Why Help at All?: teacher key

Kindness, grade 10 edition, written for 10th grade. Why do animals and people give? Ideas such as reciprocal altruism are tested on bats, rats, apes and toddlers, along with mimicry, mirror neurons and oxytocin.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. Who developed the idea of reciprocal altruism to explain cooperation?
   • Mark Davis
   • Robert Trivers (answer)
   • Warneken
2. What always came before food sharing in the captive bats?
   • Fighting
   • Sleeping
   • Grooming (answer)
3. Why did the authors judge the free rat unlikely to be ending alarm calls?
   • Alarm calls were rare in the study (answer)
   • The rats were deaf
   • The rats were paid
4. Who were more consoling overall in the chimpanzee study?
   • Males
   • Females (answer)
   • Neither
5. What have studies of nasal oxytocin been criticized for?
   • Costing too much
   • Using too many dogs
   • Sprays may not produce behavioral effects (answer)
6. How far did cooperative behavior spread in the experiments?
   • Up to three degrees of separation (answer)
   • One step
   • Twenty steps

Words

• reciprocal: back and forth
• mimicry: copying
• oxytocin: a hormone
• altruism: selfless concern
• consoling: comforting