Social Psychology Chapter 14

Darley and Batson's Good Samaritan Study

* Asked theological studies students to give a talk to undergrads in another campus location and were either told they had plenty of time to get to the location, had to hustle a bit to be on time, or that they were already late and really needed to go fast to get there. *All participants passed a confederate who was slumped over/groaning/complaining of breathing troubles in a passageway *Those not in a hurry were 6x more likely to stop and help. Only 10% of those who were already late (high hurry condition) stopped to help. -the topic the guy was going to give a seminar on had no bearing on whether he helped or not

Study on Volunteerism

-423 married couples -assessed degree to which each partner offered help to other people respondents who volunteered were at lower risk for mortality 4 years later, especially those who volunteered more regularly and frequently. However, volunteering behavior was not always beneficially related to mortality risk: Those who volunteered for self-oriented reasons had a mortality risk similar to nonvolunteers. Those who volunteered for other- oriented reasons had a decreased mortality risk, even in adjusted models

Culture and Cooperation: Economists

-economics popular on campus *economists believe that people and society are best served if individuals are allowed to selfishly pursue their own ends *this thought encourages economists to act more competitively *prisoners dilemma 72% defected *more likely to free ride on contributions of fellow citizens

Audience Effects

-Bystander Intervention -Diffusion of Responsibility

Culture and Altruism: Socioeconomic Status

-Individuals with lower social class (less $) tend to donate more $ because less resources tends for lower SES people to be more attuned to others, better judge emotional displays, act prosocially, and build strong relationships that help them adapt to their more unpredictable/threatening environments. -When both lower and upper SES-ers are made to feel compassion with film clips, they both act prosocially, but lower SES-ers are more likely to do it with neutral and compassion-causing clips. -the dictator game-> lower class individuals gave away more of their points to strangers than did members of the upper class

Culture and Altruism: Urban and Rural Settings

-Rural vs. urban environments: -Strangers are significantly more likely to be helped in rural communities than in urban areas. (50,000 is the cut off point) -The amount of stimulation in modern urban environments is so great that you cannot attend to all of it. -Urban areas are more diverse and you're more likely to encounter someone similar to yourself in a rural environment. -There are likely to be more people around in urban areas. -current context more important than where you grew up (grew up in small town but now in the big city)

Evolution and Cooperation: Tit for Tat

-Tit-for-Tat strategy: a strategy in which the individual's first move is cooperative and thereafter the individual mimics the other person's behavior, whether cooperative or competitive. -5 Factors: *it is cooperative, thus it encourages mutually supportive action toward a shared goal. *Second it is not envious. *Third it is not exploitable, it is not blindly prosocial. *fourth, it forgives, it is willing to cooperate at the first cooperative action of its partner, even after long runs of defection and competition. *Finally, it is easy to read: should not take long for others to know that the tit for tat strategy is being played

Examples of Tit for Tat strategy

-WWI: British, French and German interactions peaceful from time to time -fly special flags, eat meals peacefully, long periods of confrontation, and fraternize

Empathic Concern and Volunteerism

-batson research *found that feelings of empathic concern and sympathy increase the likelihood that people will act altruistically, helping those who suffer-> determinant of prosocial behaviors

Situational Determinants of Cooperation

-cooperative or competitive outcomes in your relationships may, without your knowledge, depend on your behavior as on the behavior of the people you deal with -competitive people create more competitive interactions-> justifies their own behavior -competitive people, when paired off with cooperators made them more competitive -cooperators better at determining whether they were paired with competitive or cooperative person -reputation

Motives of Volunteerism

-desire for social rewards -desire to reduce personal distress -influenced by empathic concern

Social Psychologists measure social class in three ways:

-family wealth -educational level that you and your parents attain -prestige of your work and that of your parents

Reciprocity

-genetics help explain altruism, but what about helping those who are not our kin? -helping friends and total strangers -preliterate societies: individuals living in groups were able to survive when they cooperate with another -reciprocal altruism

Combating Pluralistic Ignorance

-less likely to happen if they see one another's initial reactions Study: -participants lef through construction filled hallway to a lab -visibility of participants varied among groups when finally in lab doing drawings -control condition: alone -2nd condition: two people together -3rd condition: facing each other -suddenly a loud crash and a workman cry out "my leg!" -when you can see other people's initial reaction more likely to help -90% of those alone helped -80% of those face to face helped -20% of those sitting back to back helped 1) make your need clear 2) select a specific person-> prevent people from concluding there is no emergency, and precent them from thinking that someone else will help

Construal Processes and Cooperation

-matter a lot in shaping interactions to be either more cooperative or competitive -prisoners dilemma set up *before starting participants subliminally primed with either competitive words or neutral words *exposure to hostile words affected participants actions-> 84% defected on majority of trials -calling the prisoners dilemma either wallstreet or community changed the way people played the game

Evolution and Altruism

-natural selection favors behaviors that increase the likelihood of survival and reproduction -altruism is costly-> affects natural selection -can include ultimate sacrifice -story of kids jumping into the whirlpool to save each other

Cooperation

-part of evolutionary heritage -vulnerability of offspring-> required cooperative child care -competitive relationships can become cooperative (and vice versa)

Mikulincer and Shaver Study on Friends and Altruism

-participants completed task-> judge whether ten strings of matters made up actual words -in the middle of the task-> presented name of an acquaintance, of a friend they were not close to, or to a person they felt strongly attached -then moved on to another "study" which they watched a confederate do a bunch of unpleasant things -confederate would at some point ask the participant to take over -those who were exposed to the strong relationship were more likely to take over -groups of strangers appear to inhibit altruistic responses to emergencies -friends evoke nobler tendencies

Victim Characteristics

-scream v. no scream (scream makes people help) -the greater the costs of helping the less likely to be helped-> blood v. no blood-> greater medical care (no blood=more help) -more enduring characteristics->more attractive women or women dressed in more feminine attire=more help *why? Fit gender stereotype of helpless woman, foot in the door possibility of romantic involvement -people are more likely to help those who are like them *same goes for species (monkeys will starve to avoid having their companion shocked)

Daniel Batson on Altruism

-several motives come in to play * two of these motives are selfish (social rewards, personal distress) *third is unselfish (empathic concern)

Eisenberg Study on Physiological Indicators of Empathy

-showed second graders, fifth graders, or college students a film about a mom and her children getting in an accident -measured to see who would give up their time to deliver homework to the kids while they recovered -empathic concern indicator of help as opposed to empathic distress

Construal Processes and Altruism

-when the victims distress less salient=less help -when people are less aware of the events that caused the distress=less help -situation vivid and dramatic=more help -a form of pluralistic ignorance-> when people are uncertain about what is happening and assume that nothing is wrong because no one else is responding or appears concerned (strong norms to maintain calm collected demeanor in public) -embarrassing to lose composure when there is no danger

Religion, Ethics, and Altruism

-world's religions emphasize compassion, altruism, and treating others, even strangers and adversaries, with kindness -golden rule: treat others as we would like to be treated -people primed by religious concepts were more than 4x as likely to treat a stranger as an equal by giving half of their money (in a study) to the stranger -also primed with civic responsibility and got the same outcome -emphasis on fairness and cooperation and equality, seen in religious and secular treatments of ethics, can do a great deal to elicit prosocial behavior

Darley and Latane Study

1. Set up: one kid talking about NYU, thinks there are other people in separate rooms. One of them has a "seizure" in the other room. They see if the actual person responds. 2. Results: when the person thinks it's just them and the person, they helped something like 75% of the time, when they thought it was them and a bunch of other people, only 53% of people helped. 3. Learned: diffusion of responsibility: the more people present, the less likely someone is to help someone else in need. they think someone else will help them.

The Prisoner's Dilemma

Another way of arguing for the social contract theory is the prisoner's dilemma (developed about 60 years ago). In the standard version of the dilemma: Players A and B receive benefits whose size depends on whether they independently decide to cooperate. Mutual cooperation leads to a relatively moderate benefit to both players, but if only one player cooperates, then the non-confessor gets no benefit and the confessor gets a large benefit -only two options: cooperate defect -can label it wall street or community-> changes the way they play the game

Batson Study on Differences in Empathy and Personal Distress

Batson's "shock" study- watch a confederate experience electrical shocks- told confederate that victim has similar values to you or different values from you- shown a tape of Elaine experiencing electric shocks- asks if you will switch places with Elaine. • Two escape conditions: easy one (leave), difficult (stay and watch). • Willing to volunteer to take the place of someone else receiving shock (could just leave) -those participants who mostly felt distress and could escape took few shocks -those participants who felt empathic concern volunteered to take more shocks, even when they could simply leave the study Especially when they took the other's perspective. Critique: -identified empathic participants by self-report -the experimenter knew how the participant acted so a social rewards account of this study cannot be ruled out

Culture and Cooperation

Cultural factors likewise influence the tendency to cooperate or compete. The more the members of a culture depended on one another to gather food and survive, the more they offered to a stranger as allocators in the ultimatum game. Interdependence increases our cooperation and generosity.

Physiological Indicators of Empathy

Eisenberg study: More Likely to Help: -eyebrows pulled inward and upward -concerned gaze -heart rate deceleration -opposite to the fight or flight response Less Likely to Help: -reported distress -pained wince on the face -heart rate acceleration **empathic concern illicit more help than empathic distress

Empathic concern

Identifying with another person—feeling and understanding what that person is experiencing—accompanied by the intention to help the person in need. -seeing the pain from their perspective -selfless altruism (AKA other-oriented altruism)

The Dictator Game

In the dictator game, the first player, "the proposer", determines an allocation (split) of some endowment (such as a cash prize). The second player, "the responder", simply receives the remainder of the endowment left by the proposer. The responder's role is entirely passive (the responder has no strategic input into the outcome of the game). As a result, the dictator game is not formally a proper game (as the term is used in game theory). To be a proper game, every player's outcome must depend on the actions of at least some others. Since the proposer's outcome depends only on his own actions, this situation is one of decision theory. Despite this formal point, the dictator game is used in the game theory literature as a degenerate game.

Volunteerism

Nonmonetary assistance an individual regularly provides to another person or group with no expectation of compensation -30% of the U.S. population volunteer -has many motives -good for your health-> increases longevity -high home value of altruism and compassion-> passed from parent to children (empathy, ethical values)

Reputation

The beliefs, evaluations, and impressions people hold about an individual within a social network -banter, gossip, joking important to group life -competitive/cooperative central to reputation -in prisoners dilemma game, if people told the person they are playing with is cooperative/competitive-> changes the way they play the game

Reciprocal Altruism

The tendency to help others with the expectation that they are likely to help us in return at some future time. -increases chances of survival and reproduction for both parties -form alliances -bats-> regurgitate blood to feed other bats who are hungry and who have helped them in the past -human universal -christmas card study: sent out christmas cards to total strangers-> got 20% back -important to social contract

Latane and Darley Study on Pluralistic Ignorance

They had subjects began to fill out questionnaires in a room to which they began to add smoke. In one condition the subject was alone. In another three naive subjects were in the room. In the final condition one naive subject and two confederates who purposely noticed and then ignored the smoke (even when the room became hazy from all the smoke). 75% of alone subjects calmly noticed the smoke and left the room to report it. But only 10% of the subjects with confederates reported it. Surprisingly, in the three naive bystander condition only 38% reported the smoke. Most subjects had similar initial reactions. Those that didn't report it all concluded that the smoke wasn't dangerous or was part of the experiment. No one attributed their inactivity to the presence of others in the room. Other studies have shown that togetherness reduces fear even when the danger isn't reduced. It may have been that people in groups were less afraid and thus less likely to act. Or people were inhibited to show fear in a group situation. However, from post-interviews it was clear that people didn't act because they concluded the situation wasn't a threatening situation.

Personal Distress

a motive for helping those in distress that may arise from a need to reduce our own distress -ex: 1-day-old infants cry more in response to other 1-day-old infants rather than the crying of an 11-month old -when we watch someone else experience pain, the pain regions of our brain are activated -we want to get rid of that pain feeling so we do things to help that other person

Diffusion of Responsibility

a reduction of a sense of urgency to help someone involved in an emergency or dangerous situation under the assumption that others who are also observing the situation will help -shown in the Darley Latane study done after Kitty Genovese murder

Social Rewards

benefits like praise, positive attention, tangible rewards, honors, and gratitude that may be gained from helping others -ex: group members will give greater social status and power to other group members who act altruistically -we reward peoples altruistic behavior with praise, attention, etc

Batson Study on Anonymous Altruism

divided participants into a high-empathy group and a low-empathy group. -They both had to listen to another student, Janet, who reported feeling lonely. -The study found that high-empathy group (told to imagine vividly how Janet felt) volunteered to spend more time with Janet, whether or not their help is anonymous, which makes the social reward lower. -It shows that if the person feels empathy, they will help without considering the cost and reward, and it complies with the empathy-altruism hypothesis -critical dependent was how much time the participant spent with Janet

Bystander Intervention

if you are a bystander to the situation do you intervene or not. the more witnesses there are during a incident the less likely someone will help because they feel that one of them is bound to call for help. (darley and latane 1968)

Kin Selection

the tendency for natural selection to favor behaviors that increase the chances of survival of genetic relatives. -evolutionary explanation for altruism -highly developed capacity to recognize kin-> helps us decide who to help and who to ignore -human mothers can recognize their new babies from photographs and smells of baby left on t-shirts (no evidence fathers can do this) -get more help from close kin than distant relatives -orbitofrontal cortex (area of brain related to prosocial emotion) activated when see pictures of their own babies but not to pictures of other equally cute babies

Situational Determinants of Altruism

time, audience effects, victim characteristics (screaming vs silent, blood vs no blood, women vs man, same race/ethnicity) (bystander intervention/diffusion of responsibility- the more people are around the less likely you are to help) IE: study where man has seizure over intercom and 85% help when its just them 2, 62% help when its three and only 31% when its six people= the presence of others prohibits helping behavior. VS friends help enhance chance of altrusitic behavior.

Altruism

unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness -prone to feelings of compassion that lead us to behave in ways that benefit others who are suffering, often at a cost to ourselves -many forces inhibit altruistic behavior: *self-preservation *fear of embarrassment -how do we know when to act altruistically?