Self and other-regarding preferences throughout the life cycle

A new film, and a new paper in Nature this week pinpoint exactly when children develop a sense of consideration for others. The film, in addition, pinpoints the age, later in life, when this socially important behaviour appears to vanish entirely.

First to the paper in Nature by researchers Fehr (photo, middle), Bernhard & Rockenbach. It shows that children as young as 8 years old demonstrate a complex set of egalitarian tendencies. Egalitarianism involves the distribution of resources in an equitable fashion between self and other, even when this distribution involves a personal cost.

Many argue that this preference is the bedrock of human cooperation, so it is important to know when and how it evolves in us. We are not born with it. Three year olds have no discernible preference towards sharing and almost never share when sharing results in personal cost to themselves.

The celebrated part of this paper is the meticulous care with which conclusions can be drawn about the precise nature of other regarding preferences. Using methods tailored for children that have been adapted from highly sophisticated experiments used to study adult behaviour, Fehr can easily distinguish human altruism from a host of distracting facsimiles, such as the tendency to be merely helpful. Helpfulness is observed in many kinds of animals.

I wouldn't want to diminish this beautiful experimental work, but I happen to have just heard about a new Ben Kingsley film that seems to chart the age-related decline of other regarding behaviour with an equally impressive accuracy and precision.

Elegy, featuring Ben Kingsley and Penélope Cruz, is a film adaptation of a Philip Roth novella about a Columbia literature professor having an affair with a student. Nicely framing behaviour across the human life span, the film examines self versus other preferences in young women and men in their mid 60s.

The film looks terribly, terribly nauseating. But it seems to provide an elegant study of the disintegration of other regarding preferences during old age and the subsequent return of mental functioning that is characteristic of early childhood. And as a work of pure fiction, the storyline also portrays the generous other regarding tendencies of younger folks that choose to live with such men:

Cruz dialog: "I didn't ask you what I was gonna do. I asked you what you wanted to do with me".

Kingsley dialog: "I was in love with her, George. I have never felt like that ever in all my life."

Cruz dialog: "I am happy".

I'd seen enough by the end of the trailer, but I trawled around and found an illuminating Ben Kingsley Guardian interview by Brian Logan:

"Very soon preconceptions of me, if there are any left, will be meaningless, because I'll be moving too fast,". [Kingsley] makes a karate action with his arms, to indicate how confused we'll all be. The child in him will be pleased at that.

"Egalitarianism in young children" is published on page 1079 in the August 28th edition of Nature. Elegy is coming to a cinema near you.