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Helping: Pro-Social Behaviour and Altruism - Coggle Diagram
Helping: Pro-Social
Behaviour and Altruism
Why Do We Help?
contrary to the law of effect: the idea that we generally act according to reward and punishment
how to explain altruism
psychologists need to explain why and when altruism exists, and this explanation should be parsimonious and generalisable.
selfish gene/kin selection view:
Revision of Darwinian theory > old view is survival of the fittest organism, new view is survival of the fittest gene. Genes (not organisms) are the unit of analysis.
R = degree of genetic relatedness > now well related two organisms might be.
C = cost to the altruist in terms of future reproductive success.
B = benefit to the recipient.
Genes for altruistic behaviour will thrive so long as C < BxR
Cost-benefit ranges from 0-1. 0 bad and 1 good.
Not really meant to remember exact math, but it's a good example to show how evolutionary theories think about altruism.
We’re predisposed to help others who share our genes; Shown in observational research after natural disasters we would be most likely to help family first, then friends and neighbours, and then strangers.
Burnstein et al 1994:
Predicted that people would be more likely to help family over non-family > help would be proportional to relatedness, and that you would help young people over old people.
Asked people about life-and-death situations and found that people said they would be more likely to help their relatives than non-relatives, that they’d help siblings more likely than cousins, and that they’d be more likely to help an old person than a young person.
Evaluation of the Evolutionary approach:
Although theorists can tell a story about evolutionary reasons for helping, we cannot know for sure whether helping has an evolutionary basis.
Retrospective explanations; no hard evidence.
Reactance Theory
A good example of a situation or set of conditions under which reciprocity may not occur.
Behm & Cole:
the effect of favour might reduce your freedom to act in the way you want to, and eliminate the reciprocity effect.
Told the subjects that they were to try to make first impressions of another subject, and they manipulated the importance of the first impressions by telling people that the study was a class project for another student (low importance) or that it was being conducted by a doctor and was funded by the National Science Foundation, and that it was about first impressions and success in life (high importance).
Confederate either did or didn’t give the subject a soft drink before the first impression ratings.
Under important situations where you’ve perceived the reciprocity norm, the person giving the soft drink might threaten your freedom to make a good first impression, and it might backfire and make you not very helpful.
definitions
Prosocial behaviour
: is any act performed with the goal of benefitting another person.
Altruism:
the desire to help another person even if it involves a cost to the helper.
empathy and the altruism selfless motive for helping
Dan Batson: empathy altruism hypothesis.
When we feel empathy for another person, we will attempt to help purely for altruistic reasons.
When he says empathy, he means a feeling of sympathy > has philosophical reasons for using the word empathy, but he means sympathy, compassion, etc.
Alternative to egoistic: helping is an instrumental goal on the way to an ultimate goal of self-benefit.
Empathy manipulation: Batson et al
Low empathy condition: listening to a radio broadcast and the instructions were to be as objective as possible about what is happening to the person in the situation and how it affected their life. Try to remain detached. Made the person responsible for their shit situation.
High empathy condition: imagine how the person in the broadcast feels, and how it impacted their life. Try to feel the full impacts of what happened and how they feel as a result. Made the person not responsible for their shit situation.
Empathy increases the positivity of attitudes
Alternative explanations:
Aversive arousal reduction:
Help to get rid of unpleasant empathetic distress that co-occurs with empathy.
Empathy-specific punishment:
Learned we have an additional obligation (guilt) to help with more empathy.
Empathy-specific reward:
Feeling empathy causes sadness and motivates person to relieve sadness.
Gender and
Helping
Women are perceived as kinder, more soft-hearted, and more helpful.
Women are more likely to help those they already know.
Take care of a neighbour or elderly relative (long-term, close relationships).
Men are more likely to help strangers in emergency situations
Help with flat tyres or in dangerous situations (short-term, strangers).
Male helpers are more likely to help women than men
Female helpers are equally likely to help men and women.
Women not only receive more help from men, but they also seek more help.
Cultural Differences in
Prosocial Behaviour
People across cultures are more likely to help members of their in-group than members of the out-group.
People from collectivist cultures are more prone to help in-group members and less likely to help out-group members than people from individualist cultures.
Effects of Mood on
Prosocial Behaviour
People in a good mood are more likely to help compared to those in a neutral mood.
Good moods can increase help for three reasons:
Good moods make us interpret events in a sympathetic way
Helping another prolongs good mood.
Good moods increase self-attention and this in turn leads us to be more likely to behave according to our values and beliefs (and most of us value helping).
May trigger positive thoughts about others.
Negative-state relief hypothesis: we help to alleviate our own sadness and distress; it exemplifies a social exchange approach.
A variety of studies show that, when people feel sad, they are more likely to help (eg donate money to a charity).
Young children are less likely to help when in a sad mood.
They have not yet learned that helping another can produce good feelings.
May improve temporary sadness (but if we blame others for our bad mood, sadness is not associated with more helping).
Situational Determinants
of Prosocial Behaviour
Environments: rural vs urban
People in rural areas are more helpful
This effect holds over a wide variety of helping situations and in many countries.
One explanation is that people from rural settings are brought up to be more neighbourly and more likely to trust strangers.
People in cities are overwhelmed with too much stimulation > if you put them in a calmer environment they might be more likely to help.
Location (rural or urban) is more important than whether the person grew up in a small or large town.
How Helping Can
Be Increased
People do not always want to be helped
If being helped means that they appear incompetent, they will often suffer in silence, even at the cost of failing at the task.
The goal of helping is to make it supportive, highlighting the concern for the recipient.
Administering aid may threaten the other person’s self-esteem.
Increasing the likelihood that bystanders will intervene:
Simply being aware of the barriers to helping can increase people’s chances of overcoming them.