"An Integrative View of Active Altruism"

Integrative theories have often proposed that altruism evolved from the need to care for helpless neonates. In this traditional view, neonates in distress or need elicit emotional resonance or sympathy, which in turn provide the affective motivation to help. This instinct is largely adaptive in social groups where many individuals are related; it also aptly explains common forms of altruism in social groups like consolation, alloparenting, and food sharing. However, such models do not adequately explain highly active forms of aid like human heroism, which often occur in the absence of empathic feelings and toward complete strangers. Active aid has been more or less ignored by the academy, apart from a few proposals that heroism evolved in males to attract mates. I propose (Preston, 2013) that active aid derives from offspring retrieval, which is a specific, active form of offspring care that exists across caregiving species, supported by known neuro-hormonal mechanisms. The retrieval response evolved to safeguard vulnerable offspring but can be released under similar conditions (toward a distressed, vulnerable target in immediate need), which is still adaptive because the mechanism prevents observers from helping when they feel scared or incompetent. The model will be presented along with recent evidence from my lab. Ancient mammalian brain systems evolved to solve key problems in ways that have far-reaching consequences for even our most venerated human traits.