By behaving altruistically, individuals voluntarily reduce their benefits in order to increase their partners'. This deviation from a self-interest-maximizing function may be cognitively demanding, though. This study investigates whether altruistic sharing in 4- to 6-year-old children, assessed by a dictator game (DG), is related to three measures of executive functioning, that is, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. We found that children who turned out to be altruistic in the DG performed better on an inhibition task than non-altruists did. This finding lends support to the hypothesis that altruistic sharing might be somewhat constrained by the child's ability to inhibit a natural tendency to preserve his or her own resources. Much research is needed to understand the role of inhibitory control in the development of costly sharing and the consolidation of inequity aversion.

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In the sacrificial moral dilemma task, participants have to morally judge an action that saves several lives at the cost of killing one person. According to the dual process corrective model of moral judgment suggested by Greene and collaborators (2001; 2004; 2008), cognitive control is necessary to override the intuitive, deontological force of the norm against killing and endorse the utilitarian perspective. However, a conflict model has been proposed more recently to account for part of the evidence in favor of dual process models in moral and social decision making. In this model, conflict, moral responses and reaction times arise from the interplay between individually variable motivational factors and objective parameters intrinsic to the choices offered. To further explore this model in the moral dilemma task, we confronted three different samples with a set of dilemmas representing an objective gradient of utilitarian pull, and collected data on moral judgment and on conflict in a 4-point scale. Collapsing all cases along the gradient, participants in each sample felt less conflicted on average when they gave extreme responses (1 or 4 in the UR scale). They felt less conflicted on average when responding to either the low- or the high-pull cases. The correlation between utilitarian responses and conflict was positive in the low-pull and negative in the high-pull cases. This pattern of data suggests that moral responses to sacrificial dilemmas are driven by decision conflict, which in turn depends on the interplay between an objective gradient of utilitarian pull and the moral motivations which regulate individual responsiveness to this gradient.

Introduction Previous research has shown that peer victimization can be highly responsive to variables at the classroom level. Aggressive and prosocial norms may promote or reduce its status in classrooms. However, yet there is an apparent lack of success to explain which types of norms are more influential. This study examined the role of aggressive and prosocial descriptive and status norms in the peer victimization–status link. It also explores how the network density increases adherence to the prevailing norm in the classroom and its effect on the status of the victims. Method Data on peer acceptance and rejection, victimization, prosocial behaviour, and aggression were collected with sociometric methods in a sample of 6,600 students (M = 13.1 years, SD = 0.6; 49.2% girls), from 269 classrooms in 81 secondary schools in Spain. Group norms for aggression and for prosocial behaviour were assessed in three ways, the behaviour of all peers (class‐norm), the behaviour of most‐liked peers (likeability‐norm), and the behaviour of most salient peers (visibility‐norm). Results Multilevel regression analyses revealed that the negative impact of victimization on peer likeability was moderated by the classroom’s norm for prosocial behaviour, by the status norm of most visible peers’ norm for prosocial behaviour and for aggression, and by the group’s network density. The behavioural status norms of most likeable peers had no significant effect. Conclusion These results underscore the overall importance of group context as a moderating factor of the relation between victimization and peer status in adolescents, and add to the growing body of knowledge driven by the socio‐ecological approach to the study of peer relations in developmental psychology. As implications for education, these results affect the importance of considering socio‐emotional variables in the formation of class groups in order to reduce victimization.

It is not yet clear which response behavior requires self-regulatory effort in the moral dilemma task. Previous research has proposed that utilitarian responses require cognitive control, but subsequent studies have found inconsistencies with the empirical predictions of that hypothesis. In this paper, we treat participants' sensitivity to utilitarian gradients as a measure of performance. We confronted participants (N = 82) with a set of five dilemmas evoking a gradient of mean utilitarian responses in a 4-point scale and collected data on heart rate variability and utilitarian responses. We found positive correlations between tonic and phasic HRV and sensitivity to the utilitarian gradient in the high tonic group, but not in the low tonic group. Moreover, the low tonic group misplaced a scenario with a selfish incentive at the high end of the gradient. Results suggest that performance is represented by sensitivity correlated with HRV and accompanied with a reasonable placement of individual scenarios within the gradient.

Se asume que la tendencia a ayudar sin esperar recompensas, es una característica estable que puede ser medida utilizando instrumentos desarrollados por medios psicométricos. La Escala de Auto-reporte de Altruismo (SRAS) se usa en distintos contextos culturales y fue adaptada para Colombia, en una población de estudiantes universitarios. El objetivo de esta investigación fue obtener evidencia complementaria para la validación de la SRAS en Colombia.. La SRAS adaptada para Colombia se aplicó a 244 personas de diferentes niveles educativos, y se calcularon los índices del Modelo de Rasch. Hubo funcionamiento diferencial en un ítem. Los indicadores mostraron buen ajuste de la prueba. Se encontraron tres puntos de anclaje que permitieron dividir a los participantes en cuatro grupos de desempeño. Aunque se encontró evidencia acerca de la utilidad de la prueba para medir altruismo, se sugiere una adaptación más profunda al contexto nacional.

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El comportamiento humano es una característica emergente de los sistemas biológicos y sociales de nuestra especie. Para su estudio, es conveniente establecer la posición del Homo sapiens dentro del reino animal, en lo referente a capacidades mentales y plasticidad comportamental. Reconociendo las generalidades del comportamiento animal, se afrontan mejor las particularidades del comportamiento humano, cuestión que atañe a todas las ciencias sociales. La perspectiva histórico-evolutiva permite abordar las principales presiones ecológicas que facilitaron la evolución de diferentes tipos de comportamiento, componente esencial del fenotipo, el que permite a los individuos sobrevivir y reproducirse en diferentes ambientes, haciendo así que la vida prospere en el planeta (Guillén-Salazar, 2005).