Altruistic food sharing behavior by human infants after a hunger manipulation
Altruistic food sharing behavior by human infants after a hunger manipulation
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DOI：
10.1038/s41598-020-58645-9
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发表时间：
2020-02-04
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Meltzoff, Andrew N.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Barragan, Rodolfo Cortes;Brooks, Rechele;Meltzoff, Andrew N.
利他主义行为意味着给他人带来有价值的利益，同时承担个人成本。一种独特的人类利他主义行为包括将营养食物递给需要的陌生人，即使他想要食物。参与利他主义的食物转移，而不是保留食物，是昂贵的，因为它减少了捐助者相对于受益者的热量摄入。人类成年人在战争和饥荒时期，当给别人食物威胁到自己的生存时，就会采取这种形式的利他行为。与我们最近的灵长类近亲，黑猩猩（Pan troglodytes）和倭黑猩猩（Pan paniscus），在进行这种食物转移的倾向上表现出明显的限制（特别是黑猩猩），尽管它们与人类有许多社会认知的共性。在这里，我们表明，在非语言测试中，19个月大的人类婴儿反复自发地将高价值，营养丰富的天然食物转移给陌生人（实验1），更重要的是，在实验操作后，强制喂食延迟（实验2），这增加了他们自己吃食物的动机。社会经验变量调节了婴儿利他行为的表达，表明可塑性。
Altruistic behavior entails giving valuable benefits to others while incurring a personal cost. A distinctively human form of altruistic behavior involves handing nutritious food to needy strangers, even when one desires the food. Engaging in altruistic food transfer, instead of keeping the food, is costly, because it reduces the caloric intake of the benefactor vis-a-vis the beneficiary. Human adults engage in this form of altruistic behavior during times of war and famine, when giving food to others threatens one's own survival. Our closest living primate relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), exhibit notable constraints on the proclivity to engage in such food transfer (particularly chimpanzees), although they share many social-cognitive commonalities with humans. Here we show that in a nonverbal test, 19-month-old human infants repeatedly and spontaneously transferred high-value, nutritious natural food to a stranger (Experiment 1) and more critically, did so after an experimental manipulation that imposed a feeding delay (Experiment 2), which increased their own motivation to eat the food. Social experience variables moderated the expression of this infant altruistic behavior, suggesting malleability.