In Brief

Little helpers

Think toddlers are simply self-centered whirling dervishes, capable only of making a mess, waiting to be cared for and picked up after? Think again.

A study recently published in Science suggests that preverbal toddlers as young as 18 months old understand when adults need their assistance and will do their best to help out, even for no reward. What’s more, the study found that some human-raised chimpanzees have similar altruistic tendencies.

Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, studied the behavior of 24 18-month-old toddlers, as well as three three-year-old to five-year-old chimps raised by people. Twelve children made up the experimental group, and the 12 others comprised the control group. The researchers put the children from both groups in 10 different situations in which an adult stranger—Warneken himself—was having trouble attaining a goal.

For example, in one experimental scenario, Warneken haphazardly dropped a clothespin and subtly indicated that he could not retrieve it without assistance. For the control group, the researcher again dropped the clothespin but gave no indication that he wanted to get it back.

Nearly every young child helped in at least one of the tasks. “It is noteworthy that they did so in almost all cases immediately,” and without any reward or praise for their altruism, Warneken and Tomasello write. And in six of the 10 tasks, children in the experimental group were significantly more likely to help than those in the control group, suggesting that kids can recognize when adults need their help and when they don’t. The chimpanzees also surprised the researchers by consistently helping with some of the tasks. But their altruistic capacity seemed limited only to certain scenarios, and the researchers note that the chimps’ basic helping skills may be attributed to their upbringing among people.

“A number of theorists have claimed that human beings cooperate with one another and help one another in ways not found in other animal species. This is almost certainly so,” the study concludes, “and the current results demonstrate that even very young children have a natural tendency to help other persons solve their problems.”

Early childhood educators take note: A child’s “natural” altruistic tendencies—likely inherited from humans’ and chimps’ common ancestor before the species split about six million years ago—should be recognized and cultivated, according to Warneken.

“Selfish as well as altruistic motives seem to be present early in ontogeny [development from embryo to adult],” he said in an interview. “Therefore, preschool teachers can build upon children’s proclivity to help others.”
—Jenn Director Knudsen

Notes on peace camp

Every day, the media reports on ethnic conflicts that seem intractable: Darfur. Kurdistan. Israel-Palestine.

But new research offers some hope. A study has found that peace-building workshops may increase participants’ positive emotions toward members of a rival ethnic group long after the initial workshop has ended.

Researchers Deepak Malhotra and Sumanasiri Liyanage conducted their study in Sri Lanka, where the Sinhalese and the Tamil have been involved in violent conflict for over 20 years. The Sri Lankan government sponsors annual peace workshops for Sinhalese and Tamil student leaders. During these workshops, men and women ages 18 to 21 live together in a “peace camp,” participating in lectures and other activities where they learn about the other ethnicity. For their study, Malhotra and Liyanage recruited over 80 people who had participated in this peace camp one year earlier and assessed their level of empathy toward the other ethnic group.

Their results, published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, showed that students who participated in the peace camp program felt more empathy for the other ethnic group than did students from similar backgrounds who had not participated. In addition, peace camp participants were more willing to donate money to help poor children belonging to the other ethnic group. These results were true for both Sinhalese and Tamil students.

These results are especially encouraging because they suggest a lasting impact: All participants had returned to ethnically divided settings after the peace camp, yet one year later they still showed greater empathic concern for members of the rival ethnic group than did other members of their community. The authors note that feeling empathy for members of a rival group during conflict may lead people to be less violent and more willing to compromise. In the future, they hope to investigate the impact of interventions at various stages of conflict and on other attitudes and behaviors. —Michelle Flythe

No quick fix for happiness

Psychologists have historically been skeptical of the idea that we can become happier people over the course of our lives.

We each have a genetic set-point of happiness, many believe, and even if we do experience momentary boosts of happiness above this set-point, we quickly adapt to this change and return back to our normal level.

A recent article by psychologists Kennon Sheldon and Sonja Lyubomirsky in the Journal of Happiness Studies challenges this theory. They concede that about half of our happiness is likely due to genetic influences. But in three studies they tested whether life circumstances—such as our health, income, and where we live—and intentional activities—conscious choices we make for ourselves, such as joining a club or starting a meaningful new project—have the potential to increase our long-term happiness above our genetic set-point.

They found that circumstantial changes and intentional activities both increase happiness in the short term. But the right kinds of intentional activities are also able to sustain those changes over several months. Circumstantial changes, by contrast, didn’t show a long-term effect on happiness.

One complication with this research is the difficulty in distinguishing between some changes in circumstance and intentional activities. Some events (such as getting married or going to college) can be both. But according to the authors, the effect of those events depends on how we interpret them: For one person they might be circumstances that are easily taken for granted, and to someone else they serve as intentional activities that help contribute to a series of pleasurable experiences.

So what intentional activities should we undertake? A variety of other research suggests that happiness can be increased by counting one’s blessings, not comparing oneself to others, making a conscious effort to feel optimistic, pursuing goals that are personally motivating and interesting, and becoming more forgiving.

No matter the activity, Sheldon and Lyubomirsky stress that increasing happiness seems to require consistent focus and determination over an extended period of time rather than the quick fix of a one-time circumstantial change. “Our data suggest that effort and hard work offer the most promising route to happiness,” they write. “In contrast, simply altering one’s superficial circumstances (assuming they are already reasonably good) may have little lasting effect on personal well-being.” —Laura Saslow

Staring prejudice in the face

Decades of psychological research has shown that people exhibit a strong preference for members of their own group over members of other groups, and these preferences surface even in young children.

Yet other research, guided by psychologist Gordon Allport’s “contact theory,” suggests that, under the right conditions, these prejudices can be challenged by exposing people to members of other groups.

A study recently published in Psychological Science tested the contact theory. The study, conducted by researchers in Israel and Ethiopia, measured the length of time that 36 three-month-old infants looked at faces of individuals from their own race versus faces of people from different racial backgrounds. Infants were first separated into three groups based on their race and their living environment: Caucasian infants living in a Caucasian environment in Israel; African infants living in an African environment in Ethiopia; and African infants living in a predominantly Caucasian environment in Israel. The researchers then showed the infants a series of pictures of Caucasian faces side-by-side with African faces. With each pair of faces, experimenters recorded which face the infants focused on for a longer period of time; they considered the amount of time the infants spent looking at that face to reflect their overall preference for faces of that race. The researchers wanted to see whether the infants’ racial preferences were related to the environment in which they lived.

The results showed that those infants living mainly among people of their own race—Caucasian infants living in Israel and African infants living in Ethiopia—preferred to look at faces of people from their own racial group. However, African infants living in a Caucasian environment showed no particular preference for African or Caucasian faces.

“Although these findings indicate that preference for own-race faces emerges out of very early exposure to prototypical perceptual environments,” the researchers write, “they also demonstrate that significant exposure to other-race faces can block the development of own-race preference.” They argue that because racial preferences early in life can lead to racial prejudices later, further research should determine precisely when these racial preferences might be altered by exposure to people of other races. —Rebecca Rialon

Sacrificial rights (and wrongs)

We’ve all been told that romantic relationships require sacrifice, and most of us can probably think of times when we’ve tried to heed this advice.

Perhaps you saw the foreign film your partner wanted to see instead of the comedy you’d been looking forward to, or maybe you skipped a bike ride with friends because your partner asked for help with errands.

But new research suggests that it’s not just whether we sacrifice but why we do so that affects the length and quality of our relationships.

Researchers from San Francisco State University and the University of California, Los Angeles, have distinguished between sacrifices made with “approach motives,” where the goal is to obtain positive results, such as making your partner happy or increasing intimacy between the two of you, and sacrifices made with “avoidance motives,” where the goal is to avoid conflict, guilty feelings, or other negative outcomes. In a study recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Emily Impett and her colleagues asked college students in dating relationships to complete a daily survey about their sacrifices, emotions, and relationship quality over two weeks. They found that daily sacrifices made with approach motives were associated with daily increases in positive emotions, life satisfaction, and relationship quality, and with the likelihood of being together one month later. On the other hand, sacrifices made with avoidance motives were associated with increases in daily negative emotions, decreases in life and relationship satisfaction, and an increased likelihood of breaking up.

Because the participants in this study were students who had not made any major sacrifices for each other (e.g., relocating for a partner’s job), it is difficult to know how these findings might generalize to married or committed couples. Nonetheless, the findings challenge the simplistic notion that sacrifice is always a good thing for relationships; instead, it suggests that there are good and bad kinds of sacrifice.

In an interview, Impett said she hopes her findings can prove instructive to therapists working with couples. “Our research suggests that couples may benefit from turning their problems into opportunities,” she said. “Attempts to reduce conflict, for example, can be transformed into opportunities to communicate more peacefully. Attempts to avoid break-up or divorce can be turned into opportunities to create fulfilling and long-lasting partnerships.” —Neera Mehta

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