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Is There A Neuroscientific Basis To Altruism?

Is There A Neuroscientific Basis To Altruism? published on

Evidence that certain brain-regions are strongly linked to altruistic behavior.

In this study, published in Social Neuroscience, Moore et al. use “continuous Theta Bust Stimulation (cTBS)” on a total of 58 subjects (30 female, 28 male), to temporarily disable, or at least dampen the activity in two parts of the prefrontal cortex, which had been linked to altruistic behavior in a previous study. To test the link, the participants were placed in an unsupervised Dictator Game, where they had to allocate money between themselves and players of high or low economic standing. Both tested areas of the prefrontal cortex resulted in an increase in generosity in general, but increasing generosity towards players with low and with high economic standing differentially–strongly suggesting that the cTBS-disabled areas of the brain exert an inhibitory influence on altruistic behavior in general and in more nuanced ways.

Original Source:
Christov-Moore, Leonardo, Taisei Sugiyama, Kristina Grigaityte, and Marco Iacoboni. Increasing generosity by disrupting prefrontal cortex. Social Neuroscience, just-accepted, 2016.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17470919.2016.1154105
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17470919.2016.1154105

Does Religion Promote or Hinder Altruistic Behavior?

Does Religion Promote or Hinder Altruistic Behavior? published on

Evidence that altruism is negatively influenced by the religiosity of children’s households.

A team of psychologists from seven different countries (including Canada, the US, Turkey, South Africa, and China) evaluated 1,170 children aged between 5 and 12 years in six countries to assess the effects of religion on their altruistic behavior and their evaluations of scenarios depicting interpersonal harm. The study, published in the journal Current Biology (Vol 25, 2015), reports three findings: a) across all countries, parents in religious households reported that their children expressed more empathy and sensitivity for justice in everyday life than non-religious parents; b) religiousness was inversely predictive of children’s altruism; and c) religiousness was positively correlated with children’s punitive tendencies. The researchers claim that “these results reveal the similarity across countries in how religion negatively influences children’s altruism, challenging the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behavior.”

Original Source:
Jean Decety, Jason M. Cowell, Kang Lee, Randa Mahasneh, Susan Malcolm-Smith, Bilge Selcuk, Xinyue Zhou, The Negative Association between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism across the World, Current Biology, Volume 25, Issue 22, 16 November 2015, Pages 2951-2955, ISSN 0960-9822.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215011677