Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees.

Full Abstract

Human beings routinely help others to achieve their goals, even when the helper receives no immediate benefit and the person helped is a stranger. Such altruistic behaviors (toward non-kin) are extremely rare evolutionarily, with some theorists even proposing that they are uniquely human. Here we show that human children as young as 18 months of age (prelinguistic or just-linguistic) quite readily help others to achieve their goals in a variety of different situations. This requires both an understanding of others' goals and an altruistic motivation to help. In addition, we demonstrate similar though less robust skills and motivations in three young chimpanzees.

Author information

Author/s: Warneken, Felix (F); Tomasello, Michael (M);

Affiliation: Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. warneken(-atsign-)eva.mpg.de

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article

Journal: Science (New York, N.Y.) (Science), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-Mar; vol 311 (issue 5765) : pp 1301-3

Dates: Created 2006/03/03; Completed 2006/03/13; Revised 2007/03/19;

PMID: 16513986, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

Comments and Corrections

CommentIn: Science. 2006 Mar 3;311(5765):1248-9. (PMID: 16513970)

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