Is pro-social behaviour good for us?

  • May 9, 2018
Is pro-social behaviour good for us?

Robert Henderson speaks about what led him to do a PhD in moral development and pro-social behaviour.

I am interested in what influences people to behave positively, in why people think the way they do and what makes them change their minds.

Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson is interested in moral development and in what encourages us to behave in positive ways towards each other.

His PhD in Psychology begins this autumn. “I am interested in what influences people to behave positively, in why people think the way they do and what makes them change their minds,” he says.

He says his curiosity about how social norms are established is in part due to him growing up as an outsider.

As a foster child Robert, whose birth mother is Korean, shared foster homes with mainly African American and Hispanic children. At high school in a small Californian town he was one of only five Asian students. In the air force his politics were more liberal than many of his peers and at Yale his background was different to many of his fellow students.

Robert was born in Los Angeles. He doesn’t know his father and hasn’t seen his biological mother since he was very young. He was taken into foster care when he was two and spent five years in different foster homes in Los Angeles until he was adopted by a family from a small agricultural town in North California.

Although he had had a disruptive early childhood, Robert was a very curious child, who got good grades despite finding the structured environment of school challenging. His grades improved as his home life became more stable, but that changed again when his adoptive mother divorced his adoptive father. Her new partner was shot when Robert was 14 and had to undergo multiple operations which Robert says changed the dynamics at home. The couple invested their insurance settlement in property, but it was just before the 2008 recession when property was the worst investment and they started to haemorrhage money. They lost their home and the other properties they had bought. Robert’s mother and her partner moved to another city. Robert was finishing high school and so opted to move in with a friend.  

Air force

He knew his grades were not going to be good and he felt he was not ready to go to college so he opted to join the air force. “It was another way to find a path to success and I felt I could do something good in the process,” he says. Robert served as an electronic warfare technician in several countries, including Qatar, Kyrgyzstan and Germany. His role involved doing repairs on defence and radar systems and tracking devices. Over the eight years he was in the force, he rose up the ranks to the post of debrief supervisor where he liaised between pilots and technicians.

As his contract was coming to an end, Robert considered what he could do. He didn’t want to stay in the air force on a long-term basis so he investigated college courses for veterans and came across Yale Veterans’ Association. He spoke to the vice president over Skype and found out about a two-week summer programme to prepare veterans for college which taught skills such as how to write an academic essay. Robert says the course gave him the confidence to email Professor Paul Bloom about his desire to study psychology. He now works in the professor’s Mind and Development Lab.  

He had taken night courses while in the military which earned him some college credits and these helped to win him a place at Yale. He says there was some element of culture shock when he got there due to the big difference between his social background and that of some of the students. Robert knew he wanted to study Psychology and after the first semester he asked to work as a research assistant in Professor Bloom's Mind and Development Lab.

Moral obligation

The research projects he is working on for his senior thesis focus on proportionality and punishment – specifically, whether young children believe punishment should be tailored to the moral transgression. “I am curious about the idea of punishment with regard to moral violations – what the punishment should be and how severe it should be,” he says. Another project he is working on looks at people’s sense of moral obligation to strangers. For both projects he compares children and adults’ perceptions. For instance, his research has found that young children distinguish between proportionate and disproportionate punishment; they also have a different sense of moral obligation than adults.

While he has been at Yale, Robert has also done research at Stanford University’s Social Learning Lab, studying social cognition with a particular focus on the ability to infer the emotional states of others.

Robert contacted his Cambridge supervisor, Dr Simone Schnall, because he was interested in her work on the role of disgust in morality and she encouraged him to apply to the university to do his PhD. He begins in the autumn and will be based at St Catharine's College.

He feels the Gates Cambridge mission matches his own interests. At Yale he has been working at a tuition centre for disadvantaged children who are having trouble in school. “It has been a very rewarding experience. I see myself in these kids. A lot of them do not have good home lives. Many lack confidence. I understand where they are coming from. They do open up about their lives and I can see them improving,” he says.

He has also been a mentor for a veteran who overcame a disadvantaged upbringing and found his footing in the marines. He is now at Brown. “It feels good to help other people,” says Robert. “A lot of people helped me. It felt like an obligation originally, but then I recognised the fulfillment it gave me and those I was helping. Everyone wins.”

His research is in part inspired by that work. “I want to gather empirical data to explore whether pro-social behaviour is a win win. If so, I feel this would encourage more of it. From the research I've reviewed thus far, it seems money is not everything – it is relationships which are more important,” he says.

 
Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson

  • Alumni
  • United States
  • 2018 PhD Psychology
  • St Catharine's College

As an undergraduate studying Psychology at Yale University, I developed an interest in moral reasoning and decision making. At the Yale Mind and Development Lab, I conducted research on moral development, examining intuitions about moral obligation and punishment. I also performed research at Stanford University’s Social Learning Lab, studying social cognition with a particular focus on the ability to infer the emotional states of others. As a former foster youth and military veteran, others have helped me on my path. Today, I am a tutor for underprivileged children and mentor for veterans interested in education. As a Psychology student at Cambridge, I aim to investigate the psychological underpinnings of morality and prosocial behavior. Specifically, I am interested in what underlies generosity, and how to promote more of it. I hope to share useful findings with the public in order to increase happiness, strengthen social bonds, and promote kindness. I am honored to join the Gates Cambridge community, made up of scholars who are committed to improving the lives of others.

Previous Education

Community College of the Air Force
Yale University

Latest News

Research impact award for Gates Cambridge Scholar

A Gates Cambridge Scholar is one of two winners of the 2023 Sandra Dawson Research Impact Award for his work on the economics of climate change earlier this month. The annual award was established through a generous donation from Professor Dame Sandra Dawson, a former Director of Cambridge’s Judge Business School. Winners are chosen based […]

AI system self-organises to resemble brains of complex organisms

A team of Cambridge scientists, co-led by a Gates Cambridge Scholar, have shown that placing physical constraints on an artificially-intelligent system – in much the same way that the human brain has to develop and operate within physical and biological constraints – allows it to develop features of the brains of complex organisms in order […]

Scholar wins history of science & medicine essay prize

A Gates Cambridge Scholar has won a prestigious essay competition about the history of early science with a treatise on evidence of knowledge exchange between the Ming-Chinese and Iberian conventions in the 16th century. The essay competition was run by the Early Sciences Forum of the History of Science Society and the Early Science and Medicine journal […]

Addressing the complex roots of environmental crime

Simone Haysom [2009] says her MPhil at the University of Cambridge helped to change her life course. While she had been interested in climate change and human geography as an undergraduate, doing the MPhil in Environment, Society and Development at an international university as part of the Gates Cambridge cohort broadened her perspective and set […]