the French entomologist Antoine: Antoine Magnan, Le Vol des insectes (Paris: Hermann, 1934).
“I applied the laws of air resistance”: Antoine Magnan, La Locomotion Chez les Animaux, vol. 1 (Paris: Hermann, 1934).
Insects, bees included: Douglas L. Altshuler, William B. Dickson, Jason T. Vance, Stephen P. Roberts, and Michael H. Dickinson, “Short-Amplitude High-Frequency Wing Strokes Determine the Aerodynamics of Honeybee Flight,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102, no. 50 (2005): 18213–18218.
But as Charles Darwin: Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (London: John Murray Publishers, 1871).
some altruism toward kin: W. D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour: I,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 7, no. 1 (1964): 1–16; W. D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour: II,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 7, no. 1 (1964): 17–52.
It explains why colony-dwelling creatures: Paul W. Sherman, “Nepotism and the Evolution of Alarm Calls,” Science 197, no. 4310 (1977): 1246–1253.
Inclusive fitness may also explain: Arthur J. Matas, Jodi M. Smith, Melissa A. Skeans, Kenneth E. Lamb, S. K. Gustafson, Ciara J. Samana, Darren E. Stewart, Jon J. Snyder, Ajay K. Israni, and Bertram L. Kasiske, “OPTN/SRTR 2011 Annual Data Report: Kidney,” American Journal of Transplantation 13, suppl. 1 (2013): 11–46.
reciprocal altruism, which relies: Robert L. Trivers, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,” Quarterly Review of Biology 46 (1971): 35–57.
Bats are more likely to receive blood buffets: Gerald G. Carter and Gerald S. Wilkinson, “Food Sharing in Vampire Bats: Reciprocal Help Predicts Donations More Than Relatedness or Harassment,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 280, no. 1753 (2013): 20122573.
Some declare all altruism an illusion: Robert B. Cialdini, Stephanie L. Brown, Brian P. Lewis, Carol Luce, et al., “Reinterpreting the Empathy-Altruism Relationship: When One into One Equals Oneness.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73, no. 3 (1997): 481–494.
Others cite supernatural forces: Antonia J. Z. Henderson, Monica A. Landolt, Michael F. McDonald, William M. Barrable, John G. Soos, William Gourlay, Colleen J. Allison, and David N. Landsberg, “The Living Anonymous Kidney Donor: Lunatic or Saint?” American Journal of Transplantation 3, no. 2 (2003): 203–213.
The subjects in these studies: Alston Chase, “Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber,” The Atlantic, June 2000.
they called “moral typecasting”: Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, “Moral Typecasting: Divergent Perceptions of Moral Agents and Moral Patients,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96, no. 3 (2009): 505–520.
recognized as far back as Aristotle: Cynthia A. Freeland, “Aristotelian Actions,” Noûs 19, no. 3 (1985): 397–414.
Social media exploded with admiration: “Cory Booker Hashtag Explodes on Twitter After Mayor’s Dramatic Fire Rescue,” NJ.com, April 13, 2012, http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/04/cory_booker_hashtag_explodes_o.html; Stephanie Haberman, “Super-Mayor Cory Booker Gets Memed,” CNN.com, April 13, 2012, http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/13/tech/web/mayor-cory-booker-memed/.
Booker was blunt: “Mayor Cory Booker Answers Questions About Fire Rescue,” uploaded April 13, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm1SKTyVZf8; “Newark Mayor Cory Booker: Race into Home Fire Was “a Come to Jesus Moment,” CBS News, April 13, 2012, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/newark-mayor-cory-booker-race-into-home-fire-was-a-come-to-jesus-moment/; Alyssa Newcomb, “Newark Mayor Cory Booker Rescues Neighbor from Fire,” ABC News, April 13, 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/04/newark-mayor-cory-booker-rescues-neighbor-from-fire/; James Barron, “After Rescuing Woman from Fire, a Mayor Recalls His Fear and Focus,” New York Times, April 13, 2012.
he’d landed on his head: “Ex-Stanford Wrestler Surmon Dies in Fall,” Washington Post, January 3, 2000.
More than one serial killer: “Suspected or Convicted Serial Killers in Washington,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 19, 2003; “Adhahn Pleads Guilty to Murder of Tacoma Girl, 12,” Seattle Times, April 8, 2008.
John Keats was correct in observing: John Keats, letter to George and Georgiana Keats, February 14–May 3, 1819, http://www.john-keats.com/briefe/140219.htm.
the infamous case of Kitty Genovese: Rachel Manning, Mark Levine, and Alan Collins, “The Kitty Genovese Murder and the Social Psychology of Helping: The Parable of the 38 Witnesses,” American Psychologist 62, no. 6 (2007): 555–562.
follow-up psychology studies: John M. Darley and Bibb Latané, “Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 8, no. 4 (1968): 377–383.
Zimbardo’s infamous Stanford Prison Experiment: Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo, “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison,” International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1 (1973): 69–97.
Stanley Milgram’s research was so controversial: Daniel Raver, “Stanley Milgram,” Psyography, http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/stanleymilgram.html.
most influential psychologists of the last century: Ibid.
“six degrees of separation” is a real thing: Jeffrey Travers and Stanley Milgram, “An Experimental Study of the Small World Problem,” Sociometry (1969): 425–443.
the most notorious use ever of electric shocks: For original documentation of the studies, see Stanley Milgram, “Behavioral Study of Obedience,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 67 (1963): 371–378; Stanley Milgram, “Obedience” (film) (New York: New York University Film Library, 1965).
he anxiously monitored the local obituaries: Sandi Kahn Shelton, “Clinton Man Hears Dad’s Taped Screams in 1960s Shock Study at Yale” (video), New Haven Register, October 20, 2012.
“There is a need to draw a line”: Isabel Kershner, “Pardon Plea by Adolf Eichmann, Nazi War Criminal, Is Made Public,” New York Times, January 27, 2016.
more recent evidence has suggested: S. Alexander Haslam and Stephen D. Reicher, “Contesting the ‘Nature’ of Conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo’s Studies Really Show,” PLoS Biology 10, no. 11 (2012): e1001426.
“I would say, on the basis”: Gina Perry, Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments (New York: New Press, 2013).
Versions of the study have been run: Thomas Blass, “The Milgram Paradigm After 35 Years: Some Things We Now Know About Obedience to Authority,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 29, no. 5 (1999): 955–978; Thomas Blass, “A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Studies of Obedience Using the Milgram Paradigm: A Review,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 6, no. 2 (2012): 196–205; Jerry M. Burger, “Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey Today?” American Psychologist 64, no. 1 (2009): 1–11.
the volunteers’ responses weren’t uniform: Haslam and Reicher, “Contesting the ‘Nature’ of Conformity.”
Batson’s study used electrical shocks: C. Daniel Batson, Bruce D. Duncan, Paula Ackerman, Terese Buckley, and Kimberly Birch, “Is Empathic Emotion a Source of Altruistic Motivation?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40, no. 2 (1981): 290–302.
a discipline that has historically focused: Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross, The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991). For a historical discussion of this perspective, see Harry T. Reis, “Reinvigorating the Concept of Situation in Social Psychology,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 12, no. 4 (2008): 311–329.
So another possibility—one of many: Catherine Tuvblad and Laura A. Baker, “Human Aggression Across the Lifespan: Genetic Propensities and Environmental Moderators,” Advances in Genetics 75 (2011): 171–214.
Many of these studies aren’t designed: For a review, see Robert Plomin, “Genetics and Developmental Psychology,” Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 50, no. 3 (2004): 341–352. For one example of a study that examines the genetic influences of an effect that is often described as purely environmental—the influence of parents’ language use on children’s language development—see Laura S. DeThorne, Stephen A. Petrill, Sara A. Hart, Ron W. Channell, Rebecca J. Campbell, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Lee Anne Thompson, and David J. Vandenbergh, “Genetic Effects on Children’s Conversational Language Use,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 51, no. 2 (2008): 423–435.
A study like this provides compelling evidence: Thomas J. Bouchard Jr., David T. Lykken, Matthew McGue, Nancy L. Segal, and Auke Tellegen, “Sources of Human Psychological Differences: The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart,” Science 250, no. 4978 (1990): 223–228; Robert Plomin, Michael J. Owen, and Peter McGuffin, “The Genetic Basis of Complex Human Behaviors,” Science 264, no. 5166 (1994): 1733–1739. Some aspects of genetic contributions to human traits remain topics of debate; for a discussion, see Eric Turkheimer, “Three Laws of Behavior Genetics and What They Mean,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 9, no. 5 (2000): 160–164.
This is how researchers could determine: Turi E. King, Gloria Gonzalez Fortes, Patricia Balaresque, Mark G. Thomas, David Balding, Pierpaolo Maisano Delser, Rita Neumann, Walther Parson, Michael Knapp, and Susan Walsh, “Identification of the Remains of King Richard III,” Nature Communications 5 (2014): 5631.
A caveat is that the heritability: For a review of heritability and misconceptions about it, see Peter M. Visscher, William G. Hill, and Naomi R. Wray, “Heritability in the Genomics Era: Concepts and Misconceptions,” Nature Reviews Genetics 9, no. 4 (2008): 255–266. For important findings relevant to gene-environment interactions, see Eric Turkheimer, Andreana Haley, Mary Waldron, Brian D’Onofrio, and Irving I. Gottesman, “Socioeconomic Status Modifies Heritability of IQ in Young Children,” Psychological Science 14, no. 6 (2003): 623–628; Elliot M. Tucker-Drob and Timothy C. Bates, “Large Cross-National Differences in Gene × Socioeconomic Status Interaction on Intelligence,” Psychological Science 27, no. 2 (2015): 138–149. For an examination of how genetic and environmental processes shape human height variation, see Gert Stulp and Louise Barrett, “Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Height Variation,” Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 91, no. 1 (2016): 206–234.
For body weight, heritability hovers: Hermine H. M. Maes, Michael C. Neale, and Lindon J. Eaves, “Genetic and Environmental Factors in Relative Body Weight and Human Adiposity,” Behavior Genetics 27, no. 4 (1997): 325–351.
the famed behavioral geneticist Eric Turkheimer: Turkheimer, “Three Laws of Behavior Genetics.”
A massive study reported in the journal: Tinca J. C. Polderman, Beben Benyamin, Christiaan A. de Leeuw, Patrick F. Sullivan, Arjen van Bochoven, Peter M. Visscher, and Danielle Posthuma, “Meta-Analysis of the Heritability of Human Traits Based on Fifty Years of Twin Studies,” Nature Genetics 47, no. 7 (2015): 702–709.
In Milgram’s era, most psychologists: Plomin, “Genetics and Developmental Psychology.” For an in-depth review of this topic, see the outstanding book by Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Penguin, 2003).
The behaviorists’ views were very influential: Steven J. Haggbloom, Renee Warnick, Jason E. Warnick, Vinessa K. Jones, Gary L. Yarbrough, Tenea M. Russell, Chris M. Borecky, Reagan McGahhey, John L. Powell III, and Jamie Beavers, “The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century,” Review of General Psychology 6, no. 2 (2002): 139.
“What is love except”: Burrhus Frederic Skinner, Walden Two (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1974) 282.
if we could perfectly control: Burrhus Frederic Skinner, Science and Human Behavior (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953).
The heritability of aggression is: Tuvblad and Baker, “Human Aggression Across the Lifespan”; Marina A. Bornovalova, Brian M. Hicks, William G. Iacono, and Matt McGue, “Familial Transmission and Heritability of Childhood Disruptive Disorders,” American Journal of Psychiatry 167, no. 9 (2010): 1066–1074; S. Alexandra Burt, “Are There Meaningful Etiological Differences Within Antisocial Behavior? Results of a Meta-Analysis,” Clinical Psychology Review 29 (2009): 163–178; Laura A. Baker, Adrian Raine, Jianghong Liu, and Kristen C. Jacobson, “Differential Genetic and Environmental Influences on Reactive and Proactive Aggression in Children,” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 36, no. 8 (2008): 1265–1278; Dehryl A. Mason and Paul J. Frick, “The Heritability of Antisocial Behavior: A Meta-Analysis of Twin and Adoption Studies,” Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 16, no. 4 (1994): 301–323.
but among violent criminals: Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (New York: Guilford, 1993).
Psychopathy is also highly influenced: Catherine Tuvblad, Serena Bezdjian, Adrian Raine, and Laura A. Baker, “The Heritability of Psychopathic Personality in 14-to 15-Year-Old Twins: A Multirater, Multimeasure Approach,” Psychological Assessment 26 (2014): 704–716; Essi Viding, Robert James R. Blair, Terrie E. Moffitt, and Robert Plomin, “Evidence for Substantial Genetic Risk for Psychopathy in 7-Year-Olds,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 46, no. 6 (2005): 592–597.
Not so for Gary, who grew up: Ann Rule, Green River, Running Red: The Real Story of the Green River Killer—America’s Deadliest Serial Murderer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004); Terry McCarthy, “River of Death,” Time 159, no. 22 (2002): 56–61; Mary Ellen O’Toole and Alisa Bowman, Dangerous Instincts: How Gut Feelings Betray Us (New York: Hudson Street Press, 2011).
Tony Savage emphasized this: “Inside the Mind of Serial Killer Gary Ridgway,” Larry King Live, CNN, February 18, 2004, http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0402/18/lkl.00.html.
Most people who are psychotic: Sherry Glied and Richard G. Frank, “Mental Illness and Violence: Lessons from the Evidence,” American Journal of Public Health 104, no. 2 (2014): e5–e6.
Children who are abused or neglected: David D. Vachon, Robert F. Krueger, Fred A. Rogosch, and Dante Cicchetti, “Assessment of the Harmful Psychiatric and Behavioral Effects of Different Forms of Child Maltreatment,” JAMA Psychiatry (2015): 1135–1142; Gayla Margolin and Elana B. Gordis, “The Effects of Family and Community Violence on Children,” Annual Review of Psychology 51 (2000): 445–479.
what really sets them apart is proactive aggression: Robert James R. Blair, “Neurocognitive Models of Aggression, the Antisocial Personality Disorders, and Psychopathy,” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 71, no. 6 (2001): 727–731.
It’s not like people haven’t looked: K. A. Dodge, John E. Lochman, Jennifer D. Harnish, John E. Bates, and G. S. Pettit, “Reactive and Proactive Aggression in School Children and Psychiatrically Impaired Chronically Assaultive Youth,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 106, no. 1 (1997): 37; Julian D. Ford, Lisa A. Fraleigh, and Daniel F. Connor, “Child Abuse and Aggression Among Seriously Emotionally Disturbed Children,” Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 39, no. 1 (2010): 25–34.
one large study conducted by Adrian Raine: Catherine Tuvblad, Adrian Raine, Mo Zheng, and Laura A. Baker, “Genetic and Environmental Stability Differs in Reactive and Proactive Aggression,” Aggressive Behavior 35, no. 6 (2009): 437–452.
one of my dissertation studies: Abigail A. Marsh, Megan N. Kozak, and Nalini Ambady, “Accurate Identification of Fear Facial Expressions Predicts Prosocial Behavior,” Emotion 7, no. 1 (2007): 239–251; Jay S. Coke, C. Daniel Batson, and Katherine McDavis, “Empathic Mediation of Helping: A Two-Stage Model,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36 (1978): 752–766.
one of the “most unintuitive” psychology findings: Simon A. Moss and Samuel Wilson, “Integrating the Most Unintuitive Empirical Observations of 2007 in the Domain of Personality and Social Psychology into a Unified Framework,” New Ideas in Psychology 28, no. 1 (2010): 1–27.
Subsequent research has also linked: Abigail A. Marsh and R. J. Blair, “Deficits in Facial Affect Recognition Among Antisocial Populations: A Meta-Analysis,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 32 (2008): 454–465; Purva Rajhans, Nicole Altvater-Mackensen, Amrisha Vaish, and Tobias Grossmann, “Children’s Altruistic Behavior in Context: The Role of Emotional Responsiveness and Culture,” Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 24089; Abigail A. Marsh, Sarah A. Stoycos, Kristin M. Brethel-Haurwitz, Paul Robinson, and Elise M. Cardinale, “Neural and Cognitive Characteristics of Extraordinary Altruists,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 42 (2014): 15036–15041; Stuart F. White, Margaret J. Briggs-Gowan, Joel L. Voss, Amelie Petitclerc, Kimberly McCarthy, R. J. R. Blair, and Laurie S. Wakschlag, “Can the Fear Recognition Deficits Associated with Callous-Unemotional Traits Be Identified in Early Childhood?” Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 38, no. 6 (2016): 672–684.
James proposed that the mechanism: R. J. Blair, “A Cognitive Developmental Approach to Morality: Investigating the Psychopath,” Cognition 57, no. 1 (1995): 1–29; R. J. Blair, “Applying a Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective to the Disorder of Psychopathy,” Development and Psychopathology 17, no. 3 (2005): 865–891.
the work of animal behavior experts: Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (London: Methuen, 1966); Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns (Chicago: Aldine, 1996); Rudolf Schenkel, “Submission: Its Features in the Wolf and Dog,” American Zoologist 7 (1967): 319–329.
Young children are almost always: Sylvana M. Côté, Tracy Vaillancourt, John C. LeBlanc, Daniel S. Nagin, and Richard E. Tremblay, “The Development of Physical Aggression from Toddlerhood to Pre-adolescence: A Nation Wide Longitudinal Study of Canadian Children,” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 34, no. 1 (2006): 71–85; Richard E. Tremblay, “The Development of Physical Aggression,” Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development, January 2012, http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/aggression/according-experts/development-physical-aggression.
In one study conducted in the 1970s: Linda A. Camras, “Facial Expressions Used by Children in a Conflict Situation,” Child Development (1977): 1431–1435.
even during negotiations between adults: Marwan Sinaceur, Shirli Kopelman, Dimitri Vasiljevic, and Christopher Haag, “Weep and Get More: When and Why Sadness Expression Is Effective in Negotiations,” Journal of Applied Psychology 100, no. 6 (2015): 1847–1871.
Here are the full criteria for a conduct disorder diagnosis: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2013), 469–471.
these children may not respond appropriately: Robert James R. Blair, “Responsiveness to Distress Cues in the Child with Psychopathic Tendencies,” Personality and Individual Differences 27, no. 1 (1999): 135–145; Amy Dawel, Richard O’Kearney, Elinor McKone, and Romina Palermo, “Not Just Fear and Sadness: Meta-Analytic Evidence of Pervasive Emotion Recognition Deficits for Facial and Vocal Expressions in Psychopathy,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 36 (2012): 2288–2304; Abigail A. Marsh and R. J. R. Blair, “Deficits in Facial Affect Recognition Among Antisocial Populations: A Meta-Analysis,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 32 (2008): 454–465; Stuart F. White, Margaret J. Briggs-Gowan, Joel L. Voss, Amelie Petitclerc, Kimberly McCarthy, R. James R. Blair, and Lauren S. Wakschlag, “Can the Fear Recognition Deficits Associated with Callous-Unemotional Traits Be Identified in Early Childhood,” Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 38, no. 6 (2016): 672–684; Patrick D. Sylvers, Patricia A. Brennan, and Scott O. Lilienfeld, “Psychopathic Traits and Preattentive Threat Processing in Children: A Novel Test of the Fearlessness Hypothesis,” Psychological Science 22 (2011): 1280–1287.
When electricity is sent surging: José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado, Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society (Washington, DC: World Bank Publications, 1969); Marvin Wasman and John P. Flynn, “Directed Attack Elicited from Hypothalamus,” Archives of Neurology 6 (1962): 220–227; Thomas R. Gregg and Allan Siegel, “Brain Structures and Neurotransmitters Regulating Aggression in Cats: Implications for Human Aggression,” Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry 25, no. 1 (2001): 91–140.
Optogenetic triggering of neurons: Dayu Lin, Maureen P. Boyle, Piotr Dollar, Hyosang Lee, E. S. Lein, Pietro Perona, and David J. Anderson, “Functional Identification of an Aggression Locus in the Mouse Hypothalamus,” Nature 470, no. 7333 (2011): 221–226..
electrically induced rage will not be directed: Alexander M. Perachio, “The Influence of Target Sex and Dominance on Evoked Attack in Rhesus Monkeys,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 38, no. 2 (1973): 543–547.
The modern clinical definition of psychopathy: Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-called Psychopathic Personality (Brattleboro, VT: Echo Point Books & Media, 2015).
More often than not, the typical psychopath: Ibid., 339.
Perhaps our resistance to the idea: Although the perception of children as moral patients may be less true for black children, who tend to be perceived as older and physically larger and more likely to be guilty of a crime than white children of the same age; see, for example, Phillip Atiba Goff, Matthew Christian Jackson, Brooke Allison, Lewis Di Leone, Carmen Marie Culotta, and Natalie Ann DiTomasso, “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106, no. 4 (2014): 526–545, DOI: 10.1037/a0035663; American Psychological Association, “Black Boys Viewed as Older, Less Innocent Than Whites, Research Finds,” March 6, 2014, http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/black-boys-older.aspx.
The title of a widely circulated: Jennifer Kahn, “Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?” New York Times Magazine, May 11, 2012.
There is a nearly identical 40-point scale: Robert D. Hare, The Hare Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (Toronto: Multi-Health Systems, 1991); Adelle E. Forth, David S. Kosson, and Robert D. Hare, The Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (Toronto: Multi-Health Systems, 2003).
in children with psychopathic traits the opposite: Ashley S. Hampton, Deborah A. G. Drabick, and Laurence Steinberg, “Does IQ Moderate the Relation Between Psychopathy and Juvenile Offending?” Law and Human Behavior 38, no. 1 (2014): 23–33; Terrie E. Moffitt, “Adolescence-Limited and Life-Course-Persistent Antisocial Behavior: A Developmental Taxonomy,” Psychological Review 100, no. 4 (1993): 674–701.
nearly all of these parents had other children: For Ridgeway’s brother’s response to reading about Ridgway’s crimes, see Michael Ko, “Ridgway’s Relatives ‘Mortified by Grief,’” Seattle Times, November 9, 2003.
different styles of parenting may buffer: Hugh Lytton, “Child and Parent Effects in Boys’ Conduct Disorder: A Reinterpretation,” Developmental Psychology 26, no. 5 (1990): 683–697; Grazyna Kochanska, “Multiple Pathways to Conscience for Children with Different Temperaments: From Toddlerhood to Age 5,” Developmental Psychology 33, no. 2 (1997): 228–240; Rebecca Waller, Frances Gardner, Essi Viding, Daniel S. Shaw, Thomas J. Dishion, Melvin N. Wilson, and Luke W. Hyde, “Bidirectional Associations Between Parental Warmth, Callous Unemotional Behavior, and Behavior Problems in High-Risk Preschoolers,” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 42, no. 8 (2014): 1275–1285; Rebecca Waller, Daniel S. Shaw, Erika E. Forbes, and Luke W. Hyde, “Understanding Early Contextual and Parental Risk Factors for the Development of Limited Prosocial Emotions,” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 43, no. 6 (2015): 1025–1039.
very high levels of parental warmth: Luke W. Hyde, Rebecca Waller, Christopher J. Trentacosta, Daniel S. Shaw, Jenae M. Neiderhiser, Jody M. Ganiban, David Reiss, and Leslie D. Leve, “Heritable and Nonheritable Pathways to Early Callous-Unemotional Behaviors,” American Journal of Psychiatry 173, no. 9 (2016): 903–910; Bruce Rosen, “fMRI at 20: Has It Changed the World?” ISMRM Lauterbur Lecture, 2011, uploaded April 9, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edO43AT5GhE.
the NIMH acquired a 7-Tesla magnet: Jun Shen, “Section on Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy,” National Institute of Mental Health, https://www.nimh.nih.gov/labs-at-nimh/research-areas/clinics-and-labs/mib/smrs/index.shtml; Björn Friebe, Astrid Wollrab, Markus Thormann, Katharina Fischbach, Jens Ricke, Marcus Grueschow, Siegfried Kropf, Frank Fischbach, and Oliver Speck, “Sensory Perceptions of Individuals Exposed to the Static Field of a 7T MRI: A Controlled Blinded Study,” Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging 41, no. 6 (2015): 1675–1681.
a group of researchers, led by Daniel Tranel: Daniel Tranel and Bradley T. Hyman, “Neuropsychological Correlates of Bilateral Amygdala Damage,” Archives of Neurology 47, no. 3 (1990): 349–355.
photographs of people who looked frightened: Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, Hanna Damasio, and Antonio Damasio, “Impaired Recognition of Emotion in Facial Expressions Following Bilateral Damage to the Human Amygdala,” Nature 372, no. 6507 (1994): 669–672.
revealed her knack for portraiture: Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, Hanna Damasio, and Antonio R. Damasio, “Fear and the Human Amygdala,” Journal of Neuroscience 15, no. 9 (1995): 5879–5891.
in a teenage Urbach-Wiethe patient: Morteza Pishnamazi, Abbas Tafakhori, Sogol Loloee, Amirhossein Modabbernia, Vajiheh Aghamollaii, Bahador Bahrami, and Joel S. Winston, “Attentional Bias Towards and Away from Fearful Faces Is Modulated by Developmental Amygdala Damage,” Cortex 81 (2016): 24–34.
including vocal utterances, body postures: For a review, see Abigail A. Marsh, “Understanding Amygdala Responsiveness to Fearful Expressions Through the Lens of Psychopathy and Altruism,” Journal of Neuroscience Research 94, no. 6 (2016): 513–525.
Hundreds of studies have now been conducted: Paolo Fusar-Poli, Anna Placentino, Francesco Carletti, Paola Landi, Paul Allen, Simon Surguladze, Francesco Benedetti, Marta Abbamonte, Roberto Gasparotti, Francesco Barale, Jorge Perez, Philip McGuire, and Pierliugi Politi, “Functional Atlas of Emotional Faces Processing: A Voxel-Based Meta-Analysis of 105 Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies,” Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience 34, no. 6 (2009): 418–432.
A firefighter once got sucked into an MRI: J. K. Bucsio, “MRI Facility Safety: Understanding the Risks of Powerful Attraction,” Radiology Today 6, no. 22 (2005): 22.
The simple act of labeling an emotion: Matthew D. Lieberman, Naomi I. Eisenberger, Molly J. Crockett, Sabrina M. Tom, Jennifer H. Pfeifer, and Baldwin M. Way, “Putting Feelings into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity in Response to Affective Stimuli,” Psychological Science 18, no. 5 (2007): 421–428.
the region of the brain that is critical: Abigail A. Marsh, Elizabeth C. Finger, Derek G. V. Mitchell, Marguerite E. Reid, Courtney Sims, David S. Kosson, Kenneth E. Towbin, Ellen Leibenluft, Daniel S. Pine, and R. James R. Blair, “Reduced Amygdala Response to Fearful Expressions in Children and Adolescents with Callous-Unemotional Traits and Disruptive Behavior Disorders,” American Journal of Psychiatry 165, no. 6 (2008): 712–720; Alice P. Jones, Kristin R. Laurens, Catherine M. Herba, Gareth J. Barker, and Essi Viding, “Amygdala Hypoactivity to Fearful Faces in Boys with Conduct Problems and Callous-Unemotional Traits,” American Journal of Psychiatry 166 (2009): 95–102; Essi Viding, Catherine L. Sebastian, Mark R. Dadds, Patricia L. Lockwood, Charlotte A. M. Cecil, Stephane A. De Brito, and Eamon J. McCrory, “Amygdala Response to Preattentive Masked Fear in Children with Conduct Problems: The Role of Callous-Unemotional Traits,” American Journal of Psychiatry 169, no. 10 (2012): 1109–1116; Stuart F. White, Abigail A. Marsh, Katherine A. Fowler, Julia C. Schechter, Christopher Adalio, Kayla Pope, Stephen Sinclair, Daniel S. Pine, and R. James R. Blair, “Reduced Amygdala Response in Youths with Disruptive Behavior Disorders and Psychopathic Traits: Decreased Emotional Response Versus Increased Top-Down Attention to Nonemotional Features,” American Journal of Psychiatry 169, no. 7 (2012): 750–758; Leah M. Lozier, Elise M. Cardinale, John W. VanMeter, and Abigail A. Marsh, “Mediation of the Relationship Between Callous-Unemotional Traits and Proactive Aggression by Amygdala Response to Fear Among Children with Conduct Problems,” JAMA Psychiatry 71, no. 6 (2014): 627–636.
Ours was not the only study: Abigail A. Marsh, Elizabeth E. Finger, Julia C. Schechter, Ilana T. N. Jurkowitz, Marguerite Reid Schneider, and Robert James R. Blair, “Adolescents with Psychopathic Traits Report Reductions in Physiological Responses to Fear,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 52, no. 8 (2011): 834–841; Alice Jones Bartoli, Francesca G. Happe, Francesca Gilbert, Stephanie Burnett Heyes, and Essi Viding, “Feeling, Caring, Knowing: Different Types of Empathy Deficit in Boys with Psychopathic Tendencies and Autism Spectrum Disorder,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 51, no. 11 (2010): 1188–1197; Rebecca Waller, Christopher J. Trentacosta, Daniel S. Shaw, Jenae M. Neiderhiser, Jody M. Ganiban, David Reiss, Leslie D. Leve, and Luke W. Hyde, “Heritable Temperament Pathways to Early Callous-Unemotional Behaviour,” British Journal of Psychiatry 209, no. 6 (2016): 475–482; Ida Klingzell, Kostas A. Fanti, Olivier F. Colins, Louise Frogner, Anna-Karin Andershed, and Henrik Andershed, “Early Childhood Trajectories of Conduct Problems and Callous-Unemotional Traits: The Role of Fearlessness and Psychopathic Personality Dimensions,” Child Psychiatry and Human Development 47, no. 2 (2016): 236–247; Kostas A. Fanti, Georgia Panayiotou, C. Lazarou, R. Michael, and Giorgos Georgiou, “The Better of Two Evils? Evidence That Children Exhibiting Continuous Conduct Problems High or Low on Callous-Unemotional Traits Score on Opposite Directions on Physiological and Behavioral Measures of Fear,” Development and Psychopathology 28, no. 1 (2016): 185–198.
Similar fearlessness has been observed: Justin S. Feinstein, Ralph Adolphs, Antonio Damasio, and Daniel Tranel, “The Human Amygdala and the Induction and Experience of Fear,” Current Biology 21 (2011): 34–38; Justin S. Feinstein, “Lesion Studies of Human Emotion and Feeling,” Current Opinion in Neurobiology 23, no. 3 (2013): 304–309: Michael Davis, “The Role of the Amygdala in Fear and Anxiety,” Annual Review of Neuroscience 15 (1992): 353–75.
As one psychopathic sex offender interviewed: Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (New York: Guilford, 1993), 44.
these aberrant judgments correspond: Abigail A. Marsh and Elise M. Cardinale, “Psychopathy and Fear: Specific Impairments in Judging Behaviors That Frighten Others,” Emotion 12, no. 5 (2012): 892–898; Abigail A. Marsh and Elise M. Cardinale, “When Psychopathy Impairs Moral Judgments: Neural Responses During Judgments About Causing Fear,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 9 (2014): 3–11; Elise M. Cardinale and Abigail A. Marsh, “Impact of Psychopathy on Moral Judgments About Causing Fear and Physical Harm,” PLoS One 10, no. 5 (2015): e0125708.
my student Joana Vieira and others: Yaling Yang, Adrian Raine, Katherine L. Narr, Patrick M. Colletti, and Arthur W. Toga, “Localization of Deformations Within the Amygdala in Individuals with Psychopathy,” Archives of General Psychiatry 66, no. 9 (2009): 986–994; Dustin A. Pardini, Adrian Raine, Kurt Erickson, and Rolf Loeber, “Lower Amygdala Volume in Men Is Associated with Childhood Aggression, Early Psychopathic Traits, and Future Violence,” Biological Psychiatry 75, no. 1 (2014): 73–80; Joana B. Vieira, Fernando Ferreira-Santos, Pedro R. Almeida, F. Barbosa, João Marques-Teixeira, and Abigail A. Marsh, “Psychopathic Traits Are Associated with Cortical and Subcortical Volume Alterations in Healthy Individuals,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 10, no. 12 (2015): 1693–1704; Moran D. Cohn, Essi Viding, Eamon McCrory, Louise Pape, Wim van den Brink, Theo A. H. Doreleijers, Dick J. Veltman, and Arne Popma, “Regional Grey Matter Volume and Concentration in At-Risk Adolescents: Untangling Associations With Callous-Unemotional Traits and Conduct Disorder Symptoms,” Psychiatry Research 254 (2016): 180–87.
a 2014 study of amygdala activity: Leah M. Lozier, Elise M. Cardinale, John W. VanMeter, and Abigail A. Marsh, “Mediation of the Relationship Between Callous-Unemotional Traits and Proactive Aggression by Amygdala Response to Fear Among Children with Conduct Problems,” JAMA Psychiatry 71, no. 6 (2014): 627–636.
perhaps 30 percent of the population registers: Jeremy Coid, Min Yang, Simone Ullrich, Amanda Roberts, and Robert D. Hare, “Prevalence and Correlates of Psychopathic Traits in the Household Population of Great Britain,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 32, no. 2 (2009): 65–73.
the remaining 61 percent were generous: Ziv G. Epstein, Alexander Peysakhovich, and David G. Rand, “The Good, the Bad, and the Unflinchingly Selfish: Cooperative Decision-Making Can Be Predicted with High Accuracy Using Only Three Behavioral Types,” paper presented to the Seventeenth ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, June 3, 2016, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2737983.
“All the friendly feelings are derived”: Aristotle, Ethics, part 5, http://www.fullbooks.com/Ethics5.html.
belief that human nature is fundamentally selfish: Dale T. Miller, “The Norm of Self-Interest,” American Psychologist 54, no. 12 (1999): 1053–1060.
A nearly identical percentage of people: Robert Wuthnow, Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). See results of New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted July 17–19, 1999, at: https://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/101799mag-poll-results.html. To explore the GSS data, visit GSS Data Explorer, “Can People Be Trusted,” https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/441/vshow.
Most traits, from height to cholesterol levels: For population distributions, see Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Anthropometric Reference Data for Children and Adults: United States, 2007–2010,” Vital and Health Statistics 11, no. 252 (October 2012), https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_11/sr11_252.pdf.
what is called a half normal curve: Coid et al., “Prevalence and Correlates of Psychopathic Traits.”
People with this condition represent: Jeremy B. Wilmer, Laura Germine, Christopher F. Chabris, Garga Chatterjee, Mark Williams, Eric Loken, Ken Nakayama, and Bradley Duchaine, “Human Face Recognition Ability Is Specific and Highly Heritable,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, no. 11 (2010): 5238–5241; Nicholas G. Shakeshaft and Robert Plomin, “Genetic Specificity of Face Recognition,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, no. 41 (2015): 12887–12892.
individuals who are extraordinarily good: Richard Russell, Brad Duchaine, and Ken Nakayama, “Super-Recognizers: People with Extraordinary Face Recognition Ability,” Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 16, no. 2 (2009): 252–257.
Both of these altruists were unaware: Nicole Lyn Pesce, “New Yorker Gives Barefoot Homeless Woman Her Shoes on the Subway,” New York Daily News, November 19, 2015, http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/new-yorker-barefoot-homeless-woman-shoes-subway-article-1.2440107; Lucy Yang, “Good Samaritan Gives Shivering Man His Shirt, Hat on Subway,” ABC Eyewitness News, January 10, 2016, http://abc7ny.com/society/exclusive-good-samaritan-who-gave-homeless-man-shirt-on-subway-speaks-out/1153750/.
The 2016 World Giving Index estimates: Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), “CAF World Giving Index 2016,” https://www.cafonline.org/about-us/publications/2016-publications/world-giving-index-2016.
The amount of money that Americans give: Charity Navigator, “Giving Statistics,” http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=42#.VxVGaZMrIkg.
one of Daniel Batson’s studies of altruism: C. Daniel Batson, Bruce D. Duncan, Paul Ackerman, Terese Buckley, and Kimberly Birch, “Is Empathic Emotion a Source of Altruistic Motivation?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40, no. 2 (1981): 290–302.
Two forces that biologists: Abigail A. Marsh, “Neural, Cognitive, and Evolutionary Foundations of Human Altruism,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 7, no. 1 (2016): 59–71.
one frigid January afternoon in 1982: Sue Anne Pressley Montes, “In a Moment of Horror, Rousing Acts of Courage,” Washington Post, January 13, 2007; Blaine Harden, “Instant Hero,” Washington Post, January 15, 1982; “Hero of Plane Crash Had Little Experience in the Hero Business,” Los Angeles Times/Washington Post News Service, January 16, 1982.
the moral equivalent of saving a drowning stranger: D. Z. Levine, “When a Stranger Offers a Kidney: Ethical Issues in Living Organ Donation,” American Journal of Kidney Disease 32, no. 4 (1998): 676–691.
Before the 1990s, donating a kidney: Reginald Y. Gohh, Paul E. Morrissey, Peter N. Madras, and Anthony P. Monaco, “Controversies in Organ Donation: The Altruistic Living Donor,” Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation 16, no. 3 (2001): 619–621, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ndt/16.3.619.
These issues are rare, thankfully: Anders Hartmann, Per Fauchald, Lars Westlie, Inge B. Brekke, and Hallvard Holdaas, “The Risks of Living Kidney Donation,” Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation 18, no. 5 (2003): 871–873, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ndt/gfg069.
The odds of dying after tumbling out of a plane: Jeremy Hus, “The Truth About Skydiving Risks,” March 26, 2009, LiveScience, http://www.livescience.com/5350-truth-skydiving-risks.html.
if people who start out with above-average health: Geir Mjøen, Stein Hallan, Anders Hartmann, Aksel Foss, Karsten Midtvedt, Ole Øyen, Anna Reisæter, Per Pfeffer, Trond Jenssen, Torbjørn Leivestad, Pål-Dag Line, Magnus Øvrehus, Dag Olav Dale, Hege Pihlstrøm, Ingar Holme, Friedo W. Dekker, and Hallvard Holdaas, “Long-Term Risks for Kidney Donors,” Kidney International 86, no. 1 (2014): 162–167.
“the first time in the history of medicine”: Francis D. Moore, “New Problems for Surgery,” Science 144, no. 3617 (1964): 388–392, DOI: 10.1126/science.144.3617.388.
“have the Self primarily for their object”: The misperception of human nature as uniform, and the problems this causes when it comes to transplantation decisions, was reinforced by David Levine, who wrote: “Despite the wide range of individual values, transplant centers often act as if there is a value consensus.” Levine, “When a Stranger Offers a Kidney,” 683.
Graef was not the first person: H. Harrison Sadler, Leslie Davison, Charles Carroll, and Samuel L. Kountz, “The Living, Genetically Unrelated, Kidney Donor,” Seminars in Psychiatry 3, no. 1 (1971): 86–101; Levine, “When a Stranger Offers a Kidney.”
This requirement, by the way: Levine, “When a Stranger Offers a Kidney.”
So in early 2000, Dr. Gohh wrote up: Gohh et al., “Controversies in Organ Donation.”
Nearly all transplant centers will now consent: Sadler et al., “The Living, Genetically Unrelated, Kidney Donor”; Aaron Spital, “Evolution of Attitudes at US Transplant Centers Toward Kidney Donation by Friends and Altruistic Strangers,” Transplantation 69, no. 8 (2000): 1728–1731.
In 2009, I read “The Kindest Cut”: Larissa MacFarquhar, “The Kindest Cut,” The New Yorker, July 27, 2009.
My colleague David Rand: David G. Rand and Ziv G. Epstein, “Risking Your Life Without a Second Thought: Intuitive Decision-Making and Extreme Altruism,” PLoS One 9, no. 10 (2014): e109687.
Altruistic kidney donors like Graef: Sadler et al., “The Living, Genetically Unrelated, Kidney Donor”; Lynn Stothers, William A. Gourlay, and Li Liu, “Attitudes and Predictive Factors for Live Kidney Donation: A Comparison of Live Kidney Donors Versus Nondonors,” Kidney International 67, no. 3 (2005): 1105–1111. See also the TEDx Talk by altruistic kidney donor Ned Brooks, “What Makes a Person Decide to Donate His Kidney to a Stranger?” uploaded March 8, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhht9kslq04. The unhesitating speed with which altruistic donors often make their decision is one source of the qualms of bioethicists regarding these donations, many of whom believe that truly informed consent must follow a period of careful deliberation (Levine, “When a Stranger Offers a Kidney”).
Although most people believe that they are good: Aldert Vrij, Par Anders Granhag, and Stephen Porter, “Pitfalls and Opportunities in Nonverbal and Verbal Lie Detection,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 11, no. 3 (2010): 89–121.
Clues about others’ emotions: Wen Zhou and Denise Chen, “Fear-Related Chemosignals Modulate Recognition of Fear in Ambiguous Facial Expressions,” Psychological Science 20, no. 2 (2009): 177–183; Lilianne R. Mujica-Parodi, Helmut H. Strey, Blaise de B. Frederick, R. L. Savoy, David Cox, Yevgeny Botanov, Denis Tolkunov, Denis Rubin, and Jochen Weber, “Chemosensory Cues to Conspecific Emotional Stress Activate Amygdala in Humans,” PLoS One 4, no. 7 (2009): e6415.
In 1978, Ekman and Friesen created: Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, Pictures of Facial Affect (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists, 1976).
Ekman and Friesen determined that for a face: Paul Ekman, Wallace V. Friesen, and Joseph C. Hager, Facial Action Coding System: A Technique for the Measurement of Facial Movement” (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists, 1978).
Human eyes are ideally designed: Hiromi Kobayashi and Shiro Kohshima, “Unique Morphology of the Human Eye,” Nature 387 (1997): 767–768.
Ekman has observed that the expressive muscles: David Matsumoto and Paul Ekman, “Facial Expression Analysis,” Scholarpedia 3, no. 5 (2008): 4237, http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Facial_expression_analysis.
Our speed has slowed but is still blisteringly fast: Jitendra Malik, “Human Visual System” (lecture), University of California at Berkeley, January 27, 2004, https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~malik/cs294/lecture2-RW.pdf.
Findings presented in a 2016 article: Constantino Méndez-Bértolo, Stephan Moratti, Rafael Toledano, Fernando Lopez-Sosa, Roberto Martínez-Alvarez, Yee H. Mah, Patrik Vuilleumier, Antonio Gil-Nagel, and Bryan A. Strange, “A Fast Pathway for Fear in Human Amygdala,” Nature Neuroscience 19, no. 8 (2016): 1041–1049, DOI: 10.1038/nn.4324.
They found that the amygdala: Paul J. Whalen, Jerome Kagan, Robert G. Cook, F. Caroline Davis, Hackjin Kim, Sara Polis, Donald G. McLaren, Leah H. Somerville, Ashly A. McLean, Jeffrey S. Maxwell, and Tom Johnstone, “Human Amygdala Responsivity to Masked Fearful Eye Whites,” Science 306, no. 5704 (2004): 2061.
Birds can recognize the alarm calls: Hugo J. Rainey, Klaus Zuberbühler, and Peter J. Slater, “Hornbills Can Distinguish Between Primate Alarm Calls,” Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences 271, no. 1540 (2004): 755–759.
Many have argued or assumed: Marsh, “Understanding Amygdala Responsiveness to Fearful Expressions.”
the fearlike facial expressions of other primates: A. Parr and Bridget M. Waller, “Understanding Chimpanzee Facial Expression: Insights into the Evolution of Communication,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 1, no. 3 (2006): 221–228, DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsl031.
Angry faces actually generate even less: This is true in both humans and monkeys; see Fusar-Poli et al., “Functional Atlas of Emotional Faces Processing”; Ning Liu, Fadila Hadj-Bouziane, Katherine B. Jones, Janita N. Turchi, Bruno B. Averbeck, and Leslie G. Ungerleider, “Oxytocin Modulates fMRI Responses to Facial Expression in Macaques,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, no. 24 (2015): E3123–E3130.
It’s this simulation that causes faint whispers: Yvonne Rothemund, Silvio Ziegler, Christiane Hermann, Sabine M. Gruesser, Jens Foell, Christopher J. Patrick, and Herta Flor, “Fear Conditioning in Psychopaths: Event-Related Potentials and Peripheral Measures,” Biological Psychology 90 (2012): 50–59; Antoine Bechara, Hanna Damasio, Antonio R. Damasio, and Gregory P. Lee, “Different Contributions of the Human Amygdala and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex to Decision-Making,” Journal of Neuroscience 19, no. 13 (1999): 5473–5481.
The uncanny overlap in the regions: Claus Lamm, Jean Decety, and Tania Singer, “Meta-Analytic Evidence for Common and Distinct Neural Networks Associated with Directly Experienced Pain and Empathy for Pain,” Neuroimage 54, no. 3 (2011): 2492–2502. Perhaps the most compelling evidence for the insula response to others’ pain representing an empathic phenomenon comes from a study that found that participants who were given a placebo experienced both reductions in pain and reduced insula responses to others’ pain—and that both of these effects could be eliminated by administering a drug called naltrexone, which blocks brain receptors to opioids, the neurotransmitters involved in pain responding; see Markus Rütgen, Eva-Maria Seidel, Giorgia Silani, Igor Riečanský, Allan Hummer, Christian Windischberger, Predrag Petrovic, and Claus Lamm, “Placebo Analgesia and Its Opioidergic Regulation Suggest That Empathy for Pain Is Grounded in Self Pain,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2015): E5638–E5646.
a clever brain imaging study: Grit Hein, Giorgia Silani, Kerstin Preuschoff, C. Daniel Batson, and Tania Singer, “Neural Responses to Ingroup and Outgroup Members’ Suffering Predict Individual Differences in Costly Helping,” Neuron 68, no. 1 (2010): 149–160.
One recent study investigating the acoustic properties: Luc H. Arnal, Adeen Flinker, Andreas Kleinschmidt, Anne-Lise Giraud, and David Poeppel, “Human Screams Occupy a Privileged Niche in the Communication Soundscape,” Current Biology 25, no. 15 (2015): 2051–2056.
Studies of patients with amygdala lesions: Reiner Sprengelmeyer, Andrew W. Young, Ulrike Schroeder, Peter G. Grossenbacher, Jens Federlein, Thomas Buttner, and Horst Przuntek, “Knowing No Fear,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 266, no. 1437 (1999): 2451–2456; Nathalie Gosselin, Isabelle Peretz, Erica Johnsen, and Ralph Adolphs, “Amygdala Damage Impairs Emotion Recognition from Music,” Neuropsychologia 45, no. 2 (2007): 236–244.
the amygdala is also important for identifying behaviors: Abigail A. Marsh and Elise M. Cardinale, “Psychopathy and Fear: Specific Impairments in Judging Behaviors That Frighten Others,” Emotion 12, no. 5 (2012): 892–898; Abigail A. Marsh and Elise M. Cardinale, “When Psychopathy Impairs Moral Judgments: Neural Responses During Judgments About Causing Fear,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 9 (2014): 3–11.
one study of adult psychopaths: Patricia L. Lockwood, Catherine L. Sebastian, Eamon J. McCrory, Zoe H. Hyde, Xiaosi Gu, Stéphane A. De Brito, and Essi Viding, “Association of Callous Traits with Reduced Neural Response to Others’ Pain in Children with Conduct Problems,” Current Biology 23, no. 10 (2013): 901–905; Abigail A. Marsh, Elizabeth C. Finger, Katherine A. Fowler, Christopher J. Adalio, Ilana T. N. Jurkowitz, Julia C. Schechter, Daniel S. Pine, Jean Decety, and Robert James R. Blair, “Empathic Responsiveness in Amygdala and Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Youths with Psychopathic Traits,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 54, no. 8 (2013): 900–910; Jean Decety, Laurie R. Skelly, and Kent A. Kiehl, “Brain Response to Empathy-Eliciting Scenarios Involving Pain in Incarcerated Individuals with Psychopathy,” JAMA Psychiatry 70, no. 6 (2013): 638–645.
Belay recalled that her doctor: “1-800-Give-Us-Your-Kidney,” Conscious Good, 2016, https://www.consciousgood.com/1-800-give-us-your-kidney/.
Half a cubic centimeter or so of flesh: Abigail A. Marsh, Sarah A. Stoycos, Kristin M. Brethel-Haurwitz, Paul Robinson, John W. VanMeter, and Elise M. Cardinale, “Neural and Cognitive Characteristics of Extraordinary Altruists,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, no. 42 (2014): 15036–15041.
they show heightened amygdala responses: Murray B. Stein, Alan N. Simmons, Justin S. Feinstein, B. S. Martin P. Paulus, “Increased Amygdala and Insula Activation During Emotion Processing in Anxiety-Prone Subjects,” American Journal of Psychiatry 164, no. 2 (2007): 318–327; K. Luan Phan, Daniel A. Fitzgerald, Pradeep J. Nathan, and Manuel E. Tancer, “Association Between Amygdala Hyperactivity to Harsh Faces and Severity of Social Anxiety in Generalized Social Phobia,” Biological Psychiatry 59, no. 5 (2006): 424–429; Murray B. Stein, Philippe R. Goldin, Jitender Sareen, Lisa T. Eyler, and Gregory G. Brown, “Increased Amygdala Activation to Angry and Contemptuous Faces in Generalized Social Phobia,” Archives of General Psychiatry 59, no. 11 (2002): 1027–1034.
during an interview with Ted Koppel: Blaine Harden, “Instant Hero,” Washington Post, January 15, 1982.
“Writers of sketches, in a friendly desire”: Clara Barton, The Story of My Childhood (New York: Baker & Taylor Co., 1907), 15.
echo the words of Lenny Skutnik: Marlyn Schwartz, “Has Fame Spoiled Lenny Skutnik?” New York Times News Service, March 24, 1982, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1734&dat=19820324&id=ZVQcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=elIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5381,8431318&hl=en.
only one of every 1,000 loggerhead babies: Nat B. Frazer, “Survival from Egg to Adulthood in a Declining Population of Loggerhead Turtles, Caretta Caretta,” Herpetologica (1986): 47–55.
“absurd in the highest possible degree”: Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: Collier & Son, 1909), 190.
turtles predate even the dinosaurs: Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, “Sea Turtle History,” http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/outreach/explore-and-discover/sea-turtles/history/; “Turtles: History and Fossil Record,” http://science.jrank.org/pages/7044/Turtles-History-fossil-record.html.
hamsterlike creatures called cynodonts: Olav T. Oftedal, “The Mammary Gland and Its Origin During Synapsid Evolution,” Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia 7, no. 3 (2002): 225–252.
This elixir is directly responsible: Caroline M. Pond, “The Significance of Lactation in the Evolution of Mammals,” Evolution (1977): 177–199.
the capacity for love and caring of all kinds: C. Daniel Batson, “The Naked Emperor: Seeking a More Plausible Genetic Basis for Psychological Altruism,” Economics and Philosophy 26, no. 2 (2010): 149–164.
“a turning point in the evolution”: Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns (Chicago: Aldine, 1996), xi.
this bundling is in perfect accordance: Peter H. Klopfer, “Origins of Parental Care,” in Parental Care in Mammals, edited by David J. Gubernick and Peter H. Klopfer (New York: Plenum, 1981) 1–12.
the ewe will reserve all of her nurturing and milk: Keith M. Kendrick, Ana P. C. Da Costa, Kevin D. Broad, Satoshi Ohkura, Rosalinda Guevara, Frederic Lévy, and E. Barry Keverne, “Neural Control of Maternal Behaviour and Olfactory Recognition of Offspring,” Brain Research Bulletin 44, no. 4 (1997): 383–395; E. Barry Keverne and Keith M. Kendrick, “Oxytocin Facilitation of Maternal Behavior in Sheep,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 652 (1992): 83–101; Larry J. Young and Thomas R. Insel, “Hormones and Parental Behavior,” in Behavioral Endocrinology, 2nd ed., edited by Jill B. Becker, S. Marc Breedlove, David Crews, and Margaret M. McCarthy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 331–366.
unearthed a long-forgotten 1968 study: William E. Wilsoncroft, “Babies by Bar-Press: Maternal Behavior in the Rat,” Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation 1 (1968): 229–230; Stephanie D. Preston, “The Origins of Altruism in Offspring Care,” Psychological Bulletin 139, no. 6 (2013): 1305–1341.
It’s a behavior that is at least three times more likely: Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
Among the many other mammals: Marianne L. Riedman, “The Evolution of Alloparental Care and Adoption in Mammals and Birds,” Quarterly Review of Biology 57 (1982): 405–435.
One spectacular demonstration: Marc Lacey, “5 Little Oryxes and the Big Bad Lioness of Kenya,” New York Times, October 12, 2002; Anthony Yap, “Kamunyak, the Blessed One: The Lioness Who Adopts Oryx Calves,” Phantom Maelstrom, November 29, 2011, http://phantommaelstrom.blogspot.com/2011/11/kamunyak-blessed-one-lioness-who-adopts.html; “The Lioness and the Oryx,” BBC News, January 7, 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1746828.stm.
Yet still she cared for the little calf: “The Lioness and the Oryx,” Nat Geo Wild, http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/wild/unlikely-animal-friends/videos/the-lioness-and-the-oryx/.
Another lioness in Uganda: Emma Reynolds, “Extraordinary Moment Wounded Lioness Shows Softer Side by Adopting Baby Antelope (Perhaps She Was Feeling Guilty After Killing Its Mother),” The Daily Mail, October 8, 2012.
images of the baby trying to suckle: Paul Steyn, “Cat Watch: Baby Baboon’s Frightening Encounter with Lions Ends with a Heroic Twist,” National Geographic, April 3, 2014, http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/03/baby-baboons-dramatic-encounter-with-lions-ends-with-a-heroic-twist.
a grizzled ten-year-old female chihuahua: “Ai Chihuahua! Dog Adopts 4 Baby Squirrels,” CowboysZone, September 8, 2007, http://cowboyszone.com/threads/ai-chihuahua-dog-adopts-4-baby-squirrels.94635/; “Chihuahua Mothers Abandoned Baby Squirrels,” For the Love of the Dog Blog, September 8, 2007, http://fortheloveofthedogblog.com/news-updates/chihuahua-mothers-abandoned-baby-squirrels.
“resident nursery companion” at the Cincinnati Zoo: Kelli Bender, “Blakely Plays the Role of Dog Dad to Ohio Zoo’s Rejected Baby Takin,” People, August 18, 2015, http://site.people.com/pets/blakely-plays-the-role-of-dog-dad-to-ohio-zoos-rejected-baby-takin-video/.
a golden retriever named Izzy: Mike Celizic, “Tigers Say ‘Bye Mom’ to Dog That Raised Them,” Today, June 25, 2009, http://www.today.com/id/31541834/ns/today-today_pets/t/tigers-say-bye-mom-dog-raised-them/#.V-SKiJMrLkI.
From tiny tamarins and marmosets to siamangs: Karen Isler and Carel P. van Schaik, “Allomaternal Care, Life History, and Brain Size Evolution in Mammals,” Journal of Human Evolution 63, no. 1 (2012): 52–63.
real allomothering superstars are humans: Hrdy, Mothers and Others.
Humans in modern cultures: Courtney L. Meehan and Alyssa N. Crittenden, Childhood: Origins, Evolution, and Implications (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016).
tracing back to the psychiatrist John Bowlby: John Bowlby, A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development (New York: Basic Books, 2008); Mary D. Ainsworth, “Infant-Mother Attachment,” American Psychologist 34, no. 10 (1979): 932–937.
whether child care for working mothers: D’Vera Cohn and Andrea Caumont, “7 Key Findings About Stay-at-Home Moms,” Pew Research Center, April 8, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/08/7-key-findings-about-stay-at-home-moms/.
“Children do best in societies”: Quoted in Hrdy, Mothers and Others, 103.
mothers in some foraging cultures: Ibid., 100.
Inadequate social support is a top risk factor: Emma Robertson, Sherry Grace, Tamara Wallington, and Donna E. Stewart, “Antenatal Risk Factors for Postpartum Depression: A Synthesis of Recent Literature,” General Hospital Psychiatry 26, no. 4 (2004): 289–295.
the famous “napalm girl” photograph: Gendy Alimurung, “Nick Ut’s Napalm Girl Helped End the Vietnam War. Today in LA, He’s Still Shooting,” LA Weekly, July 17, 2014, http://www.laweekly.com/news/nick-uts-napalm-girl-helped-end-the-vietnam-war-today-in-la-hes-still-shooting-4861747.
the awful, heartrending image of Aylan Kurdi: Roy Greenslade, “So Aylan Kurdi’s Picture Did Make a Difference to the Refugee Debate,” The Guardian, September 4, 2015; Jessica Elgot, “Charity Behind Migrant-Rescue Boats Sees 15-Fold Rise in Donations in 24 Hours,” The Guardian, September 3, 2015; Paul Slovic, Daniel Västfjäll, Arvid Erlandsson, and Robin Gregory, “Iconic Photographs and the Ebb and Flow of Empathic Response to Humanitarian Disasters,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114, no. 4 (2017): 640–644, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1613977114.
what ethologists call “key stimuli”: Leslie A. Zebrowitz, Reading Faces: The Window to the Soul? (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 68; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Love and Hate.
their brains and the tops of their skulls: Doug Jones, C. Loring Brace, William Jankowiak, Kevin N. Laland, Lisa E. Musselman, Judith H. Langlois, Lori A. Roggman, Daniel Pérusse, Barbara Schweder, and Donald Symons, “Sexual Selection, Physical Attractiveness, and Facial Neoteny: Cross-Cultural Evidence and Implications,” Current Anthropology 36 (1995): 723–748.
The resulting babyish proportions: Konrad Lorenz, “Die angeborenen Formen moeglicher Erfahrung,” Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie 5 (1943): 235–409.
after adult men and women simply view: Gary D. Sherman, Jonathan Haidt, and James A. Coan, “Viewing Cute Images Increases Behavioral Carefulness,” Emotion 9, no. 2 (2009): 282–286.
Subjects who were less psychopathic: Jennifer L. Hammer and Abigail A. Marsh, “Why Do Fearful Facial Expressions Elicit Behavioral Approach? Evidence from a Combined Approach-Avoidance Implicit Association Test,” Emotion 15 (2015): 223–231.
a cute, appealing, babyish appearance: Zebrowitz, Reading Faces.
These effects are not simply due: Caroline F. Keating, David W. Randall, Timothy Kendrick, and Katharine A. Gutshall, “Do Babyfaced Adults Receive More Help? The (Cross-Cultural) Case of the Lost Résumé,” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 27, no. 2 (2003): 89–109; David A. Lishner, Luis V. Oceja, E. L. Stocks, and Kirstin Zaspel, “The Effect of Infant-Like Characteristics on Empathic Concern for Adults in Need,” Motivation and Emotion 32 (2008): 270–277.
Over half of all American households: For a useful summary of academic efforts to explain pet-keeping, with various levels of success, see Melissa Hogenboom, “Why Do We Love Our Pets So Much?” BBC Earth, May 29, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150530-why-do-we-love-our-pets-so-much.
one of the causes of rising pet ownership: For articles delving into this possibility, see Robert A. Ferdman, “Modern Family: Americans Are Having Dogs Instead of Babies,” Quartz, April 10, 2014, http://qz.com/197416/americans-are-having-dogs-instead-of-babies/; Karen E. Bender, “Dogs: The Best Kids You Could Ask For,” The Atlantic, August 22, 2014; Jordan Weissmann, “Why America’s Falling Birth Rate Is Sensational News for the Pet Industry,” The Atlantic, May 20, 2013.
a Russian motorist risked his life: Jenny Starrs, “Harrowing Footage Shows Motorists Dodging Kitten on Busy Russian Highway—Until One Man Stops,” Washington Post, September 16, 2016.
allomothering provides the basis for altruism: Judith Maria Burkart, O. Allon, Federica Amici, Claudia Fichtel, Christia Finkenwirth, Adolf Heschl, J. Huber, Karin Isler, Z. K. Kosonen, E. Martins, Ellen J. M. Meulman, R. Richiger, K. Rueth, B. Spillmann, S. Wiesendanger, and Carel P. van Schaik, “The Evolutionary Origin of Human Hyper-Cooperation,” Nature Communications 5 (2014): 4747.
Fearful eyes are wide and large: Roger Segelken, “Survey Explains Why Some Animals Have Smaller Eyes: Lifestyle Matters More Than Size, Cornell Biologists Say,” Cornell Chronicle, August 6, 2004, http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2004/08/why-some-animals-have-smaller-eyes-lifestyle-matters.
adopting a fearful expression causes a face: Abigail A. Marsh, Reginald B. Adams Jr., and Robert E. Kleck, “Why Do Fear and Anger Look the Way They Do? Form and Social Function in Facial Expressions,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31, no. 1 (2005): 73–86.
some of our nearest primate relatives: Hillary Anger Elfenbein and Nalini Ambady, “On the Universality and Cultural Specificity of Emotion Recognition: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 128, no. 2 (2002): 203–235; Signe Preuschoft, “Primate Faces and Facial Expressions.” Social Research 67, no. 1 (2000): 245–271.
key traits of the one creature that social mammals: Rudolf Schenkel, “Submission: Its Features and Function in the Wolf and Dog,” American Zoologist 7 (1967): 319–329.
“The plaintive voice of misery”: Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1853), 48.
the entry point into the parental care system: Stephanie D. Preston, “The Origins of Altruism in Offspring Care,” Psychological Bulletin 139, no. 6 (2013): 1305–1341.
regardless of whether the cues: Leslie A. Zebrowitz, Victor X. Luevano, P. Matthew Bronstad, and Itzhak Aharon, “Neural Activation to Babyfaced Men Matches Activation to Babies,” Social Neuroscience 4, no. 1 (2009): 1–10; Chris Baeken, Rudi De Raedt, Nick F. Ramsey, Peter Van Schuerbeek, Dora Hermes, Axel Bossuyt, Lemke Leyman, Marie-Anne Vanderhasselt, Johan De Mey, and Robert Luypaert, “Amygdala Responses to Positively and Negatively Valenced Baby Faces in Healthy Female Volunteers: Influences of Individual Differences in Harm Avoidance,” Brain Research 1296 (2009): 94–103. Note that, in new mothers, amygdala activation may be strongest specifically to images of one’s own baby; see S. Ranote, Rebecca Elliott, Kathryn M. Abel, Rachel Mitchell, John Francis William Deakin, and L. Appleby, “The Neural Basis of Maternal Responsiveness to Infants: An fMRI Study,” Neuroreport 15, no. 11 (2004): 1825–1829.
listening to them results in more activation: Amygdala responsiveness to cries varies impressively as a function of a number of variables, including gender, parental status, personality, and exactly whose infant is crying, but some level of amygdala responsiveness to infant cries is a constant across nearly every study on the topic; see Kerstin Sander, Yvonne Frome, and Henning Scheich, “fMRI Activations of Amygdala, Cingulate Cortex, and Auditory Cortex by Infant Laughing and Crying,” Human Brain Mapping 28, no. 10 (2007): 1007–1022; Erich Seifritz, Fabrizio Esposito, John G. Neuhoff, Andreas Lüthi, Henrietta Mustovic, Gerhard Dammann, Ulrich von Bardeleben, Ernst W. Radue, Sossio Cirillo, Gioacchino Tedeschi, and Francesco Di Salle, “Differential Sex-Independent Amygdala Response to Infant Crying and Laughing in Parents Versus Nonparents,” Biological Psychiatry 54, no. 12 (2003): 1367–1375; Isabella Mutschler, Tonio Ball, Ursula Kirmse, Birgit Wieckhorst, Michael Pluess, Markus Klarhöfer, Andrea H. Meyer, Frank H. Wilhelm, and Erich Seifritz, “The Role of the Subgenual Anterior Cingulate Cortex and Amygdala in Environmental Sensitivity to Infant Crying,” PLoS One 11, no. 8 (2016): e0161181.
differs from oxytocin by only one amino acid: Valery Grinevich, H. Sophie Knobloch-Bollmann, Marina Eliava, Marta Busnelli, and Bice Chini, “Assembling the Puzzle: Pathways of Oxytocin Signaling in the Brain,” Biological Psychiatry 79, no. 3 (2015): 155–164. Incidentally, the limited parental care that sea turtles supply is directly supported by vasotocin. When a mother turtle begins to drag herself up onto the beach in preparation for nesting, the amount of vasotocin produced in her hypothalamus begins to climb. As she begins to dig a hole in the sand with her flippers, it increases still further, then spikes dramatically when the nest nears completion. At the moment she deposits her first egg in the nest, vasotocin levels are 1,500 times greater than when they started rising. Production of vasotocin starts to drop shortly thereafter, remaining just detectable as she covers her nest up with sand. By the time she slips back into the sea, vasotocin production has dwindled away to almost nothing. Does this surge in vasotocin feel like anything to a loggerhead? Does some glimmer of maternal concern pass through her craggy head as she tamps sand over her nest? It is impossible to say, although the fact that sea turtles weep briny tears as they lay their ill-fated eggs has caused some to speculate. See Robert A. Figler, Duncan S. MacKenzie, David W. Owens, Paul Licht, and Max S. Amoss, “Increased Levels of Arginine Vasotocin and Neurophysin During Nesting in Sea Turtles,” General and Comparative Endocrinology 73, no. 2 (1989): 223–232.
the pituitary releases the oxytocin: C. Sue Carter and Margaret Altemus, “Integrative Functions of Lactational Hormones in Social Behavior and Stress Management,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 807 (1997): 164–74.
injected oxytocin into female rats’ brains: Cort A. Pedersen, John A. Ascher, Yvonne L. Monroe, and Arthur J. Prange Jr., “Oxytocin Induces Maternal Behavior in Virgin Female Rats,” Science 216, no. 4546 (1982): 648–650.
Oxytocin has been shown to induce: I should emphasize that any complex behavior involves a complex array of processes within the brain, and maternal care is no different. Given this, the widespread agreement that oxytocin’s effects on subcortical structures like the amygdala are the most essential processes supporting neural care is impressive. For reviews on the effects of oxytocin on maternal behavior, see Keith M. Kendrick, “Neural Control of Maternal Behaviour and Olfactory Recognition of Offspring,” Brain Research Bulletin 44, no. 4 (1997): 383–395; Thomas R. Insel and Lawrence E. Shapiro, “Oxytocin Receptors and Maternal Behavior,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 652 (1992): 122–141; C. Sue Carter, “Neuroendocrine Perspectives on Social Attachment and Love,” Psychoneuroendocrinology 23, no. 8 (1998): 779–818; Gareth Leng, Simone L. Meddle, and Alison J. Douglas, “Oxytocin and the Maternal Brain,” Current Opinion in Pharmacology 8, no. 6 (2008): 731–734.
the amygdala is a central locus: Oliver J. Bosch and Inga D. Neumann, “Both Oxytocin and Vasopressin Are Mediators of Maternal Care and Aggression in Rodents: From Central Release to Sites of Action,” Hormones and Behavior 61, no. 3 (2012): 293–303; Thomas R. Insel, “The Challenge of Translation in Social Neuroscience: A Review of Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and Affiliative Behavior,” Neuron 65, no. 6 (2010): 768–779.
News articles suggested that car dealerships: Stefan Lovgren, “‘Trust’ Hormone’s Smell Helps Us Hand over Cash, Study Says,” National Geographic News, June 1, 2005, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0601_050601_trustpotion.html.
a few squirts of oxytocin up each nostril: Abigail A. Marsh, Henry H. Yu, Daniel S. Pine, Elena K. Gorodetsky, David Goldman, and R. J. R. Blair, “The Influence of Oxytocin Administration on Responses to Infant Faces and Potential Moderation by OXTR Genotype,” Psychopharmacology 224, no. 4 (2012): 469–476.
several other researchers have since reported: Abigail A. Marsh, Henry H. Yu, Daniel S. Pine, and R. J. Blair, “Oxytocin Improves Specific Recognition of Positive Facial Expressions,” Psychopharmacology (Berl) 209, no. 3 (2010): 225–232; Meytal Fischer-Shofty, Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory, Hagai Harari, and Yechiel Levkovitz, “The Effect of Intranasal Administration of Oxytocin on Fear Recognition,” Neuropsychologia 48, no. 1 (2010): 179–184; Meytal Fischer-Shofty, Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory, and Yechiel Levkovitz, “Characterization of the Effects of Oxytocin on Fear Recognition in Patients with Schizophrenia and in Healthy Controls,” Frontiers in Neuroscience 7 (2013): 127; Alexander Lischke, Christoph Berger, Kristin Prehn, Markus Heinrichs, Sabine C. Herpertz, and Gregor Domes, “Intranasal Oxytocin Enhances Emotion Recognition from Dynamic Facial Expressions and Leaves Eye-Gaze Unaffected,” Psychoneuroendocrinology 37, no. 4 (2012): 475–481.
the findings reported in a 2016 study: Daniele Viviani, Alexandre Charlet, Erwin van den Burg, Camille Robinet, Nicolas Hurni, Marios Abatis, Fulvio Magara, and Ron Stoop, “Oxytocin Selectively Gates Fear Responses Through Distinct Outputs from the Central Amygdala,” Science 333, no. 6038 (2011): 104–107.
Their courage seems to result: Oliver Bosch, Simone L. Meddle, Daniela I. Beiderbeck, Alison J. Douglas, and Inga D. Neumann, “Brain Oxytocin Correlates with Maternal Aggression: Link to Anxiety,” Journal of Neuroscience 25, no. 29 (2005): 6807–6815; Oliver J. Bosch, “Maternal Nurturing Is Dependent on Her Innate Anxiety: The Behavioral Roles of Brain Oxytocin and Vasopressin,” Hormones and Behavior 59, no. 2 (2011): 202–212.
These neurons may signal other cells: For evidence that the amygdala may mediate what would otherwise be a fearful response to infants, see Alison S. Fleming, Frank Vaccarino, and Carola Luebke, “Amygdaloid Inhibition of Maternal Behavior in the Nulliparous Female Rat,” Physiology and Behavior 25, no. 5 (1980): 731–743. This very recent paper on rats provides strong support for this hypothesis: Elizabeth Rickenbacher, Rosemarie E. Perry, Regina M. Sullivan, and Marta A. Moita. “Freezing Suppression By Oxytocin in Central Amygdala Allows Alternate Defensive Behaviours and Mother-Pup Interactions.” Elife 6 (2017), e24080.
Dysfunction throughout the amygdala: Mark R. Dadds, Caroline Moul, Avril Cauchi, Carol Dobson-Stone, David J. Hawes, John Brennan, and Richard E. Ebstein, “Methylation of the Oxytocin Receptor Gene and Oxytocin Blood Levels in the Development of Psychopathy,” Development and Psychopathology (2014): 33–40; Mark R. Dadds, Caroline Moul, Avril Cauchi, Carol Dobson-Stone, David J. Hawes, John Brennan, Ruth Urwin, and Richard E. Ebstein, “Polymorphisms in the Oxytocin Receptor Gene Are Associated with the Development of Psychopathy,” Development and Psychopathology (2013): 1–11; Joseph H. Beitchman, Clement C. Zai, Katherine Muir, Laura Berall, Behdin Nowrouzi-Kia, Esther Choi, and James L. Kennedy, “Childhood Aggression, Callous-Unemotional Traits, and Oxytocin Genes,” European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 21 (2012): 125–132.
Gallup polls of thousands of people: Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), “CAF World Giving Index 2016,” https://www.cafonline.org/about-us/publications/2016-publications/caf-world-giving-index-2016.
Americans donate hundreds of billions of dollars: Corporation for National & Community Service, “Volunteering and Civic Life in America,” https://www.nationalservice.gov/vcla.
Americans donate over 13 million units of their blood: AABB, “Blood FAQ,” http://www.aabb.org/tm/Pages/bloodfaq.aspx.
Thousands more Americans undergo: US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, “General FAQ,” https://bloodcell.transplant.hrsa.gov/about/general_faqs/.
respondents reported having treated: National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association (NWRA), “Facts About NWRA,” http://www.nwrawildlife.org/?page=Facts.
international wildlife rehabilitation groups: “International Wildlife Rehabilitators,” http://wildlife.rescueshelter.com/international.
Per capita, Americans donated: Charity Navigator, “Giving Statistics,” http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/content.view/cpid/42; Philanthropy Roundtable, “Statistics,” http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/statistics/.
Globally, blood donations are also increasing: World Health Organization (WHO), “Blood Safety and Availability,” July 2016, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs279/en/.
over three times as many people received marrow: Figure 1 from Dennis Confer and Pam Robinett, “The US National Marrow Donor Program Role in Unrelated Donor Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation,” Bone Marrow Transplantation 42, suppl. 1 (2008): S3–S5.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates: Andy Kiersz, “Volunteering in America Is at Its Lowest Level in at Least a Decade,” Business Insider, February 25, 2014, http://www.businessinsider.com/bls-volunteering-chart-2014-2; BLS, “Volunteering in the United States, 2015,” February 25, 2016, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/volun.nr0.htm.
the trend may instead reflect forces that affect volunteering: “Americans with No Religious Affiliation,” from Pew Research Center, 2014 Religious Landscape Study, http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55526680ecad04ac07fbd880-1200-900/godless-millennials.png; Corporation for National & Community Service, “National: Trends and Highlights Overview,” https://www.nationalservice.gov/vcla/national.
Steven Pinker has provided convincing evidence: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Natures: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011).
In Europe, the homicide rate today: Steven Pinker, “A History of Violence: Edge Master Class 2011,” September 27, 2011, https://www.edge.org/conversation/steven_pinker-a-history-of-violence-edge-master-class-2011.
Mauritania’s abolition of slavery in 1980: Ibid.
only a minority of polled Americans: “The Death Penalty, Nearing Its End” (editorial), New York Times, October 24, 2016.
no war zones anywhere in the Western Hemisphere: Greg Myre, “How Castro’s Rise and Death Bookend 60 Years of Latin American Wars,” NPR, September 27, 2016, http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/27/495522306/guess-what-as-of-today-the-western-hemisphere-has-no-wars.
a majority of Americans have reported: Pew Research Center, “Public Perception of Crime Rate at Odds with Reality,” April 16, 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/17/despite-lower-crime-rates-support-for-gun-rights-increases/ft_15-04-01_guns_crimerate/.
Although youth violence and delinquency: Will Dahlgreen, “British Public Unaware of Improvement in Youth Behaviour,” March 3, 2015, YouGovUK, https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/03/03/british-public-unaware-revolution-youth-behaviour/.
especially biased toward focusing on bad things: Roy F. Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Catrin Finkenauer, and Kathleen D. Vohs, “Bad Is Stronger Than Good,” Review of General Psychology 5, no. 4 (2001): 323.
we generally pay more attention to bad events: For compelling examples of this phenomenon, see Joop Van der Pligt and J. Richard Eiser, “Negativity and Descriptive Extremity in Impression Formation,” European Journal of Social Psychology 10, no. 4 (1980): 415–419; Nicole C. Baltazar, Kristin Shutts, and Katherine D. Kinzler, “Children Show Heightened Memory for Threatening Social Actions,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 112, no. 1 (2012): 102–110.
a romantic relationship must be marked: Ellie Lisitsa, “The Positive Perspective: Dr. Gottman’s Magic Ratio!” Gottman Institute, December 5, 2012, https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-positive-perspective-dr-gottmans-magic-ratio.
the worse the action, the more likely: Susan T. Fiske, “Attention and Weight in Person Perception: The Impact of Negative and Extreme Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38 (1980): 889–906.
And so, by some estimates: Ray Williams, “Why We Love Bad News More Than Good News,” Psychology Today, November 1, 2014, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201411/why-we-love-bad-news-more-good-news; Marc Trussler and Stuart Soroka, “Consumer Demand for Cynical and Negative News Frames,” International Journal of Press/Politics 19, no. 3 (2014): 360–379.
the mistaken but common belief that the world is dangerous: Moran Bodas, Maya Siman-Tov, Kobi Peleg, and Zahava Solomon, “Anxiety-Inducing Media: The Effect of Constant News Broadcasting on the Well-being of Israeli Television Viewers,” Psychiatry 78, no. 3 (2015): 265–276; Sean Patrick Roche, Justin T. Pickett, and Marc Gertz, “The Scary World of Online News? Internet News Exposure and Public Attitudes Toward Crime and Justice,” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 32, no. 2 (2016): 215–236; Sara Tiegreen and Elana Newman, “Violence: Comparing Reporting and Reality,” Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, February 18, 2009, http://dartcenter.org/content/violence-comparing-reporting-and-reality.
The word “epidemic” frequently crops up: Peter Moore, “Does America Have a Rape Culture?” YouGovUS, December 11, 2014, https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/12/11/rape-culture.
rates of sexual assault are decreasing, not increasing: “Yes Means Yes, Says Mr. Brown,” The Economist, October 3, 2014; Sofi Sinozich and Lynn Langton, “Rape and Sexual Assault Among College-Age Females, 1995–2013,” NCJ 248471 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, December 11, 2014), http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5176.
About half of the respondents reported: Common Cause Foundation, Perceptions Matter: The Common Cause UK Values Survey (London: Common Cause Foundation, 2016). The findings of the survey are also broadly consistent with findings of the recent laboratory study by Ben M. Tappin and Ryan T. McKay, “The Illusion of Moral Superiority,” Social Psychological and Personality Science (2016): 1–9.
Think, for example, of Anne Frank: Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 333; “In Our Opinion: Nelson Mandela Left Legacy of Freedom and Faith” (editorial), Deseret News, December 5, 2013; Mazhar Kibriya, Gandhi and Indian Freedom Struggle (New Delhi: APH Publishing, 1999), 20; Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel acceptance speech, December 10, 1964, Nobelprize.org, https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance_en.html. A little later in King’s speech, he predicted that goodness would be the rule of the land when “the lion and the lamb shall lie down together.” And as you have seen, they have.
the beliefs of Richard Ramirez, the notorious serial murderer: Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 128; Mark Thomas, The Deadliest War: The Story of World War II (Berlin, NJ: Townsend Press, 2011); International Encyclopedia of Public Health, vol. 1, 2nd ed., edited by Stella R. Quah and William Cockerham (Waltham, MA: Elsevier), 467.
Starting from an assumption of others’ trustworthiness: Robert M. Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 2006). The relationship between trust and cooperation is undeniably complex. Just as trust can lead to cooperation, so can cooperation lead to trust; see Alexander Peysakhovich and David G. Rand, “Habits of Virtue: Creating Norms of Cooperation and Defection in the Laboratory,” Management Science 62, no. 3 (2013): 631–647.
In one computer simulation study we conducted: Kristin M. Brethel-Haurwitz, Sarah A. Stoycos, Elise M. Cardinale, Bryce Huebner, and Abigail A. Marsh, “Is Costly Punishment Altruistic? Exploring Rejection of Unfair Offers in the Ultimatum Game in Real-World Altruists,” Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 18974.
the social discounting task: Bryan Jones and Howard Rachlin, “Social Discounting,” Psychological Science 17, no. 4 (2006): 283–286.
This pattern holds up across multiple studies: Howard Rachlin and Bryan A. Jones, “Social Discounting and Delay Discounting,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 21 (2008): 29–43; Qingguo Ma, Guanxiong Pei, and Jia Jin, “What Makes You Generous? The Influence of Rural and Urban Rearing on Social Discounting in China,” PLoS One 10, no. 7 (2015): e0133078; Tina Strombach, Jia Jin, Bernd Weber, Peter H. Kenning, Qiang Shen, Qingguo Ma, and Tobias Kalenscher, “Charity Begins at Home: Cultural Differences in Social Discounting and Generosity,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 27, no. 3 (2014): 235–245.
Their generosity had dropped by less than half: Kruti M. Vekaria, Kristin M. Brethel-Haurwitz, Elise M. Cardinale, Sarah A. Stoycos, and Abigail A. Marsh, “Social Discounting and Distance Perceptions in Costly Altruism,” Nature Human Behaviour (2017).
as the philosopher Peter Singer and others have put it: Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology (Oxford: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1981).
Reciprocal altruism is the closest: Gabriele Bellucci, Sergey V. Chernyak, Kimberly Goodyear, Simon B. Eickhoff, and Frank Krueger, “Neural Signatures of Trust in Reciprocity: A Coordinate-Based Meta-Analysis,” Human Brain Mapping (2016), DOI: 10.1002/hbm.23451; James K. Rilling and Alan G. Sanfey, “The Neuroscience of Social Decision-Making,” Annual Review of Psychology 62 (2011): 23–48.
altruistic kidney donors overwhelmingly report: Sadler et al., “The Living, Genetically Unrelated, Kidney Donor”; Stothers, Gourlay, and Liu, “Attitudes and Predictive Factors for Live Kidney Donation.”
My colleague David Rand, a behavioral scientist: David G. Rand, “Cooperation, Fast and Slow: Meta-Analytic Evidence for a Theory of Social Heuristics and Self-Interested Deliberation,” Psychological Science 27, no. 9 (2016): 1192–1206.
urges to care and cooperate are deeply rooted: David G. Rand and Ziv G. Epstein, “Risking Your Life Without a Second Thought: Intuitive Decision-Making and Extreme Altruism,” PLoS One 9, no. 10 (2014): e109687.
its advocates’ explicit aim: From the website effectivealtruism.org: “Effective altruism is changing the way we do good. Effective altruism is about answering one simple question: how can we use our resources to help others the most? Rather than just doing what feels right, we use evidence and careful analysis to find the very best causes to work on.”
quickly spiral into a vortex of indecision: For thoughtful critiques of effective altruism, see Dylan Matthews, “I Spent a Week at Google Talking with Nerds About Charity. I Came Away… Worried,” Vox, August 10, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/8/10/9124145/effective-altruism-global-ai; Eric Posner, “Should Charity Be Logical?” Slate, March 26, 2015, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2015/03/effective_altruism_critique_few_charities_stand_up_to_rational_evaluation.html; Jamil Zaki, “The Feel-Good School of Philanthropy,” New York Times, December 5, 2015.
Such injuries leave IQ and reasoning ability intact: Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error (New York: Random House, 2006); Edmund T. Rolls and Fabien Grabenhorst, “The Orbitofrontal Cortex and Beyond: From Affect to Decision-Making,” Progress in Neurobiology 86, no. 3 (2008): 216–244.
“There is a wholly fallacious theory”: Bertrand Russell, “What Desires Are Politically Important?” (Nobel lecture), December 11, 1950, nobelprize.org, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-lecture.html.
Consider the case of Robert Mather: Derek Thompson, “The Greatest Good,” The Atlantic, June 15, 2015.
the amount of suffering and misery: For graphs showing these changes and many others, see Max Roser, “Life Expectancy,” Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy.
The economic historian Joel Mokyr: Ana Swanson, “Why the Industrial Revolution Didn’t Happen in China,” Washington Post, October 28, 2016.
The World Bank estimates: The World Bank, “World Monitoring Report 2015/2016,” http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-monitoring-report.
We ran a number of analyses to probe: Kristin M. Brethel-Haurwitz and Abigail A. Marsh, “Geographical Differences in Subjective Well-being Predict Extraordinary Altruism,” Psychological Science 25 (2014): 762–771.
The psychologists Elizabeth Dunn and Mike Norton: Lara B. Aknin, Christopher P. Barrington-Leigh, Elizabeth W. Dunn, John F. Helliwell, Justine Burns, Robert Biswas-Diener, Imelda Kemeza, Paul Nyende, Claire E. Ashton-James, and Michael I. Norton, “Prosocial Spending and Well-being: Cross-Cultural Evidence for a Psychological Universal,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104, no. 4 (2013): 635–652; Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn, and Michael I. Norton, “Happiness Runs in a Circular Motion: Evidence for a Positive Feedback Loop Between Prosocial Spending and Happiness,” Journal of Happiness Studies 13 (2012): 347–355.
One 2005 Gallup poll found a linear relationship: Carroll, “Americans More Likely to Donate Money”; see also Jesus Ramirez-Valles, “Volunteering in Public Health: An Analysis of Volunteers’ Characteristics and Activities,” International Journal of Volunteer Administration 24, no. 2 (2006): 15–24.
Another large study found similar results: Paul B. Reed and L. Kevin Selbee, “The Civic Core in Canada: Disproportionality in Charitable Giving, Volunteering, and Civic Participation,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 30, no. 4 (2001): 761–780.
A field experiment in Ireland: Antonio S. Silva and Ruth Mace, “Cooperation and Conflict: Field Experiments in Northern Ireland,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281, no. 1792 (2014): 20141435; Jo Holland, Antonio S. Silva, and Ruth Mace, “Lost Letter Measure of Variation in Altruistic Behaviour in 20 Neighbourhoods,” PLoS One 7, no. 8 (2012): e43294; David Sloan Wilson, Daniel Tumminelli O’Brien, and Artura Sesma, “Human Prosociality from an Evolutionary Perspective: Variation and Correlations at a City-Wide Scale,” Evolution and Human Behavior 30, no. 3 (2009): 190–200.
The positive relationship between well-being and altruism: Sebastian Prediger, Björn Vollan, and Benedikt Herrmann, “Resource Scarcity, Spite and Cooperation,” Working Papers in Economics and Statistics 2013-10, University of Innsbruck, 2013; Yu-Kang Lee and Chun-Tuan Chang, “Who Gives What to Charity? Characteristics Affecting Donation Behavior,” Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal 35, no. 9 (2007): 1173–1180.
Many decades of research on misanthropy: Tom W. Smith, “Factors Relating to Misanthropy in Contemporary American Society,” Social Science Research 26, no. 2 (1997): 170–196.
To be fair, some recent studies: Paul K. Piff, Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences United States of America 109, no. 11 (2012): 4086–4091; Paul K. Piff, Michael W. Kraus, Stéphane Côté, Bonnie Hayden Cheng, and Dacher Keltner, “Having Less, Giving More: The Influence of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 99, no. 5 (2010): 771–84.
The study was conducted by the German psychologist: Martin Korndörfer, Boris Egloff, and Stefan C. Schmukle, “A Large Scale Test of the Effect of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior,” PLoS One 10, no. 7 (2015): e0133193.
despite the fact that wealthier individuals: Derek Thompson, “The Free-Time Paradox in America,” The Atlantic, September 13, 2016; “Why Is Everyone So Busy?” The Economist, December 20, 2015.
Prosperity within a culture tends to be associated: Patricia M. Greenfield, “The Changing Psychology of Culture from 1800 Through 2000,” Psychological Science 24, no. 9 (2013): 1722–1731; Pamela L. Cox, Barry A. Friedman, and Thomas Tribunella, “Relationships Among Cultural Dimensions, National Gross Domestic Product, and Environmental Sustainability,” Journal of Applied Business and Economics 12, no. 6 (2011): 46; Ronald Inglehart and Wayne E. Baker, “Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values,” American Sociological Review (2000): 19–51; Pinker, Better Angels of Our Nature.
Collectivism entails focusing on and valuing interdependence: Nicholas Sorensen and Daphna Oyserman, “Collectivism, Effects on Relationships,” May 2, 2011, in Encyclopedia of Human Relationships (Sage Publications, 2009), http://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/783/docs/sorensen_oyserman_2009.pdf.
Analyses of cultural values across nations: Cox, Friedman, and Tribunella, “Relationships Among Cultural Dimensions,” 46; Linghui Tang and Peter E. Koveos, “A Framework to Update Hofstede’s Cultural Value Indices: Economic Dynamics and Institutional Stability,” Journal of International Business Studies 39, no. 6 (2008): 1045–1063; Henri C. Santos, Michael E. W. Varnum, and Igor Grossmann, “Global Increases in Individualism,” Psychological Science (2017): in press.
one recent study found that over the last 200 years: Greenfield, “The Changing Psychology of Culture from 1800 Through 2000.”
the recent period of incredible economic growth in China: Liza G. Steele and Scott M. Lynch, “The Pursuit of Happiness in China: Individualism, Collectivism, and Subjective Well-being During China’s Economic and Social Transformation,” Social Indicators Research 114, no. 2 (2013): 441–451.
This effect may be bidirectional: Igor Grossmann and Michael E. W. Varnum, “Social Structure, Infectious Diseases, Disasters, Secularism, and Cultural Change in America,” Psychological Science 26, no. 3 (2015): 311–324; Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Gérard Roland, “Individualism, Innovation, and Long-Run Growth,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences United States of America 108, suppl. 4 (2011): 21316–21319.
traditional Confucian teachings emphasize: Wilbur A. Lam and Laurence B. McCullough, “Influence of Religious and Spiritual Values on the Willingness of Chinese-Americans to Donate Organs for Transplantation,” Clinical Transplantation 14, no. 5 (2000): 449–456; Andrew Ma, “Comparison of the Origins of Altruism as Leadership Value Between Chinese and Christian Cultures,” Leadership Advance Online XVI (2009).
“Fijians do games that involve giving”: Quoted in Bob Holmes, “Generous by Nature,” New Scientist 231, no. 3086 (2016): 26–28.
An emphasis on group bonds requires: Anu Realo, Jüri Allik, and Brenna Greenfield, “Radius of Trust: Social Capital in Relation to Familism and Institutional Collectivism,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 39, no. 4 (2008): 447–462; Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Gérard Roland, “Understanding the Individualism-Collectivism Cleavage and Its Effects: Lessons from Cultural Psychology,” in Institutions and Comparative Economic Development, edited by Masahiko Aoki, Timur Kuran, and Gérard Roland, 213–236 (Berlin: Springer, 2012); André Van Hoorn, “Individualist-Collectivist Culture and Trust Radius: A Multilevel Approach,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 46, no. 2 (2015): 269–276. For interesting real-world implications, see “The Unkindness of Strangers,” The Economist, July 27, 2013.
Collectivism is associated with low levels: Mie Kito, Masaki Yuki, and Robert Thomson, “Relational Mobility and Close Relationships: A Socioecological Approach to Explain Cross-Cultural Differences,” Personal Relationships 24, no. 1 (2017): 114–130; Masaki Yuki and Joanna Schug, “Relational Mobility: A Socioecological Approach to Personal Relationships,” in Relationship Science: Integrating Evolutionary, Neuroscience, and Sociocultural Approaches, edited by Omri Gillath, Glenn Adams, and Adrianne Kunkel, 137–151 (Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 2012).
when the wider culture paints members of an outgroup: Brad Pinter and Anthony G. Greenwald, “A Comparison of Minimal Group Induction Procedures,” Group Processes Intergroup Relations 14 (2011): 81–98; Mina Cikara, Emile G. Bruneau, and Rebecca R. Saxe, “Us and Them: Intergroup Failures of Empathy,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 20 (2011): 149–153; Jonathan Levy, Abraham Goldstein, Moran Influs, Shafiq Masalha, Orna Zagoory-Sharon, and Ruth Feldman, “Adolescents Growing Up Amidst Intractable Conflict Attenuate Brain Response to Pain of Outgroup,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences United States of America 113, no. 48 (2016): 13696–13701.
These psychological phenomena may help to explain: Gil Luria, Ram Cnaan, and Amnon Boehm, “National Culture and Prosocial Behaviors Results from 66 Countries,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (2014): 0899764014554456.
The top of this index is reliably dominated: “Individualism,” Clearly Cultural, http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/individualism/.
These countries are also vastly more likely: Alois Gratwohl, Helen Baldomero, Michael Gratwohl, Mahmoud Aljurf, Luis Fernando Bouzas, Mary Horowitz, Yoshihisa Kodera, Jeff Lipton, Minako Iida, Marcelo C. Pasquini, Jakob Passweg, Jeff Szer, Alejandro Madrigal, Karl Frauendorfer, Dietger Niederwieser, and WBMT (Worldwide Network of Blood and Marrow Transplantation), “Quantitative and Qualitative Differences in Use and Trends of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation: A Global Observational Study,” Haematologica 98, no. 8 (2013): 1282–1290; WHO, “Blood Safety and Availability”; GODT (Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation), “WHO-ONT,” http://www.transplant-observatory.org/.
This may contribute to the persistent problem: A. L. N. Udegbe, Kemi Ololade Odukoya, and Babatunde E. Ogunnowo, “Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Voluntary Blood Donation Among Residents in a Rural Local Government Area in Lagos State: A Mixed Methods Survey,” Nigerian Journal of Health Sciences 15, no. 2 (2015): 80; S. O. Onuh, M. C. Umeora, and Odidika Ugochukwu Joannes Umeora, “Socio-Cultural Barriers to Voluntary Blood Donation for Obstetric Use in a Rural Nigerian Village,” African Journal of Reproductive Health (2005): 72–76; Osaro Erhabor and Teddy Charles Adias, “The Challenges of Meeting the Blood Transfusion Requirements in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Need for the Development of Alternatives to Allogenic Blood,” Journal of Blood Medicine 2 (2011): 7–21; Anju Dubey, Atul Sonker, Rahul Chaurasia, and Rajendra Chaudhary, “Knowledge, Attitude, and Beliefs of People in North India Regarding Blood Donation,” Blood Transfusion 12, suppl. 1 (2014): s21–s27; Tanja Z. Zanin, Denise P. Hersey, David C. Cone, and Pooja Agrawal, “Tapping into a Vital Resource: Understanding the Motivators and Barriers to Blood Donation in Sub-Saharan Africa,” African Journal of Emergency Medicine 6, no. 2 (2016): 70–79. For a particularly thorough exploration of relevant factors, see the following ethnographic study conducted in Pakistan: Zubia Mumtaz, Sarah Bowen, and Rubina Mumtaz, “Meanings of Blood, Bleeding, and Blood Donations in Pakistan: Implications for National vs. Global Safe Blood Supply Policies,” Health Policy and Planning 27, no. 2 (2012): 147–155..
Even within an individualist nation like the United States: Markus Kemmelmeier and Joyce A. Hartje, “Individualism and Prosocial Action: Cultural Variations in Community Volunteering,” Advances in Psychology Research 51 (2007): 149; Lam and McCullough, “Influence of Religious and Spiritual Values.”
Fiction, in particular, represents: Keith Oatley, “Fiction: Simulation of Social Worlds,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 20, no. 8 (2016): 618–628.
some subjects read a brief note: C. Daniel Batson and Nadia Y. Ahmad, “Empathy-Induced Altruism in a Prisoner’s Dilemma II: What If the Target of Empathy Has Defected?” European Journal of Social Psychology 31, no. 1 (2001): 25–36.
People who read more fiction: Oatley, “Fiction: Simulation of Social Worlds”; P. Matthjis Bal and Martijn Veltkamp, “How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation,” PLoS One 8, no. 1 (2013): e55341.
Collectivist cultures generally value conformity: Markus Kemmelmeier and Joyce A. Hartje, “Individualism and Prosocial Action: Cultural Variations in Community Volunteering,” Advances in Psychology Research 51 (2007): 149.
Yamagishi has proposed that this may explain: Toshio Yamagishi and Midori Yamagishi, “Trust and Commitment in the United States and Japan,” Motivation and Emotion 18, no. 2 (1994): 129–166.
An influential series of studies: Netta Weinstein and Richard M. Ryan, “When Helping Helps: Autonomous Motivation for Prosocial Behavior and Its Influence on Well-being for the Helper and Recipient,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98, no. 2 (2010): 222–244.
the evident satisfaction felt by Lenny Skutnik: “Hero of Plane Crash Had Little Experience in the Hero Business,” Los Angeles Times/Washington Post News Service, January 16, 1982.
the confusion of foreseen outcomes with intended outcomes: Thomas A. Cavanaugh, “The Intended/Foreseen Distinction’s Ethical Relevance,” Philosophical Papers 25, no. 3 (1996): 179–188.
As the Buddhist monk and neuroscience researcher: Matthieu Ricard, Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World (London: Atlantic Books, 2015), 141.
Expending resources on helping others: Elizabeth W. Dunn, Lara B. Aknin, and Michael I. Norton, “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness,” Science 319, no. 5870 (2008): 1687–1688.
Once a mother rat has had the experience: Cort Andrew Pedersen, “Biological Aspects of Social Bonding and the Roots of Human Violence,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1036 (2004): 106–127.
the amygdala lesion patient S.M. is not a psychopath: Scott O. Lilienfeld, Katheryn C. Sauvigné, Justin Reber, Ashley L. Watts, Stephan B. Hamann, Sarah Francis Smith, Christopher J. Patrick, Shauna M. Bowes, and Daniel Tranel, “Potential Effects of Severe Bilateral Amygdala Damage on Psychopathic Personality Features: A Case Report,” Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment (December 2016), DOI: 10.1037/per0000230.
One recent tantalizing study: Robin S. Rosenberg, Shawnee L. Baughman, and Jeremy N. Bailenson, “Virtual Superheroes: Using Superpowers in Virtual Reality to Encourage Prosocial Behavior,” PLoS One 8, no. 1 (2013): e55003.
a twenty-year-old program with demonstrated success: Kimberly A. Schonert-Reichl, Veronica Smith, Anat Zaidman-Zait, and Clyde Hertzman, “Promoting Children’s Prosocial Behaviors in School: Impact of the ‘Roots of Empathy’ Program on the Social and Emotional Competence of School-Aged Children,” School Mental Health 4, no. 1 (2012): 1–21.
Even relatively brief training in compassion: Daniel Lim, Paul Condon, and David DeSteno, “Mindfulness and Compassion: An Examination of Mechanism and Scalability,” PLoS One 10, no. 2 (2015): e0118221; Paul Condon, Gaëlle Desbordes, Willa Miller, and David DeSteno, “Meditation Increases Compassionate Responses to Suffering,” Psychological Science 24 (2013): 2125–2127; Julieta Galante, Marie-Jet Bekkers, Clive Mitchell, and John Gallacher, “Loving-Kindness Meditation Effects on Well-being and Altruism: A Mixed-Methods Online RCT,” Applied Psychology: Health and Well-being (2016); Yoona Kang, Jeremy R. Gray, and John F. Dovidio, “The Nondiscriminating Heart: Lovingkindness Meditation Training Decreases Implicit Intergroup Bias,” Journal of Experimental Psychology General 143, no. 3 (2014): 1306–1313.
Humility, happily, is one of those rare and wonderful qualities: Joshua D. Foster, W. Keith Campbell, and Jean M. Twenge, “Individual Differences in Narcissism: Inflated Self-Views Across the Lifespan and Around the World,” Journal of Research in Personality 37, no. 6 (2003): 469–486; Petar Milojev and Chris G. Sibley, “The Stability of Adult Personality Varies Across Age: Evidence From a Two-Year Longitudinal Sample of Adult New Zealanders,” Journal of Research in Personality 51 (2014): 29–37.
“Just driving in our car”: K. K. Ottesen, “Cory Booker on the Perils of Heroism,” Washington Post, February 25, 2016.