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campusreview.com.au
The kindness
of strangers
The science behind being nice
to people we don’t know.
W
hat makes someone help a
stranger?
Many people are likely to
believe it’s an innate personality trait,
a sense of altruism that runs through
someone, something certain individuals
possess but others neither practise
nor understand.
Superbug
warning
UNSW researchers say whooping
cough is morphing into a superbug.
T
here are calls for a new whooping
cough vaccine in the next 5–10 years
to protect vulnerable individuals
from what experts are calling superbug
strains of the condition.
UNSW researchers believe whooping
cough bacteria are “becoming smarter at
But according to a new study led by
Dr Cyril Grueter from UWA’s School of
Human Sciences and involving researchers
from Edith Cowan University, people
from highly educated backgrounds with
well-paid jobs are more likely to help
strangers in need.
Titled ‘Educational Attainment is
Associated with Unconditional Helping
Behaviour’, the study was recently
published in the journal Evolutionary
Human Sciences and set out to investigate
links between individuals’ socioeconomic
status and “acts of kindness”.
“Previous research by us and others has
suggested that residents of high-SES areas
are more likely to feel concern for the
welfare of others,” Grueter said.
“What we’ve found is that a person’s
willingness to help a stranger depends on
their socioeconomic environment.
“But what exactly is it about
socioeconomic status that makes people
go out of their way to help a stranger?”
To measure individuals’ level of kindness to
strangers – or “pro-social behaviour” – study
co-author Grace Westlake dropped 600
envelopes across 20 suburbs in Perth, WA, and recorded how many were eventually
delivered.
The results showed that areas populated
with highly educated people in high-status
jobs had a “profound positive effect” on the
letters being delivered.
“The precise reason why altruism
flourishes in areas that are populated
with highly educated individuals working
in high-status jobs requires further
investigation,” Grueter said.
“But these results offer a fascinating
glimpse into community attitudes and may
also prove relevant for policy development
and intervention.”
Although further research is required
into the link between helping strangers
and high-SES neighbourhoods, the
authors contend that it might relate to
“cognitive ability, self-control and high levels
of socialisation”.
The authors suspect that having been
exposed to “norm-abiding models”
throughout their lives, more educated
people may be more inclined to the
“cultural norms of helping behaviour”,
which radiates a sense of altruism
throughout their neighbourhoods. ■
colonising and feeding off unwitting hosts –
whether they have been vaccinated or not”.
The current vaccine, which has been used
since 2000, targets three antigens in the
contagious respiratory disease, but as the
whooping cough epidemic between 2008
and 2012 showed, strains evolved that were
“able to evade vaccine-generated immunity”.
In 2011 alone, 40,000 cases of whooping
cough were diagnosed across the country.
In what’s being called a “world-first
discovery”, the UNSW researchers showed
that some strains of the disease are
adapting to survive in their host, regardless
of their immunisation status.
The research team also discovered new
antigens that could be targeted by vaccines
in the future.
These findings were recently published in
the journal, Vaccine.
Microbiologist Dr Laurence Luu and
Professor Ruiting Lan, who led the team
of researchers, said the resurgence of
whooping cough cases in Australia might
be related to the disease’s ability to adapt
to vaccines.
“We found the whooping cough strains
were evolving to improve their survival,
regardless of whether a person was vaccinated or not, by producing more
nutrient-binding and transport proteins, and
fewer immunogenic proteins which are not
targeted by the vaccine,” Luu said.
“This allows whooping cough bacteria to
more efficiently scavenge nutrients from
the host during infection, as well as to
evade the body’s natural immune system
because the bacteria are making fewer
proteins that our body recognises.
“Put simply, the bacteria that cause
whooping cough are becoming better
at hiding and better at feeding – they’re
morphing into a superbug.
“So, the bacteria might still colonise you
and survive without causing the disease –
you probably wouldn’t know you’ve been
infected with the whooping cough bacteria
because you don’t get the symptoms.”
Lan stressed that, although a new vaccine
would be welcome in the next 5–10 years,
the team’s findings did not make the current
vaccine obsolete.
“It is critical that people are vaccinated
to prevent the spread of whooping cough
– the current vaccine is still effective for
protecting against the disease – but new
vaccines need to be developed in the long
term,” he said. ■
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