The Caregiving Behavioral System
Shaver, Mikulincer, and Shemesh-Iron (2010) explain:
“When caregiving works properly, it benefits the person being cared for - by solving a problem, increasing the person’s sense of safety and security, or bolstering the person’s own coping abilities… Appropriate care also benefits the support provider, even though its primary goal is to benefit the other. It promotes an inner sense of what Erickson called generativity - a feeling that one is more than an isolated self and is able to contribute significantly to others’ welfare. This sense of generativity includes positive feelings about oneself as a person with admiralty moral qualities and the ability to perform good deeds; strong feelings of self-efficacy…; confidence in one’s social skills; and heightened feelings of love and connection with others.”1
Shaver, Mikulincer, and Shemesh-Iron (2010) describe characteristics of hyper- and hypo-activation of the caregiving system:
“As with the other behavioral systems, dysfunctions of the caregiving system can trigger one of two nonoptimal (secondary) caregiving strategies… Hyperactivated caregiving is intrusive, poorly timed, and effortful; it may be aimed at making oneself indispensable to a person or applauding oneself for being competent or admirable as a caregiver. These goals can be achieved by exaggerating appraisals of others’ needs, adapting a hypervigilant stance toward other people’s imagined needs or troubles, forcing others to accept one’s caregiving efforts, and focusing on others’ needs to the neglect of own’s own. On the other hand, strategies associated with caregiving-system deactivation involve insufficient empathy, withdrawal from caregiving, offering only half-hearted assistance, and insisiting on maintaining emotional distance when the oher person seeks care, consideration, closeness, and comforting…”2
Mikulincer and Shaver (2021) associate the Caregiving system with Panksepp’s CARE neural circuity:
“According to Bowlby, (1982), humans are born with a caregiving behavioral system that fosters empathy and compassion for others and care for them when they are in need… This caregiving system seems to be organized around what Panksepp (1998, 2011) called the CARE neural circuitry. This circuitry presumably emerged over the course of evolution because it increased humans’ inclusive fitness… by heightening the transmission of genes to future generations. Today, although people probably still care disproportionally for others with whom they are closely related, either psychologically or genetically, the caregiving system can be activated by anyone in need and is a key contributor to prosocial behavior...”3
Assessment of Caregiving System Indivudal Differences
The Caregiving Behavioral System Scale (CSS) is a self-report instrument used to assess hyper-activation and deactivation of the caregiving system.4
Examples of items in the CSS:
Hyper-activated caregiving system thought:
“I sometimes try to help others more than they actually want me to.”
Hypo-activated caregiving system thought:
“I don’t often feel an urge to help others”.
Shaver, P. R., Mikulincer, M. & Shemesh-Iron, M. (2010). A behavioral-systems perspective on prosocial behavior. In M. Mikulincer & P.R. Shaver (Eds.), Prosocial motives, emotions, and behavior: The better angels of our nature (pp. 73 – 91). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Ibid, 1. pp. 79 - 80.
Mikulincer, M. & Shaver, P.R. (2021). Attachment theory: a behavioral system approach for studying species-universal and individual-differences aspects of the social mind. In T.K. Shackelford (Ed.) The Sage Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (p. 15). Sage Publications.
Ibid, 1.