Defensive states driving active escape from immediate danger also facilitate decisions to help others, potentially by engaging neurocognitive systems implicated in caregiving across mammals

Vieira, Joana, Sabine Schellhaas, Erik Enström, and Andreas Olsson. 2020. “Help or Flight? Increased Threat Imminence Promotes Defensive Helping in Humans.” PsyArXiv. May 17. doi:10.31234/osf.io/bckn3

Abstract
Defensive responses to threatening situations vary with threat imminence, but it is unknown how those responses affect decisions to help others. Here, we manipulated threat imminence to investigate the impact of different defensive states on helping behaviour. Ninety-eight 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. Individual differences in empathic concern were specifically correlated with helping during imminent threats. These results suggest defensive states driving active escape from immediate danger also facilitate decisions to help others, potentially by engaging neurocognitive systems implicated in caregiving across mammals.