Help or flight? Increased threat imminence promotes defensive helping in humans.

ABSTRACT: In humans and other mammals, defensive responses to danger vary with threat imminence, but it is unknown how those responses affect decisions to help conspecifics. Here, we manipulated threat imminence to investigate the impact of different defensive states on human helping behaviour. Ninety-eight healthy adult participants made trial-by-trial decisions about whether to help a co-participant avoid an aversive shock, at the risk of receiving a shock themselves. Helping decisions were prompted under imminent or distal threat, based on temporal distance to the moment of shock administration to the co-participant. Results showed that, regardless of how likely participants were to also receive a shock, they helped the co-participant more under imminent than distal threat. Reaction times and car

SUBMITTER: Vieira JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7482272 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature