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Using a Comparative Species Approach to Investigate the Neurobiology of Paternal Responses
Published on: September 19, 2011
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The convergence between defence and care in mammals
Joana B Vieira1, Andreas Olsson2
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
|May 15, 2024
Summary
Self-defense mechanisms can promote helping others, challenging the view that protecting oneself and others conflict. Evolution may have repurposed defense systems for care, suggesting convergent functions.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Evolutionary Psychology
- Social Behavior
Background:
- Traditionally, self-protection and other-protection motivations are viewed as conflicting.
- Existing models, like empathy-altruism, predict helping based on distress cues.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore evidence suggesting self-defense mechanisms facilitate helping behavior.
- To propose that defense and care functions may be evolutionarily convergent, not conflicting.
- To present a model of shared neural mechanisms for self and other defense.
Main Methods:
- Review of recent empirical evidence.
- Theoretical analysis of evolutionary repurposing.
- Development of a working model of neural mechanisms.
Main Results:
- Self-defensive responses can be more potent in promoting helping than responses to conspecific distress.
- Evidence supports the repurposing of neural mechanisms for both self-defense and other-protection.
- Defense and care are proposed as convergent, rather than conflicting, evolutionary functions.
Conclusions:
- Neural mechanisms underlying self-defense may have been evolutionarily adapted to support the protection of others.
- The study challenges the dichotomy between self-preservation and altruism.
- A unified model of defense and care mechanisms offers a new perspective on social behavior.
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