Showing papers by "Michael E. McCullough published in 2022"

An evolutionary psychology view of forgiveness: individuals, groups, and culture.

Abstract: We review the logic of an evolutionary perspective on forgiveness, highlighting how insight into the likely function of forgiveness--solving adaptive problems related to acquiring and maintaining social relationships--has productively guided research and theory. A combination of experimental, longitudinal, cross-sectional, and cross-cultural evidence supports the claim that victims’ perceptions of harmdoers’ relationship value and exploitation causally influence whether or not victims forgive harmdoers. We also review the nascent literature on the topic of intergroup forgiveness, and consider how the concepts associated with interpersonal forgiveness, such as apologies, relationship value, and exploitation risk might help us understand forgiveness between groups, cultures, and societies. Finally, we explore the intersection of evolutionary and cultural perspectives on forgiveness, and consider how concepts from these two research traditions might be integrated to help us understand forgiveness even better.

Evaluating Benefits, Costs, and Social Value as Predictors of Gratitude

Abstract: Although much is known about cooperation, the internal decision rules that regulate motivations to initiate and maintain cooperative relationships have not been thoroughly explored. Here, we focus on how acts of benefit delivery and perceptions of social value inform gratitude, an emotion that promotes cooperation. We evaluated alternate information-processing models to determine which inputs and internal representations best account for the intensity with which people report experiencing gratitude. Across two experiments (Ns = 257 and 208), we tested 10 models that consider multiple variables: the magnitude of benefits conferred on beneficiaries, the magnitude of costs incurred by benefactors, beneficiaries’ perception of how much benefactors value their welfare, and beneficiaries’ value for the welfare of their benefactors. Across both studies, only beneficiaries’ change in social valuation for their benefactors consistently predicted gratitude. Results point to the need for further research and contribute to the growing literature linking cooperation, social emotions, and social valuation.

Does Empathy Promote Helping by Activating Altruistic Motivation or Concern About Social Evaluation? A Direct Replication of Fultz et al. (1986)

Abstract: Empathy motivates people to help needy others. Does it do so by activating genuine concern, or by activating more self-interested goals that helping needy others might enable them to fulfill? The empathy-altruism hypothesis claims that empathic concern reflects a non-instrumental desire to improve the welfare of a person in need. To rule out the alternative hypothesis that empathy motivates prosocial behavior by first generating fear of appearing selfish, Fultz et al. (1986) manipulated empathy for a needy target using perspective-taking instructions; they also manipulated whether the subject’s opportunity to help was subject to social evaluation. However, Fultz et al.’s (1986) experiments were underpowered. Here, we conducted a large-N pre-registered replication of Experiment 2 in Fultz et al. (1986). We also administered self-report measures of moral identity and endorsement of the principle of care to test whether these traits reflect altruistic desires or desires to avoid disapprobation. We found that volunteering did not differ between the high and low social evaluation conditions, and that volunteering was not significantly higher in the high-empathy condition. These results sit uneasily with Fultz et al. (1986)’s evidence in support of the empathy-altruism hypothesis. We also failed to find evidence that the principle of care or moral identity internalization reflect altruistic motivation. Consistent with the empathy-altruism hypothesis, however, we did find that self-reported empathic concern predicted helping.