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Prosocial Behaviour (Y2) - Coggle Diagram
Prosocial Behaviour (Y2)
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Personal, social and situational factors
I helped -
- Felt sorry for them - personal factor; empathy based altruism - motivated by emotional response to someone else's distress
- Problem was genuine, uncontrollable and clear - situational; nature of need - more likely to help if the problem is clear, unambigious, legitimate and uncontrollable
- Think highly of the person - situational; perception of the victim, where you are more likely to help if someone is similar to you, you have a relationship with them or find them attractive
- In a helpful mood - personal - more likely to help if you are in a good mood or need an external influence to make you feel good, as being less preoccupied with ourselves lets us be more altruistic
- I knew how to help - personal - competence; more likely to help if you perceive yourself to be competent or have the skills to help
I did not help - bystander apathy -
- Thought someone else would - social - diffusion of responsibility - believing someone else would help thus reducing feelings of responsibility
-> Social influence - look to others to model action - informational social influence and social support
- Did not want to look stupid - personal - audience inhibition - not helping due to fear of looking foolish or incompetent in front of others - fear of social blunders
- Don't know the person that well - situational - lack of relationship
- Did not think there was a real problem - situational - nature of need
- In a bad mood - personal - less likely to help
- Don't have the skills - personal - see yourself as incompetent
- Just did not care - personal - lack of a relationship to a person
- No one else seemed worried - situational - social influence; we are less likely to help if other onlookers appear unperturbed by the situation
Personal factors -
- Feelings of guilt - to avoid this drive you help the person
- Considering oneself to be helpful - makes you feel competent / ego boost
- Feeling control and tendency to take responsibility for others
- Feeling like a leader - leads to responsibility to help, feeling like you are veiwed as competent makes you more likely to help
- Gender - sexual arousal in male-female interactions - men more likely to help women
- Competence - the more equipped you feel to deal with a situation, the more likely you are to help
Situational factors -
- The number of bystanders
- Rural v city location - those from small towns more likely to help due to close knit relationship (Latane and Darley, 1970)
- Scrooge effect - mortality salience increases prosocial attitudes - more likely to help if we are in danger
-> Prosocial behaviour can be a collateral benefit of being reminded of life and death, as part of terror management theory - helping others helps reduce this feeling (Greenberg, Solomon and Pyszczynski, 1997)
The bystander effect -
- Kitty Genovese case - murder in which people witnessed the events but thought others would intervene or call police (Manning et al, 2007)
- Due to diffusion of responsibility - 38 people and big group
- Ambigious nature of need
- Audience inhbition - do not want to look stupid in front of neighbours
- Mood - tired / happened at night
- Perception of victim - victim blaming for being alone
- Competency - unsure how to help
- Relationship - did not know her
- Social influence - no social support to model behaviour
Bystander effect - if in a group, you will perceive others will be prosocial and everyone thinks this, leading to no action
Effect depends on the nature of the group - bystander effect reduced for connected groups, category memberships and ingroups
Effect depends on the relationship to the victim - bystander effect reduced for kinship
Effect depends on seriousness of situation - reduced in high risk situations - Fischer et al, 2005
Biological accounts
Evolutionary accounts - a biological or genetic predisposition to help others or be communicative
- Kin selection - survival of genes makes people prosocial
- Mutualism - self interest makes it better to cooperate
- Communicative gene - emotional signals + social bonds = prosocial behaviour
Evidence - helping behaviour in animals - more likely to help relatives and to help the young rather than the old in life or death situations
- But - more likely to help the sick and the poor, which could impact their survival, and so these accounts do not explain all behaviour
Reciprocal altruism -
- Exception to rule
- Helping as they may help you in the future
- Costs for the helper must be lower than the benefits for the recipient
- initial cost to be cashed in later
Social accounts
Social learning theory - helping is learned
- Direct -
-> Instructions - instructor must also practise what they preach
-> Reinforcement - reward for helping
- Indirect -
-> Modelling / vicarious learning - when watching media with prosocial lessions, children are more prosocial (Rosenkoetter, 1999)
-> Exposure to role models
Norms -
- Reciprocity norms - you paid, I'll pay next time
- Social responsibility - feeling like you should help those in need because you can
Attributions -
- Self attribution - internalising a helpful behaviour and used as a guide in future situations - thinking of oneself as a helpful person has greater longevity
- Victim attribution - judge whether the victim deserved their fate
-> Need to believe the world is just and fair (Just world hypothesis - Lerner and Miller, 1978)
-> helping depends on belief - victim is a special case and their need is temporary
Study - 2,500 people asked for charitable donation, more likely to help the family when the need was temporary and the money was only for that family
- Forgiveness to outgroups or ingroup members
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0899764020911203 - public recognition increases charitable donations amongst those with need for approval, but impsoing it decreases it in those without this - crowding out effect
- Optional public recognition balances this effect
- When it is imposed, donation likelihood increases, suggesting that donors potential concern about observers questioning their motives is reduced
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Cognitive models
Latane and Darley's model - Emergency -> attend to event -> interpret event as emergency -> assume responsibility (competency, bystanders) -> decide what to do - give help -> helps At all points in the model, the individual can decide not to help based on the decision at each stage
- Not very in dpeth - also a negative view, people will likely help if all of the first three stages are true
- Instinctive help is not accounted for - reflex to danger in your own environment or heuristics around helping (SLT)
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Emergency -> attend to event -> seen as emergency -> assume responsibility -> don't give help when deciding what to do
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