Unit 4 - Chapter 11: Prosocial Behavior

Five Steps to Helping in an Emergency

1. Notice that something is happening. 2. Interpret the event as an emergency. - Pluralistic ignorance. 3. Take responsibility for providing help. 4. Knowing how to help. 5. Deciding to implement help.

Prosocial Behavior

Any act performed with the goal of benefiting another person. Sometimes this is motivated by altruism. Examples: Helping an individual in need; sharing personal resources; volunteering time, effort, and expertise; cooperating with others to achieve some common goals.

Outgroup

Any group with which an individual does not identify. There is a long history of discrimination and prejudice against ____ members, including those of other races, cultures, and genders, as well as people with different sexual orientations. People often go out of their way to help ____ members. - We tend to help ____ members when there is something in it for us, such as making us feel good about ourselves or making a good impression on others.

Altruism v Empathy Specific Punishments

Helping lets people avoid social and self punishments for not doing so. Do we help to increase another's welfare or to avoid self/other censure? - Manipulated justification for not helping and empathy.

Feel Bad Do Good Effect

Helping may allow us to reduce our own distress from seeing someone in need, or avoid feeling guilt. Sadness can also lead to an increase in helping because when people are sad, they are motivated to engage in activities that make them feel better. - Because helping others is rewarding, it can lift people out of their sadness. Feeling guilty also increases helping. - People often act on the idea that good deeds cancel out bad deeds. - When they have done something that has made them feel guilty, helping another person balances things out, reducing their guilty feelings.

Reciprocal Altruism

Helping others with the expectation that they will probably return the favor in the future. Why we help.

Altruism v Empathy Specific Rewards

Helping promises social and self-rewards for doing what is right. Do we help because we care about others or because it makes us feel good? - Manipulate anticipation of mood enhancement and empathy.

Gender and Prosocial Behavior

In Western cultures, the male sex role includes being chivalrous and heroic; females are expected to be nurturing and caring and to value close, long term relationships. Women are more likely than men to provide social support to their friends and to engage in volunteer work that involves helping others. Cross cultural evidence suggests the same pattern - more girls than boys reported doing volunteer work in their communities.

Altruism v Egoism

Nearly all alternatives to empathy-altruism hypothesis tested and not supported. - Rewards (feeling good) and costs (aversive arousal, self/other sanctions) don't account for helping on part of those experiencing empathy. Egoistic motivations exist, often drive responses to those in need. Under certain circumstances, data suggest motivation may be altruistic.

Residential Mobility

People who have lived for a long time in one place are more likely to engage in prosocial behaviors that help their community. Residing in one place leads to a greater attachment to the community, more interdependence with one's neighbors, and a greater concern with one's reputation in the community. Least helpful cities: LA, NY, and Patterson, NJ. Limitation to the Negative State Relief Model.

Feel Good Do Good Effect

People's tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood. When we feel happy we are more willing to help others. Why do we do this? - The desire to maintain positive mood. - See the "brighter side" of things. One instance where we help.

Religion and Prosocial Behavior

Religious people engage in more prosocial behavior. A very important feature of religion is that it binds people together and creates strong social bonds. - As a result, religious people are more likely to help than other people are, with an important qualification: if the person in need of help shares their religious beliefs. When it comes to helping strangers, religious people are no more helpful than nonreligious people. There is some evidence that religious beliefs increase hostilities toward outgroup members who don't share those beliefs.

Gender and Helping Others

Some personality characteristics are associated with greater helping: high empathy, collectivist orientation, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness. Gender: Depends on the type of helping. - Men: Dangerous situations. - Women: Safer situations and possibly longer term care.

Empathy

The ability to put oneself in the shoes of another person and to experience events and emotions (e.g., joy and sadness) the way that person experiences them. - Pure altruism is likely to come into play when we feel this for the person in need of help. People's motives are sometimes purely altruistic, in that their only goal is to help the other person, even if doing so involves some cost to them. Why we help.

Pluralistic Ignorance

The case in which people think that everyone else is interpreting a situation in a certain way, when in fact they are not.

Norm of Reciprocity

The expectation that helping others will increase the likelihood that they will help us in the future. The idea is that as humans were evolving, a group of completely selfish individuals, each living in their own cave, would have found it more difficult to survive than a group that had learned to cooperate. Some researchers suggest that the emotion of gratitude evolved in order to regulate reciprocity. So, if someone helps us, we feel gratitude, which motivates us to return the favor in the future.

Bystander Effect

The finding that the greater the number of bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely any one of them is to help. Limitation to the Negative State Relief Model.

Ingroup

The group with which an individual identifies as a member. We are more likely to feel empathy toward members of our ____ who are in need.

Negative State Relief Model

The proposal that prosocial behavior is motivated by the bystander's desire to reduce his or her own uncomfortable negative emotions or feelings. The proposition that people help others in order to counteract their own feelings of sadness. There are two limitations: 1. Where we live. 2. Who's around. One instance where we help.

Altruistic Personality

The qualities that cause an individual to help others in a wide variety of situations. Research shows that when it comes to predicting how helpful people actually are, personality is not the full story. - Other facts need to be considered as well, such as the situational pressures that are affecting people, their gender, the culture in which they grew up, how religious they are, and even their current mood.

Egoism

The tendency to see things in relation to oneself; self-centeredness. Example: Imagine that someone tells you that they volunteer at a soup kitchen once a month because they want to help the homeless. From the perspective of this, the person is actually volunteering because it makes them feel better about themselves, which makes their motivation primarily one of self-interest even though someone else is benefiting from their actions.

Urban Overload Hypothesis

The theory that people living in cities are constantly bombarded with stimulation and that they keep to themselves to avoid being overwhelmed by it. If you put urban dwellers in a calmer, less stimulating environment, they would be as likely as anyone else to reach out to others. Limitation to the Negative State Relief Model.

Altruism v Arousal Reduction

Witnessing distress is unpleasant; helping can reduce this aversive arousal. Do we help because we care about other's welfare or own discomfort? - Manipulate ease of escape. - Also manipulate empathy.

Altruism

The desire to help another person even if it involves a cost to the helper. This is helping purely out of the desire to benefit someone else, with no benefit (and often a cost) to oneself. Motivation where increasing welfare of another person is the ultimate goal. - Not egoism, where ultimate goal is to benefit oneself. Sometimes prosocial behavior is motivated by this. - Why we help. Example: For example, giving your lunch away is ____ because it helps someone who is hungry, but at a cost of being hungry yourself.

Kin Selection

The idea that behaviors that help a genetic relative are favored by natural selection. - Helping others based on genetic relatedness. People can increase the chances that their genes will be passed along not only by having their own children, but also by ensuring that their genetic relatives have children. Natural selection should favor altruistic acts directed toward genetic relatives. This is not limited to one gender or a particular culture. According to evolutionary theory, this may have become ingrained in human behavior, and as a result the genes of people who help their relatives are more likely to survive than the genes of people who don't. Helping is an instinctive reaction to promote the welfare of those genetically similar to use (evolutionary psychology). Why we help.

Empathy Altruism Hypothesis

The idea that when we feel empathy for a person, we will attempt to help that person for purely altruistic reasons, regardless of what we have to gain. - If you don't feel empathy, social exchange concerns come into play. If there is something to be gained, you will help someone. - If you will not profit from helping, you won't help someone. Feeling empathy for a person in need creates altruistic motivation to reduce their distress. - This motivation is not egoistic. How can we know someone's true motivation? - Create a situation where egoistic alternative can be met by helping or another, easier way. - If still help, suggests goal was to reduce distress of person in need (altruism). This theory says that this happens when we feel empathy. Motive underlying prosocial behavior.

Diffusion of Responsibility

The phenomenon where each bystander's sense of responsibility to help decreases as the number of witnesses increases. Because other people are present, no single bystander feels a strong personal responsibility to act. This is particularly likely to occur when people can't tell whether someone else has already intervened. In a chat room: - When a general request for help is made, a large group makes people feel that they don't have much responsibility to respond. - When addressed by name, people are more likely to feel a responsibility to help, even when many others are present.

Social Exchange Theory

The theory that human interactions are transactions that aim to maximize one's rewards and minimize one's costs. Rewards for helping. - Feeling good by helping to avoid feeling bad. Some social psychologists think that altruistic behavior can be based on self interest. The difference from evolutionary approaches is that this theory doesn't trace this desire back to our evolutionary roots, nor does it assume that the desire is genetically based. - These theorists assume that just as people in an economic marketplace try to maximize the ratio of their monetary profits to their monetary losses, people in their relationships with others try to maximize the ratio of social rewards to social costs. This theory argues that true altruism, in which people help even when doing so is costly to them, does not exist. People help when the benefits outweigh the costs. Motive underlying prosocial behavior. - Why we help. Example: Asking someone out on a date. If the person says yes, you have gained a reward and are likely to repeat the interaction by asking that person out again, or by asking someone else out. On the other hand, if you ask someone out on a date and they reply, "No way!" then you have received a punishment that will probably cause you to shy away from repeating this type of interaction with the same person in the future.