A Behavioral Measure of Costly Helping: Replicating and Extending the Association with Callous Unemotional Traits in Male Adolescents

Background

Some conduct-disordered youths have high levels of callous unemotional traits and meet the DSM-5’s “with limited prosocial emotions” (LPE) specifier. These youths often do aggressive, self-benefitting acts that cost others. We previously developed a task, the AlAn’s game, which asks participants to repeatedly decide whether to accept or reject offers in which they will receive money but a planned charity donation will be reduced. In our prior work, more "costly helping" (i.e., rejecting the offered money and protecting the donation) was associated with lower callous unemotional traits. Here we extend that prior work in a larger sample of adolescent male patients with serious conduct problems and controls, and test whether this association is mediated specifically by a Moral Elevation response (i.e., a positive emotional response to another’s act of virtue).

Methods

The adolescent male participants were: 45 patients (23 with LPE) and 26 controls, who underwent an extensive phenotypic assessment including a measure of Moral Elevation. About 1 week later participants played the AlAn’s game.

Results

All AlAn’s game outcomes demonstrated significant group effects: (1) money taken for self (p = 0.02); (2) money left in the charitable donation (p = 0.03); and, (3) costly helping (p = 0.047). Controls took the least money and did the most costly helping, while patients with LPE took the most money and did the least costly helping. Groups also significantly differed in post-stimulus Moral Elevation scores (p = 0.005). Exploratory analyses supported that the relationship between callous unemotional traits and costly helping on the AlAn’s game may be mediated in part by differences in Moral Elevation.

Conclusions

The AlAn's game provides a standardized behavioral measure associated with callous unemotional traits. Adolescents with high levels of callous unemotional traits engage in fewer costly helping behaviors, and those differences may be related to blunting of positive emotional responses.

Below:  Examples of the different trial types in the AlAn’s game.

Panel A shows an Active Trial where the participant will receive 64 cents and the Red Cross donation will be reduced by 2 cents. Participants are asked to accept or reject this offer. Panel B shows an Attentional Control Trial where the participant will lose 2 cents and the Red Cross donation will be reduced by 8 cents. We term this kind of Attention Control trials, “Logically-Reject” Trials. Panel C shows an Attention Control Trial where the participant will gain 32 cents and the Red Cross donation won’t change. We term these “Logically-Accept” Trials.Panel D shows a Calculation Trial where the You number (+8) is not bigger than the Red Cross number +16). Note: The circle remains red for 5 seconds, allowing participants to view the trial content. Then the circle turns green and subjects have 1 second to press either yes (accept) vs. no (reject).

Full article at:   http://goo.gl/0K53AA

By:  Joseph T. Sakai,* Manish S. Dalwani, Susan K. Mikulich-Gilbertson, Shannon K. McWilliams, Kristen M. Raymond, andThomas J. Crowley

Antonio Verdejo-García, Editor

Division of Substance Dependence, Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver, Colorado, United States of America

University of Granada, SPAIN

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Booze, Bars, and Bystander Behavior: People Who Consumed Alcohol Help Faster in the Presence of Others

People help each other less often and less quickly when bystanders are present. In this paper, we propose that alcohol consumption could attenuate or reverse this so-called bystander effect. Alcohol impairs people cognitively and perceptually, leading them to think less about the presence of others and behave less inhibited. Moreover, alcohol makes people more prone to see the benefits of helping and not the costs. 

To provide an initial test of these lines of reasoning, we invited visitors of bars in Amsterdam to join our study at a secluded spot at the bar. We manipulated bystander presence, and at the end of the study, we measured alcohol consumption. When participants took their seats, the experimenter dropped some items. We measured how many items were picked up and how quickly participants engaged in helping. 

Results revealed that alcohol did not influence the bystander effect in terms of the amount of help given. But importantly, it did influence the bystander effect in terms of response times: people who consumed alcohol actually came to aid faster in the presence of others.

…The foremost finding from the current contribution is that alcohol does not simply attenuate the entire bystander effect, but only increases response speeds. This could imply that the influences that seriously undermine helping and intervention (such as audience inhibition, confusion and diffusion of responsibility, and pluralistic ignorance) may slow down the decision process but do not actually change it. Indeed, people under the influence of alcohol in the presence of others were at least as fast as sober people who were alone. It seems that the complications caused by the presence of bystanders in the five-step model (Latané and Darley, 1970) may simply be ignored by them. Under the influence of alcohol, people may not notice that no-one is helping and thus do not experience pluralistic ignorance before step 2. They may not think that someone else will provide help and thus may not experience diffusion of responsibility before step 3, and they may not worry about how to implement the help in step 4. Because the amount of help given remains the same, it may imply that people make their decision to act rather quickly based on the immediate situation, and then contemplate and search (in each step) for information that confirms the correctness of the decision. As drunk people are often cognitively impaired, they may be less likely to go through this process of “false deliberation” (see also Waroquier et al., 2010)…

Full article at:  http://goo.gl/jNLZQD

By:  Marco van Bommel,1,2,3,* Jan-Willem van Prooijen,1,2 Henk Elffers,2 and Paul A. M. Van Lange1

¹Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

²Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, Amsterdam, Netherlands

³Department Psychology of Conflict, Risk, and Safety, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands

Edited by: Jacob B. Hirsh, University of Toronto, Canada

Reviewed by: Andrew K. Littlefield, Texas Tech University, USA; Ronald Friedman, University at Albany, SUNY, USA

*Correspondence: Marco van Bommel, ln.etnewtu@lemmobnav.m

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Women's Hairstyle & Men's Behavior: A Field Experiment

Little research has examined the effect of women's hairstyles on people's behavior. In a field study, male and female passersby, walking alone in the street, were observed while walking behind a female-confederate who dropped a glove and apparently was unaware of her loss. The confederate had long dark hair arranged in three different hairstyles: one with her hair falling naturally on her shoulders and her back, one with her hair tied in a ponytail, and one with her hair twisted in a bun. Results reported that the hairstyle had no effect on female passersby's helping behavior. However, it was found that the hairstyle influenced male passersby with men helping the confederate more readily when her hair fell naturally on her neck, shoulders and upper back.

Although hairstyles or hair characteristics are a common striking and obvious feature of appearance, psychological research focusing on women's hair has received little attention (Hinsz, Matz & Patience, 2001). Most of the research conducted on women's hair has examined hair color. Several studies reported that men but not women helped a woman with blond hair more favorably (Guéguen & Lamy, 2009; Lynn, 2009; Price, 2008) suggesting that hair color is an important factor for men when judging the attractiveness of a woman.

An additional feature of hair appearance studied by scientists is hair length. Several studies have reported that women's hair length influences how they are perceived by an observer. Using photographs of women targets with hair length varying across experimental conditions, Bereczkei and Mesko (2006) reported that males rated the woman target with long hair as more feminine, determined, intelligent, independent and healthy while the target with short hair was perceived to be more honest, caring and emotional. Terry and Krantz (1993) reported that long hair was associated with decreased social forcefulness. These results seem to contradict those reported by Bereczkei and Mesko (2006) but could be explained by cultural or period differences. More than 10 years separated the two studies and the experiment of Terry and Krantz (1993) was conducted in the United States while the experiment of Bereczkei and Mesko (2006) was conducted in Hungary. More recently, Swami, Furnham and Joshi (2008) using line drawings of female bodies reported that short hair targets were rated as significantly more fertile than long hair. The authors also reported an interaction effect between hair length and hair color: males but not females rated a blond target with short hair to be less healthy than a target with long hair, while the reverse effect was reported with a target with dark hair. With more realistic photos of women's faces, Mesko and Bereczkei (2004) reported that long hair was associated with higher ratings of femininity, youth, health and sexiness. These effects were found both with low or high attractive targets. Again this apparent contradiction between the findings could be explained by cultural factors (Mesko and Bereczkei, 2004 for Hungary and Swami et al., 2008 for the United Kingdom) or the targets used (Swami et al., 2008 for drawings of female bodies and Mesko and Bereczkei, 2004 for real photos of women's faces)...

  

Full article at:  http://goo.gl/yURTcr

By:  Guéguen N1.

• 1Université de Bretagne-Sud, Lorient, France. 

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