Scientific evidence suggests that humans have a biological desire to help others, including strangers. Altruistic behavior towards strangers is uniquely human and observed at a very young age. Dr. Felix ken and Dr. Michael Tomasello Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have shown that children as young as 18 months want to help strangers. When their 18-month-old subjects saw a stranger throw a pencil on the floor, none of them picked it up. However, when the same subjects saw someone"accidentally" drop a pencil, nearly all the children picked it up in the first ten seconds. Says Dr. Warneken, "The results were astonishing because these children are so young. They still wear diapers and are barely able to use language, but they already show helping behavior." Because altruistic behavior. appears in ehildren so young, Dr. Warneken and other scientists hypothesize that the human brain is designed to be altruistic.
Mirror Neurons
By using brain scans, neuroscientists are making new discoveries about the biology of the human brain. The recent discovery of mirror neurons in humans leads to scientists' belief that the brain can influence altruistic behavior. Mirror neurons are ordinary brain cells located throughout the brain. They"light up" when a person is performing an action or observing someoneelse doing a similar action. Mirror neurons make us cry when we see someone else cry or smile when someone smiles at us. our mirror neurons actually feel what they feel. They cry and smile along with them.