Why help others? Insights from rodent to human early childhood research

Ya-Qin Chen; Shu Han; Bin Yin

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1058352

Why help others? Insights from rodent to human early childhood research

Front Behav Neurosci. 2023 Mar 21:17:1058352. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1058352. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Ya-Qin Chen¹, Shu Han¹, Bin Yin^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Learning and Behavioral Sciences, School of Psychology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, Fujian, China.
² Department of Applied Psychology, School of Psychology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, Fujian, China.

Abstract

Helping behavior are actions aiming at assisting another individual in need or to relieve their distress. The occurrence of this behavior not only depends on automated physiological mechanisms, such as imitation or emotional contagion, that is, the individual's emotion and physiological state matching with others, but also needs motivation to sustain. From a comparative and developmental perspective, we discover that the motivation for helping behavior has a deep foundation both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. For example, empathic concern for others, relieving personal distress and the desire for social contact are universal motivations across rodents, non-human primates and human early childhoods. Therefore, a circle-layered model integrating evidences for motivation for helping behavior from rodent to human early childhood research is proposed: the inner circle contains the emotional-behavioral system and the outer circle contains the affective-cognitive system. The application of this model has significance for both behavioral neuroscience research and cultivating prosocial behavior in human society.

Keywords: comparative cognition; helping behavior; human early childhoods; motivation; primates; rodents.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This work was funded by the Research Start-up Projects of “Overseas Talents - Young Talents” of the Personnel Department and the Key Scientific and Technological Projects of the Science and Technology Department of Fujian Normal University.