Programmed to Care

Debra Jo Michele Hunter was sentenced to 29 days in prison on April 8th for deliberately coughing in the face of Heather Sprague – who had recently been treated for a brain tumor – in a Florida Pier 1 store.  Sprague had asked Hunter to stop berating store employees.  Such stories of human nastiness regularly flash on Internet screens.   

Yet for every Debra Hunter, there are thousands who care.  They perform acts of kindness in all kinds of situations.  They wear masks without a mandate, staff food banks, contribute on gofundme posts, help during natural disasters and in countless other ways support not just family but friends, communities, and people they’ll never know first-hand.  Most people care about others.  In fact, we’re genetically programmed for it.  

Empathy begins early. A study of six and ten-month infants presented them with two movement sequences involving a circle struggling to make it up a hill.  Along comes a triangle to push the circle up the rest of the way.  In another sequence, a square appears but pushes the circle back down the hill.  After seeing these sequences several times, the infants were given a tray with a toy on one side that looks like the triangle and a toy on the other side that resembles the square.  Fourteen of sixteen ten-month olds and all the six-month olds reached for the “helpful” triangle though too young to consciously think about why.

The neurological basis for caring appears connected to at least two sources.  One is the neurotransmitter oxytocin, the so-called “love chemical.”  It rises in women as they prepare to give birth and in males who bond with them.  It rises as well when you pet your cat or dog.  Oxytocin promotes care-giving.  Another source is the “mirror-neuron” system which causes similar neurons in our brains to activate when neurons fire in another person who is taking (or subject to) some action.  It’s why we often yawn when others yawn, cry when we someone else cry and literally feel another’s pain.

The aversion to harming others may also be hard-wired.  One study examined how peripheral blood vessels reacted when subjects were asked to simulate harming someone else, such as shooting a fake gun at their face, knowing it is fake. Their blood vessels constricted, a reaction to and preparation for dealing with stress.  No such reaction occurred when they just watched pretend harmful actions.

Yet if we’re wired to care, how do we explain people like Debra Hunter?  Our genetic propensity is, of course, just part of the story.  The other part is cultural learning.   As psychologist Joshua Greene argues in Moral Tribes, in our evolutionary struggle for survival we first had to care about ourselves in competition with other individuals but then found that groups in which members cooperated survived better than groups whose individuals stayed selfish.  That was a cultural impetus for caring about others.  But, as Greene notes: “Biologically speaking, humans were designed for cooperation, but only with some people.  Our moral brains evolved for cooperation within groups, and perhaps only within the context of personal relationships.  Our moral brains did not evolve for cooperation between groups (at least not all groups).”  For Debra Hunter, Heather Sprague was clearly not in her “group.”

A key question for a society that wants fewer Debra Hunters is:  how do we create a culture that fosters caring?  After all, she started life as a baby who would no doubt have played with the “helpful triangle.” But that child was lost in her in the line at Pier 1. 

Culture is transmitted partly through building relationships.  In a study at Stanford, one and two-year olds were split into two groups.  In one, the experimenter rolled a ball back and forth with the child while engaged in chit-chat.  In the other, the experimenter and child each played with the ball alone.  After a few minutes, the experimenter knocked something off the table.  The children who had engaged in reciprocal play were three times more likely to help pick up the object, suggesting their altruistic behavior resulted at least in part from the relationship built with the experimenter.

Cultural influences can be subtle.  In an experiment called the “Dictator Game,” one participant of a pair was given ten dollars and told they could share some of it with their partner, who was given nothing, or keep it all themselves.  Their “dictates” were made over networked computers, so they never had to face their partners. For half of these “dictators,” the computer screen background had a pair of eyes; the other half had just the lab’s logo.  The result: 55 percent of those who saw the logo shared some money but 88 percent of those who saw the pair of eyes did.  Being aware that your tendency to care is being observed made a difference.

In a society that pays so much attention to the value of competition, having fewer Debra Hunters requires more attention to designing ways - and rewards – that foster our instinct to care.

Photo Credit: Carol Donsky Newell