Running head: PREPRINT: ELEVATION, IDEALISM, AND PROSOCIAL CONTAGION1 1 PREPRINT: Elevation, an emotion for prosocial contagion, is experienced more strongly by 2 those with greater expectations of the cooperativeness of others 1,2 1,2,3 1,2,4 3 Adam Maxwell Sparks , Daniel M. T. Fessler , & Colin Holbrook 1 4 University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Anthropology 2 5 UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture 3 6 UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute 4 7 University of California, Merced, Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences 8 Author Note 9 This manuscript has been accepted for publication in PLoS ONE. The pre-print 10 version is nearly identical to the accepted paper. 11 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Adam Maxwell Sparks, 12 Department of Anthropology / 341 Haines Hall, Box 951553 / University of California, Los 13 Angeles / Los Angeles, CA 90095-1553 U.S.A.. E-mail: [email protected] PREPRINT: ELEVATION, IDEALISM, AND PROSOCIAL CONTAGION 2 14 Abstract 15 A unique emotion, elevation, is thought to underlie prosocial contagion, a process whereby 16 witnessing a prosocial act leads to acting prosocially. Individuals differ in their propensity to 17 experience elevation, and thus their proneness to prosocial contagion, but little is known 18 about the causes of such variation. We introduce an adaptationist model wherein elevation 19 marks immediate circumstances in which generalized prosociality is advantageous, with this 20 evaluation of circumstances hinging in part on prior expectations of others’ prosociality. In 21 15 studies, we add to evidence that elevation can reliably be elicited and mediates prosocial 22 contagion. Importantly, we confirm a novel prediction–generated by our adaptationist 23 account–that an idealistic attitude, which indexes others’ expected degree of prosociality, 24 moderates the relationship between exposure to prosocial cues and experiencing elevation. 25 We discuss how our findings inform both basic theorizing in the affective sciences and 26 translational efforts to engineer a more harmonious world, and we offer future research 27 directions to further test and extend our model. 28 Keywords: emotion, attitudes, prosociality, elevation, cooperation 29 Word count: 1.6 bazillion PREPRINT: ELEVATION, IDEALISM, AND PROSOCIAL CONTAGION 3 30 PREPRINT: Elevation, an emotion for prosocial contagion, is experienced more strongly by 31 those with greater expectations of the cooperativeness of others 32 Introduction 33 Increasing the basic scientific understanding of psychological mechanisms underlying 34 prosocial behavior is of theoretical importance across the social sciences, and has applied 35 significance for engineering cooperative institutions [1]. Many emotions appear to play a role 36 in prosocial behavior [2–6], among them elevation, the uplifting affect experienced upon 37 witnessing others’ morally praiseworthy actions [7]. 38 Here we present a novel adaptationist model wherein elevation functions to upregulate 39 prosocial behavior in situations that are especially favorable for cooperative investments. The 40 psychological mechanisms that regulate elevation must do so by interpreting when ambiguous 41 social cues suggest that the present situation is ripe for investing in prosociality, where such 42 interpretation is informed by prior social expectations. This leads to a novel empirical 43 prediction, that individual differences in elevation response to similar social cues should be a 44 function of differences in baseline expectations about the cooperativeness of others. 45 We then report 15 original empirical studies (total N = 8,118), the results of which 46 replicate and extend several previously-reported elevation findings, and, importantly, also 47 strongly support our novel prediction. Our open data set thus both adds confidence 48 regarding previous findings that informed our theoretical model and offers novel evidence for 49 a crucial feature of our model. 50 A brief review of scholarship on elevation 51 Drawing heavily on prior work, especially two recent review papers in the field of 52 positive psychology [8,9], but interpreting the empirical record through the lens of our model, 53 we characterize elevation using four key features useful for differentiating among emotions 54 [10,11]: (1) clusters of culturally-embedded folk affect terms used to describe the experience, PREPRINT: ELEVATION, IDEALISM, AND PROSOCIAL CONTAGION 4 55 (2) experienced physiological responses, (3) motivational/behavioral patterns, and (4) 56 eliciting conditions. 57 Lay English speakers have no precise term for elevation, but “lifted up,” “inspired,” 58 “moved,” “respect,” and “awe” are folk affect terms often used to describe the experience. 59 Somatic symptoms of elevation include warmth in the chest, chills or goosebumps, a lump in 60 the throat, and tears in the eyes. Elevation involves motivations to help others and be a 61 better person, motives that appear to cause actual cooperative behavior [12–15]. The 62 cooperative motives associated with elevation appear to be generalized, rather than directed 63 at a specific target, as is the case with gratitude [16]. Self-report measures of elevation vary 64 in their details, but typically involve Likert scale measures based on some or all of these first 65 three characteristics of elevation: folk terms, somatic sensations, and prosocial motives. 66 These three features are the basis of three corresponding subscales in the elevation measures 67 we describe below. (We will argue that a fourth category of items commonly used in 68 elevation scales, statements which capture general views of humanity, are better treated as 69 measuring an attitude rather than part of the emotion itself.) 70 Our interpretation is that elevation is elicited by exceptional prosocial behavior. 71 Prosocial behavior refers to one or more persons conferring a benefit on one or more other 72 persons, at some immediate cost to the actor(s), i.e., cooperation. “Exceptional” implies that 73 the witnessed prosociality is rare, extreme, spectacular, or in some other way violates the 74 expectations of the witness, i.e., the set of stimuli that elicit elevation is some region within a 75 continuum of prosocial behaviors from mundane to remarkable. Our perspective is somewhat 76 different from that of other researchers. Both of the recent review papers define “witnessing 77 moral beauty” as the eliciting condition of elevation, language that stems from Haidt’s [7] 78 formal introduction of the construct of elevation to the modern scientific community as being 79 an emotion elicited by “acts of human moral beauty or virtue,” a sketch which itself followed 80 from Thomas Jefferson’s [17] musings about strong emotional responses to reading fictional PREPRINT: ELEVATION, IDEALISM, AND PROSOCIAL CONTAGION 5 81 “acts of charity or gratitude” that “deeply impress with beauty,” such as great acts of 82 “fidelity” or “generosity.” Haidt elaborated that elicitors of elevation include “unexpected 83 acts of human goodness, kindness, and compassion,” and especially charitable behavior. 84 Clearly there is a great deal of overlap between the behavior sets marked by “exceptional 85 cooperation” and “moral beauty,” and the same may be said for the notion of “moral 86 heroism” [18]. Our interpretation of elevation’s elicitor set differs from the prevailing 87 interpretation in the field of positive psychology by emphasizing the flow of costs and 88 benefits between interacting parties rather than relying on moral and/or aesthetic judgments 89 of these interactions. It is not our present goal to attempt a full analysis of the 90 (in)compatibilities of these two models. Rather, we report and interpret supportive evidence 91 for a prediction about individual differences in elevation that was facilitated by our 92 theoretical linkage of elevation to theories regarding the evolution and maintenance of 93 cooperative behavior, as we elaborate below. 94 Elevation as part of an adaptive affective system for prosocial contagion 95 We can use the above sketch of the form of the elevation to infer its function; in the 96 language of evolutionary biology, we can use information about the structure of the 97 proximate mechanism to generate models of ultimate explanations for its existence. In turn, 98 ultimate models can be used to generate hypotheses used to guide further empirical 99 investigation of mechanisms [19,20]. Our general approach to modeling emotions as evolved 100 biological mechanisms builds from Gervais and Fessler’s [11] Attitude-Scenario-Emotion 101 framework, which we tailor to the current topic based on a functional analysis of the 102 cooperative inputs and outputs of elevation. The resulting model generates hypotheses about 103 the attitudes that are likely to regulate this emotion, yielding the testable prediction, 104 investigated in the empirical portion of this paper, that individual differences in elevation 105 experiences stem from individual’s prior expectations regarding the cooperativeness of other 106 people. PREPRINT: ELEVATION, IDEALISM, AND PROSOCIAL CONTAGION 6 107 General adaptationist model of affective systems. The 108 Attitude-Scenario-Emotion model [11] is a novel synthetic framework, developed with a focus 109 on emotions that regulate dyadic social relationships. To our knowledge, the work reported 110 here is the first extensive use of this framework in empirical investigation of a specific 111 emotion, and, as we later elaborate, the first extension of