Neural and cognitive bases of costly altruism toward strangers

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The purpose of this research is to investigate the role of altruism on behavior, and to investigate ways to develop altruism. Millions of Americans engage in risky and costly behaviors to help complete strangers. For example, every year hundreds of altruistic kidney donors undergo major surgery. This surgery involves removing one of their kidneys so that it can be transplanted into a person they have never met, and likely will never meet. Acts of extraordinary altruism like this are difficult to explain using existing theories of social behavior, which focus on altruism that benefits relatives or a group one is closely connected to. This research tests the novel hypothesis that costly altruism toward strangers can be explained in part by emotional responses to close and distant others. This project examines patterns of activity in subcortical brain regions that drive rapid emotional responses toward socially distant others. It is hypothesized that structured training in generating kindness and compassion towards progressively distant others will lead to greater altruism toward strangers as well as patterns of neural activity that supports such costly acts. This project aims to identify neural processes that support extraordinary altruism for strangers, which may provide key insights into the roots of human care and compassion with great implications for the health and well-being of the nation.This project examines the role of social distance on donating a kidney to strangers, and its neural underpinnings. As people are more distant to the self the willingness to sacrifice for others drops steeply. In contrast, those who engage in acts of extraordinary altruism show minimal social discounting and are willing to sacrifice for even distant others. Dr. Abigail Marsh and her team at Georgetown University examine the neurological mechanisms that support this reduced social discounting. They compare altruists to controls as they make decisions about keeping or sharing resources. Further, they examine the influence of a structure loving-kindness training on reducing social discounting. Brain imaging will be used to examine the influence of training on affective neural responses, and to understand the ways that ordinary people learn to be more altruistic toward strangers. Identifying the mechanisms that support social discounting, and determining how flexible these mechanisms are is crucial for understanding how people develop the capacity for generosity and altruism for distant others, even strangers.