What is Prosocial Behaviour?
Prosocial behaviour: actions intended to benefit another.
Why may people engage in prosocial behaviour?
- Kin Selection
- Reciprocal Altruism
- Personal Distress (alleviate it) - Arousal Cost-Reward Model
- Social rewards
- Social responsibility norm
- Empathy
What is Kin selection?
- Preferential helping of genetic relatives to increase likelihood that genes held in common will survive
- e.g. People withstood more pain to gain money for a close relative than a distant
relative, friend, or charity
What is Reciprocal Altruism?
Helping others increases odds that they help you in return
- e.g. grooming in primates related to greater assistance in a fight.
- Monkeys that cooperatively gained food shared with each other and more
likely to help each other on subsequent tasks.
Arousal Cost-Reward Model?
Observers of a victim’s suffering will want to help in order to relieve their own personal distress
- Temporarily saddened individuals will use prosocial behaviours to enhance mood
- Most successful donation drives ones that elicit negative emotions in donors
- People more likely to help when arousal is high and when act of helping is not more unpleasant than distress itself
- E.g., Ps in a sad mood more likely to volunteer when costs were low and
benefits were high. - People engaging in prosocial behaviours experience enhanced positive
emotions
Social rewards of prosocial behaviour?
- Helping others for benefits like praise, positive attention, and tangible rewards
- Giving also done as a way to gain status and approval in some groups.
Social responsibility norm
- Norm that people should help those who need assistance
- Creates a sense of duty and obligation between people in society.
Empathy
- Identifying, feeling, and understanding what another person is experiencing
- Comprised of perspective taking and emphatic concern
Define Altruism, Egoism & The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
Proposition that when we empathise with the plight of another, we will want to help for purely altruistic reasons
- Altruism: Helping behaviour that is motivated by the desire to improve another’s welfare.
- Egoism: Helping behaviour that is motivated by the desire to increase one’s own welfare.
What was found between low empathy vs high empathy in helping someone who they would see/ not see again?
HIGH empathy condition: Equally likely to help regardless whether they would see the student again
LOW empathy condition: More likely to help when they would see the student again vs not
Self and Other focused motives
Self oriented volunteers remain active longer than other oriented motives.
- as they can endure the struggle (seeing sad patients for example) because they have a personal end goal
- Empathy can also have unintended negative side effects
- All prosocial behaviour may not solely depend on altruism, but not all may be motivated by egoism either.
Bystander effect
Effect where the presence of others inhibits helping
- Across studies, appears that 75% of people help when alone compared to about 53% when in presence of others.
- However, effect weaker in dangerous than non-dangerous situations.
- Effect also stronger in experimental studies, among female participants, and among strangers.
Why may people fail to act/help others?
- We may not act on good intentions at times because of distraction or time pressure
e.g. 63% of those with time stopped to help compared to 45% with just enough time, and 10% who were already late. - Pluralistic ignorance
- Diffusion of responsibility
Pluralistic ignorance
State in which people in a group mistakenly think that their own thoughts, feelings, or behaviours are different from others in the group
- E.g., 75% of lone participants left room to report smoke, compared to
only 38% in a room with 3 real participants and only 10% when present
with 2 passive actors. - Pluralistic ignorance can be prevented if people have insight into others’
initial expressions of concern. - E.g., 80% of Ps facing each other left to help worker outside compared to only 20% sitting back to back
- Diffusion of responsibility
Diffusion of responsibility
Belief that others will or should take responsibility for providing assistance to a person in need.
Five Steps to Helping?
- Emergency
- Notice something is wrong (can be impaired by distractions, time constaints)
- Interpret event as an emergency (can be impaired by ambiguity or pluralistic ignorance)
- Take responsibility for providing help (can be impaired by diffusion of responsibility)
- Decide how to help (can be impaired by lack of competence to help)
- Provide help (audience inhibition “ill look like a fool”)
Factors Influencing Helping Behaviour?
- Location
- Mood
- Culture
- Victim Characteristics
Location Influencing Helping Behaviour?
- Population size related to helping until a certain point.
- with smaller populations having higher rates of helping
- Person’s current context is what matters most in helping, not background (how they were raised).
This may occur because of:
* Stimulus overload in urban places.
* Desire to help similar others or ingroup members in rural places
* Diffusion of responsibility in urban places.
Mood Influencing Helping Behaviour?
Good mood effect: Good mood increases helping behaviour.
Effect may occur because good moods:
* Increase self focus and get us to act more in line with our values and ideals.
* Want to sustain good mood for longer.
* Make us look on the bright side of life and others.
- People are also more likely to help when feeling guilty.
Culture Influencing Helping Behaviour?
The effect of culture on helping mixed:
- Collectivists more likely to help ingroup members than individualists.
- Cultures that particularly value well being of others show higher rates of helping than others.
Influence of helping others => Victim Characteristics: Perceived Similarity
- Perceived similarity and shared identity influences helping behaviour
- E.g., jogger wearing shirt of favorite team 3 times more likely to receive help than wearing neutral shirt or outgroup team shirt
- People assign higher priority for life saving treatment to those who share their political views.
- Among people who saved Jews from Nazis, most reported close childhood associations with people of diverse groups.
Influence of helping others => Victim Characteristics: Attractiveness
- Physical attractiveness of target influences likelihood of helping
- E.g., male motorists were significantly more likely to stop their cars for a woman when bust size enhanced.
- People are also more likely to help attractive individuals anonymously (even though there’s no chance of seeing the person again)
e.g. Airport travelers significantly more likely to mail graduate school applications belonging to an attractive than unattractive individual.
Individual Differences in Helping (Altruistic personality?)
- Altruistic personality: Altruism is characterized by selflessness and concern for the well being of others
However, unreliable findings on its predictive validity
* In some situations, empathic concern and moral reasoning correlated with helping.
* Longitudinal research finds helpful acts toward others at age 4-5 correlated with altruistic personality scores 20 years later.
- However, altruism scores do not predict behaviour across all contexts
Gender Differences and Helping
- Gender differences in helping behaviour, but contextually influenced:
- Men tend to be more helpful than women in emergency situations
- However, women more likely to offer help in social support.
- No significant gender differences in helping in mundane forms (everyday things)
