Is it possible to turn fear into altruism? This is positive psychology in a most creative sense. Take something negative, say psychopathy and look at the flip side: empathy. After all, “Psychopaths also lack empathy towards others in general, resulting in tactlessness, insensitivity, and contemptuousness” (Millon & Davis, 1998). Additionally, a focus on empathy and emotional resilience rather than psychopathy will enable people is the psychologically “normal” range to become even better, more understanding and compassionate educators, mentors, parents, siblings, and friends. Finally, this article focuses on how we must be able to understand the bad, in this case, fear, in order to know how to be good.

While there is a huge range of human emotion, recent studies have suggested that a fearful facial expression is a more salient elicitor of prosocial behavior than are other facial expressions, such as surprise or anger.

Marsh, Kozak, and Ambady (2007) conducted three studies to investigate the relationship between fear recognition and prosocial behavior.
In the first study, participants believed that the researchers were investigating typical reactions to radio broadcasts. The participants listened to an audiotape—a fictional creation of the research team—of a young woman named Katie describing her parents’ death and her struggles to care for her siblings. The researchers instructed one group of participants to empathize with the woman, while telling a control group to focus on technical aspects of the recording. Next, while having participants fill out questionnaires used to disguise the real intent of the study, the researchers handed out a letter from Katie describing her need for help, accompanied by pledge forms and envelopes.

Afterward, they gave the participants a test measuring their ability to identify emotions in photos of adult faces.
Not surprisingly, participants told to empathize with Katie donated more than those told to listen to the tape for technical accuracy. In addition, facial fear recognition skills played a powerful role in predicting their generosity. The accuracy with which participants recognized the fear expression significantly and positively predicted their donations of time and money.

In the second study, the researchers analyzed how participants’ fear recognition skills influenced their rating of people’s photos as attractive or unattractive if they thought the photographed subjects would be told about the ratings. This design created an opportunity for the participants to exhibit prosocial behavior by being kind to the people in the photos, eliminating a costly barrier of undergraduate participants not necessarily having much time or money. Another group of participants, who did not believe that the photographed people would hear their opinions, served as controls.

This study found that participants skilled at identifying facial fear (as well as sadness) responded the most kindly in the rating task. This was only true for participants for whom the task was framed as a prosocial one—who believed their judgments would be shown to the people being rated. In the control group, which did not think the researchers would share their opinions with the photo subjects, fear or sadness recognition skills played no role in the participants’ ratings. This could mean that there is nothing prosocial about rating someone as more attractive than they are if the people being rated are not told.

The third study duplicated Study 2, adding additional analyses to confirm that higher ratings of attractiveness stemmed from participants’ efforts to be kind. In this study, fear recognition again proved to be a strong predictor of prosocial behavior.

The results of the three studies maintain the hypothesis that the ability to recognize the fear facial expression predicts individual differences in prosocial behavior. This is consistent with studies involving psychopaths, because those studies suggest that individuals less prone to experiencing states associated with prosocial behavior (e.g., empathy, concern, and guilt) are less able to recognize distress cues such as the fear facial expression. Cleckley (1976) even defines psychopathy as a “lack of guilt or empathy.” More studies must be conducted to experimentally manipulate empathy, as was done in Marsh et al.’s Study 1, not merely manipulating whether or not the participant will get recognition as in their Studies two and three. Still, these researchers have lain fascinating ground for future studies of other-oriented positive emotions.

Marsh, Abigail A., Kozak, Megan N., Ambady, Nalini. (2007). Accurate identification of fear facial expressions predicts prosocial behavior. Emotion, 7, 239-51.

Millon, Theodore; Davis, Roger D. (1998). “Chapter 11: The Five-Factor Model of Personality, Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior. The Guilford Press: New York, NY. pp. 173-177.

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta have found that when monkeys were given a choice of receiving a food reward, or receiving a food reward and also having another monkey receive food. When paired with relative or “friend” the monkeys primarily went for the “prosocial” choice,  but the monkeys weren’t so generous with strangers, choosing the “selfish” option instead.

Empathy increases in both humans and animals with social closeness, which is often explained by evolution. We help those most closely related to us, to make sure not just our own genes are passed on but that those genes of our family as passed on as well.

Still one may wonder whether giving is still a selfish to capuchins because they can eat together, or if the monkeys simply like to see the other monkey enjoying the food. In the study, eight adult female capuchins were given tokens to exchange for food. One token got them a slice of apple. The other also got an apple slice, plus a similar slice was given to another monkey they could see.

In a series of tests, when the “partner” monkey was a relative or a familiar female from the same social group, the one choosing the token moved closer to the partner and primarily choose the prosocial token that got them both food.

When the second monkey was a stranger, the selfish token was more likely to be chosen, often with the lead monkey turning her back to the stranger. Since the reward was the same for the monkey making the choice, de Waal suggested there must be some intangible benefit to the prosocial choice, perhaps an indication of empathy.

The study put in much effort to eliminate the possibility that the monkeys didn’t understand the task. They also made sure the monkey could always see the other monkey eat the food when they chose the “prosocial option.

Like we’ve found with humans, strict  Dawkinsian evolutionary theory, which asserts that people may seem to act altruistically but only do so if the benefit, is questioned here. If we believed in completely selfish behavior, might researchers find a difference between “prosocial” behaviors toward a friend and toward a relative? In this study, as with many altruism studies with humans, there was no such difference.

Empathy is important to understand for better communities, schools, and personal/professional relationships. Emapthic individuals are less likely to be anti-social and more likely to have strong social ties, better social skills, and more school and life success. There are many applications for increasing one’s empathy, such as teaching it in schools, teaching it to counselors and psychologists, and teaching it as an intervention for criminals and/or emotionally impaired (Autistic, Psychopathic) people. For instance, an important target for Learning by Teaching is to train students in empathy. They have to transmit new contents to the classmates, so that they reflect continuously on the mental processes of their classmates and teachers. This greatly enhances the social relationships of the students and learning that takes place in the classroom.

Regarding psychotherapy, there is an increasing demand to train psychologists to be more empathetic with their clients. In this context, empathy is exremely important for trust and optimal treatment.

Not only is empathy a vital skill in order to maximize social relationships, but empathy is also linked to happiness and general well-being. Martin Seligman originally hypothesized that unhappy people are likely to be more altruistic since they would be more likely to identify with the suffering of others. Findings of studies on mood and helping behaviors, however, showed that happy people are more likely to demonstrate altruism (Seligman, 2002). There is no evidence to show the direction of this relationship, so it very well may be that being altruistic causes happiness. Studies conducted by Isen, George, and Brief (1992) also showed that people are more willing to help others and engage in altruistic behaviors when they are happy. Hence, it can be proposed that altruism and happiness are reciprocal.

In short, happy people are altruistic and altruistic people are happy. We’ll just have to wait for a monkey-mood-measure to see if the same is true for our capuchin friends.