Neuroanatomical basis of concern-based altruism in virtual environment

Abstract

Costly altruism entails helping others at a cost to the self and prior work shows that empathic concern (EC) for the well-being of distressed and vulnerable individuals is one of the primary motivators of such behavior. However, extant work has investigated costly altruism with paradigms that did not feature self-relevant and severe costs for the altruist and have solely focused on neurofunctional, and not neuroanatomical, correlates. In the current study, we used a contextually-rich virtual reality environment to study costly altruism and found that individuals who risked their own lives in the virtual world to try to save someone in danger had enlarged right anterior insula and exhibited greater empathic concern than those who did not. These findings add to the growing literature showing the role of caring motivation in promoting altruism and prosociality and its neural correlates in the right anterior insula.

Virtual morality in the helping professions: Simulated action and resilience

“…It is possible that trained professionals have a heightened concern not only regarding harm avoidance but also regarding utility maximization; this would result in a null effect when using the relative moral judgement measure as the two tendencies cancel each other out. There is recent work showing that judgement-behaviour discrepancy is also observed in such altruistic dilemmas (Patil et al, 2017) and so future work might explore if helping professionals exhibit the same discrepancy as controls in these altruistic contexts. Further and in line with these considerations regarding methodology, the types of dilemmas included in the present study involve scenarios that pit the welfare of two different sets of strangers, which are not the typical kinds of situations that these professionals might encounter in their duties.…”

“…Further and in line with these considerations regarding methodology, the types of dilemmas included in the present study involve scenarios that pit the welfare of two different sets of strangers, which are not the typical kinds of situations that these professionals might encounter in their duties. These individuals are more likely to encounter dilemmas that pit their own welfare against the welfare of other individuals (Patil et al, 2017;Rand & Epstein, 2014). As such, it is possible that training influences their responses to altruistic dilemmas as opposed to sacrificial moral dilemmas.…”

“…As such, it is possible that training influences their responses to altruistic dilemmas as opposed to sacrificial moral dilemmas. There is recent work showing that judgement-behaviour discrepancy is also observed in such altruistic dilemmas (Patil et al, 2017) and so future work might explore if helping professionals exhibit the same discrepancy as controls in these altruistic contexts.…”

Neuroanatomical correlates of forgiving unintentional harms

“…Previous morphometry studies relating to moral cognition have examined how regional variation in brain structure relates to individual differences in endorsed moral values23, moral development24, group-focused moral foundations25, injustice sensitivity26, indirect reciprocity27, prosocial behavior28293031, and moral judgments in clinical populations3233. To our knowledge, only one prior voxel-based morphometry (VBM) study has investigated this issue in a small sample ( n  = 19), recruited as controls for comparison with a neurological population32.…”

The behavioral and neural basis of empathic blame

“…Past research shows that the activation of this network plays a role in promoting prosocial action aimed at alleviating victim suffering [36][37][38][39][40] . Yet, at the neural level, it has not previously been associated with the moral condemnation of those who cause others to suffer 41 .…”