force metrics were recorded. Each participant's effort and reward sensitivity was estimated using a computational model of choice. On a separate eye movement paradigm, physiological reward sensitivity was indexed by measuring pupillary dilatation to increasing monetary incentives. This metric was related to apathy status and compared to the behavioural metric of reward sensitivity on the decision-making task. Finally, high quality diffusion imaging and tract-based spatial statistics were used to determine whether tracts linking brain regions implicated in effort-based decision-making were disrupted in apathetic patients. Overall, apathetic patients with CADASIL rejected significantly more offers on the decision-making task, due to reduced reward sensitivity rather than effort hypersensitivity. Apathy was also associated with blunted pupillary responses to incentives. Furthermore, these independent behavioural and physiological markers of reward sensitivity were significantly correlated. Non-apathetic patients with CADASIL did not differ from controls on either task, whilst actual motor performance of apathetic patients in both tasks was also normal. Apathy was specifically associated with reduced fractional anisotropy within tracts connecting regions previously associated with effort-based decision-making. These findings demonstrate behavioural, physiological and anatomical evidence that dysfunctional effort-based decision-making underlies apathy in patients with CADASIL, a model disorder for sporadic small vessel disease. Reduced incentivization by rewards rather than hypersensitivity to effort costs drives this altered pattern of behaviour. The study provides empirical evidence of a cognitive mechanism for apathy in cerebral small vessel disease, and identifies a promising therapeutic target for interventions to improve this debilitating condition.

Project description:This study examined linguistic patterns in mothers’ reports about their toddlers’ involvement in everyday household work, as a way to understand the parental ethnotheories that may guide children’s prosocial helping and development. Mothers from two cultural groups – US Mexican-heritage families with backgrounds in indigenous American communities and middle-class European-American families – were interviewed regarding how their 2- to 3-year-old toddler gets involved in help with everyday household work. The study’s analytic focus was the linguistic form of mothers’ responses to interview questions asking about the child’s efforts to help with a variety of everyday household work tasks. Results showed that mothers responded with linguistic patterns that were indicative of ethnotheoretical assumptions regarding children’s agency and children’s prosocial intentions, with notable contrasts between the two cultural groups. Nearly all US Mexican-heritage mothers reported children’s contributions and participation using linguistic forms that centered children’s agency and prosocial initiative, which corresponds with extensive evidence suggesting the centrality of both children’s autonomy and supportive prosocial expectations in how children’s helpfulness is socialized in this and similar cultural communities. By contrast, middle-class European-American mothers frequently responded to questions about their child’s efforts to help with linguistic forms that “pivoted” to either the mother as the focal agent in the child’s prosocial engagement or to reframing the child’s involvement to emphasize non-help activities. Correspondence between cultural differences in the linguistic findings and existing literature on socialization of children’s prosocial helping is discussed. Also discussed is the analytic approach of the study, uncommon in developmental psychology research, and the significance of the linguistic findings for understanding parental ethnotheories in each community.

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Prosocial apathy for helping others when effort is required.

Publications

Prosocial apathy for helping others when effort is required.

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