Belief in an Afterlife Influences Altruistic Helping Intentions in Alignment With Adaptive Tendencies

Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic tendencies in 20-month-olds.

The current study investigated the influence of rewards on very young children's helping behavior. After 20-month-old infants received a material reward during a treatment phase, they subsequently were less likely to engage in further helping during a test phase as compared with infants who had previously received social praise or no reward at all. This so-called overjustification effect sugges...

Are Religiosity and Belief in an Afterlife Better Predictors of Esp Performance than Belief in Psychic Phenomena? by Erlendur Haraldsson

Some measures of re l ig iosity, bel ief in an after l i fe , and bel ief in psychic phenomena were included in eight forced-choice ESP experiments. Seven of the experiments consisted of 40 trials of clairvoyance as a computer game and 40 trials of precognition in a paper-and-pencil test for each subject; and in one experiment there were 80 trials of clairvoyance. A combined measure of religios...

The Role of Compassion in Altruistic Helping and Punishment Behavior

Compassion, the emotional response of caring for another who is suffering and that results in motivation to relieve suffering, is thought to be an emotional antecedent to altruistic behavior. However, it remains unclear whether compassion enhances altruistic behavior in a uniform way or is specific to sub-types of behavior such as altruistic helping of a victim or altruistic punishment of a tra...

Felix Warneken The Development of Altruistic behavior : helping in Children

one of the key human characteristics is our willingness to help others in need. As adults we do this routinely, often in the absence of immediate personal gain and occasionally even at great costs to ourselves. Proponents of a Hobbesian worldview argue that these helpful behaviors mainly depend upon the acquisition of social norms that override and control our pervasive selfish nature. It is of...

The Development of Altruistic Behavior: Helping in Children and Chimpanzees