Final: Prosocial Behavior

Question 1

Prosocial Behavior

Answer 1

-Helping behavior regardless of person’s motives

Question 2

Altruism

Answer 2

• Helping behavior without the receipt of benefits

- Very hard to find this behavior

Question 3

When will people help?

Answer 3

• In the presence of others (bystander)
• Due to environmental or situational factors
• Depending on characteristics of the helper
• Depending on characteristics of the recipient
• Due to time pressures

Question 4

Bystander Effect (presence of others)

Answer 4

• Smoke fills up the room where participants are
• If alone, 50% said something about the fire in 2 mins
• If with others, only 12% said something in 2 mins
• If there’s a lot of people around, less likely to help
  a. Informational Influence (others aren’t helping so maybe it’s not necessary to do/say anything)
  b. Personal Cost (risk of being wrong about situation = embarrassing)

Question 5

Environmental/Situational Conditions

Answer 5

• Weather
  a. warm = more likely to help
  b. cold = less likely to help
• Urban vs. Rural
  a. “Urban overload” hypothesis = people in urban areas are exposed to many stimuli so it’s hard to process them all and focus on one
  b. more likely to help if in rural area than urban area
• Noise
  a. more noise = more likely to help

Question 6

Characteristics of the Helper

Answer 6

• Not a lot of personality factors that relate to helping (little consistency)
• Situational factors are more important
• Gender
  a. doesn’t matter
  b. changes by the situation
  c. related to empathy
• Religion = more likely to help people who share the same values
• Culture = everyone helps ingroup (similar) > outgroup
• Good Mood
  a. increases helping but is short-lived
  b. 84% of people who found a dime helped the confederate and only 4% of people who didn’t find a dime helped the confederate

Why does good mood increase help?

• more positive view of the world/others
• prolongs positive mood if we help
• increases self-attention which leads to behaving according to values
• Guilt = increases helping
• Bad Mood
  a. depends upon the nature of the mood
  b. negative state relief hypothesis = we have an innate drive to reduce negative moods by helping others
  c. doesn’t work with kids because helping isn’t rewarding yet

Question 7

Characteristics of the Recipient

Answer 7

• Help those we like (physically attractive, similar, etc.)
• Help those who deserve our help (depends on our attribution for others’ need of help)
  a. internal = control = no help
  b. external = no control = help
• Gender (more likely to help women than men)

Question 8

Time Pressures

Answer 8

• Participants were on their way to tell the Good Samaritan story to people
• Half were told to hurry, half weren’t
• On the way was a man slumped in a doorway
  a. hurry = only 10% helped
  b. not in hurry = 63% helped
• Time pressure leads to less noticing of events
• Cost is time

Question 9

Theories of Altruism

Answer 9

• Evolutionary Theory
• Social Norms
• Social Learning Theory
• Social Exchange Theory
• Empathy/Altruism Hypothesis

Question 10

Evolutionary Theory

Answer 10

• Explains social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over times (natural selection & maximizing reproduction)
• Helping others contributes to survival of genes
• Help kids more than parents
• Hypothesis: we help those who are most genetically related to us
• Critique: can’t explain why we help strangers

Question 11

Social Norms

Answer 11

• Societies evolved norms to overcome bias toward self-interest because adaptive for society
• Norm of social responsibility: help others who depend on us and this depends on social roles
• Norm of reciprocity: help those who help us

Question 12

Social Learning Theory

Answer 12

• Modeling: observe others helping and then end up helping
• Reinforcement: compliments as rewards, rewards afterwards give no motivation to help
• Concerned with overjustification effect: needing a reward in order to help (not intrinsic)

Question 13

Social Exchange Theory

Answer 13

• Behavior is aimed at maximizing rewards and minimizing costs
• Self-interest is key but not because of genes like evolutionary theory
• challenges the view that altruism exists

Question 14

Empathy/Altruism Hypothesis

Answer 14

• Altruism occurs when we empathize with another
• If empathizing, we don’t consider benefits and costs
• If not empathizing, we consider benefits & costs

Question 15

Promoting Altruism

Answer 15

• Increase feeling of personal responsibility
• Increase self-awareness
• Increase guilt
• Help attribute altruism to intrinsic rather than extrinsic
• Stop giving rewards
• Teach about bystander effect***
• Increase good mood

Question 16

Receiving Help

Answer 16

-We’re not always happy to receive help
Why?
-Psychological reactance: threatens independence
-Exchange theory: creates feeling of indebtedness (norm of reciprocity)
-Attribution theory: may threaten self-esteem, means that we need help
a. external attribute = accept help
b. internal attribute = don’t accept help