Chapter 14

when do people help

Biologically Driven Helping: Is Helping in Our Genes? Helping might have costs for the helper ('s genes), but for the (genes of the) group in general, helping behavior can be favorable. There are three ways in which helping others could benefit the survival of the helper's genes: Reciprocity: The helper will be helped back. Helping your own genes (kin) is helping yourself. Altruistic group members perpetuate the group's existence. Helping behavior in humans is a result of a naturally selected predisposition that is activated and influenced by cognitive and social processes. There are two motives for helping: our desires for mastery and concrete rewards, and connectedness with others. Helping for Mastery: The Personal Rewards and Costs of Helping Rewards and costs of helping According to Batson (1998) there are 11 rewards (e.g., gratitude) that can be gained, and 9 punishments (e.g., the painful aspect of a drowning person) that can be avoided by helping behavior. However, there are also costs of helping behavior, like physical danger. These costs depend on the helper's abilities to help. Men perceive themselves as better able to help than women do, which leads to more helping behavior by men than by women. Emotional rewards of helping Helping others gives us a good feeling. It helps to keep our good mood, but also lets us escape from a bad mood. For instance, feelings of guilt make people help more. The reason of this effect could be that helping distracts. Research activity: Helping Is helping pure egoism? The negative-state relief model of helping (Schaller & Cialdini, 1988) says that people help because of egoism. Egoistic motives lead us to help others in bad circumstances in order to reduce the distress we experience from watching the bad situation of the helpee. The negative-state relief model also explains why people walk away instead of helping: this is another way of reducing distress. However, not all negative emotions do increase helping. When negative emotions are self-focused, people become blind to the opportunity of helping. Only other-focused people help others more when they feel bad, a finding that contradicts the negative-state relief model and adds another motive for helping; the need for connectedness. Related website: An interesting website about the theories about prosocial behavior Helping for Connectedness: Empathy and Altruism The empathy-altruism model of Batson et al. (1981) suggests that people can experience two types of emotions when they see someone suffer: personal distress (alarm, anxiety, fear) that leads to egoistic helping, or empathic concern (sympathy, compassion, tenderness) that leads to altruistic behavior. Altruism is motivated by a desire to benefit others. As a result, altruistic people always help, even when they can escape the stressful situation very easily, as was shown in a famous experiment by Batson et al. As we have seen, the extent to which people empathize with the victim plays a key role in helping behavior. We empathize with the people we feel connected to more than we do with other people. In other words, connectedness facilitates helping. Case study: Mimicry promotes helping (Van Baaren, Holland, Kawakami, & Van Knippenberg, 2004) Research activity: Imitation and helping Helping for Connectedness: Social Identification and Cooperation We help people from our own group more than people from the out-group. This is especially the case in collectivistic cultures. Social dilemmas: Self-interest versus group interest In a social dilemma, people have to choose between self-interest and group interest: Each individual group member is better off not cooperating, but all group members are better off if they all cooperate (Dawes, 1980). There are two important types of social dilemma: Resource depletion dilemmas: If one group member uses a certain resource, there will be enough left for it to reproduce and replenish itself. If all group members use this resource, it will be depleted so that nobody can use it. Public goods dilemmas: The availability of a public good depends on the individual contribution of all group members. Related website: More on social dilemmas Behavior in social dilemmas In general, most people choose the selfish option: the choice for self-interest, especially when they see other group members make that choice. Structural solutions in social dilemmas To make people choose for the group interest, laws and rules are formulated that dictate this choice. However, there are some consequences of this imposed choice: An authority is needed to impose a choice, but who is this authority? Imposing choices leads to resistance. Resistance makes it necessary to have a monitoring agency that inspects and penalizes. However, choices are not always selfish, but the results of social dilemmas are a bit more differentiated: Women are more cooperative than men, and interdependent cultures are more cooperative than individualistic ones. Individuals who generally prefer to cooperate choose to do so in resource dilemmas. Solving social dilemmas: Social identification and cooperation What makes people forgo their personal interest for the interests of the group? One key factor is identification with the group. When individuals identify with the group, three changes usually take place: The greater good of the group becomes the top priority. Group members trust other group members to act cooperatively. Group norms favoring cooperation become salient guides for individual action. Other powerful cooperation-promoting factors are: Communication among group members Equality of opportunities and outcomes among group members Accessibility of group norms Linking individual efforts to the group good. Identification and altruism are very distinct mechanisms: Identification leads to cooperation, whereas altruism leads to favoring specific members, which is not good for the group as a whole. Group identification can also make our universal humanity salient, which might explain why we help others who are not members of our own group. So what does this mean?Evolutionary principles suggest that some forms of helping, such as reciprocal helping or helping kin, have been naturally selected because they increase survival. In humans, however, cognitive and social processes mediate such biologically driven helping. Help may be motivated by perceived rewards for the helper, or deterred by perceived costs or risks. These rewards and risks can be emotional: People sometimes help to alleviate their own distress at the victim's suffering, reflecting egoism. People are often motivated by a feeling of empathy to relieve another's suffering, reflecting altruism, because it is not motivated by even indirect or emotional rewards for the helper. In a social dilemma, rewards for each individual are in direct conflict with what is best for the group. However, people can be motivated by feelings of group connectedness to act for the good of the group. When group identification increases commitment to shared goals and norms, social dilemmas can be successfully resolved.

prosocial behavior in society

Help That Helps; Help That Hurts Help is experienced in a positive way when the help is aimed to relieve physical suffering, or when it creates a positive relationship between helper and helped, and this kind of help leads to positive feelings for both the helper (pride) and the helped (gratitude). Help is experienced in a negative way when the person being helped is not able to do something back for the helper, or when the person being helped feels less capable or competent. Fisher et al. (1982) distinguish between the self-supportive aspect of help, which leads to feelings of gratitude, and the self-threatening aspect of help, which leads to feelings of dislike. Men experience asking for help as threatening to their status, while women experience asking for help as an opportunity for positive relationships. Increasing Prosocial Behavior in Society Ways to make help more likely include: Reducing ambiguity: Making the need for help more clear. Increasing internal attributions for prosocial behavior: If the cause of helping is internal, the chance for subsequent prosocial behavior increases. Teaching norms that support prosocial behavior in school, and showing personal examples or models. Activating prosocial norms: By directing attention to (norms of) helping behavior, or by making people self-aware, which leads to more helping behavior. Infusing, not diffusing, responsibility: Direct your request for help to a specific person. Promoting identification: Connectedness leads to more helping behavior. So what does this mean?Receiving help can have negative as well as positive consequences, especially if recipients cannot reciprocate because of an unequal power relationship between helper and helped, or because receiving help makes them look and feel less competent. Helping in society can be increased by making needs clear, teaching and activating helping norms, fostering helpful self-concepts, focusing rather than diffusing responsibility, and promoting connectedness to engender empathy, altruism, and group identification

when do people help?

Is Help Needed and Deserved? Noticing need To become aware of the need for help, you should be able to notice it. Busy and noisy surroundings make this noticing more difficult. A happy mood leads to a more social perspective, so that the need for help is noticed more easily. Audience inhibition: To avoid appearing foolish, we avoid helping behavior in front of an audience. The unresponsiveness of others influences our helping behavior. If others fail to react, we are not likely to help. Judging deservingness There are various norms that dictate the deservingness of your help: Norm of social responsibility: Those who are able to take care of themselves have a duty and obligation to assist those who cannot. Helping others who have less than we have. Norms in close relationships or cohesive groups. Controllability: If someone is in need due to an uncontrollable cause, we are more motivated to help. Should I Help? Related website: Read about the story of Kitty Genovese Is helping up to me? Diffusion of responsibility The more other people there are to help, the less responsible we feel to help, and the smaller the chance that we actually help. Related website: More about diffusion of responsibility Case study: The larger the number of other people that are present, the less responsible for helping every individual feels: Diffusion of responsibility (Darley & Latané, 1968) When norms make helping appropriate People who hold leadership responsibility, or are the ones who should help, serve as a model or example, implicitly defining the norm for helping behavior. Mentioning the (amount of) help of other people facilitates people's prosocial behavior. Strong norms of concern for others, taught by parents or religion, lead to more prosocial behavior. When norms make helping inappropriate There are norms that prescribe not to help: Norm of family privacy: You don't intervene in a familiar/marital problem. The wife could feel embarrassed and the husband could become aggressive towards the helper. Norm of "mind your own business." So what does this mean?To be able to help, you should notice the need for help. After noticing, you have to decide whether the potential helpee deserves your help. The decision to help depends on the presence and actions of others: The more others there are, the less likely you are to help. Social and personal norms also play a role in helping. Another factor in helping is the (in)appropriateness of your help: You don't interfere in marital problems.

prosocial behavior chapter 14

Prosocial behavior can take different forms: Altruism is helping motivated by the desire to benefit others for their own sake, while helping driven by personal rewards to the helper is termed egoism. Offering help is crucially dependent on people's perception of someone as both needing and deserving help. Whether people really help depends on the behavior of others, social norms, and own standards. Help may be motivated by perceived rewards for the helper, or deterred by perceived costs or risks. These rewards and risks can be emotional: People sometimes help to alleviate their own distress at the victim's suffering, reflecting egoism. People are often motivated by a feeling of empathy to relieve another's suffering, reflecting altruism. In a social dilemma, rewards for each individual are in direct conflict with what is best for the group. Group identification promotes cooperative behavior. When helping is a considered decision, it can result in a long-term commitment. Personality factors related to prosocial behavior include differences in empathy and in self-efficacy. Receiving help can have positive, but also negative, consequences, especially if recipients cannot reciprocate, or because receiving help makes you look and feel less competent. Helping in society can be increased by making needs clear, teaching and activating helping norms, fostering helpful self-concepts, focusing rather than diffusing responsibility, and promoting connectedness to engender empathy, altruism, and group identification. In this chapterChapter 14 introduction When do people help? Why do people help? Helping for mastery and connectedness Role of superficial or systematic processing in helping and cooperation Prosocial behavior in society Chapter overview (PDF) Fill-in-the-blanks Multiple-choice questions

processing superf or systematic

The Impact of Processing Spontaneous helping, superficial processing Strong emotions lead to quick and impulsive reactions. When arousal is high and time for reflections is limited, people act on their most accessible motives and norms. Superficial processing leads to behavior that is driven by the most readily accessible mental representations. Priming manipulations can therefore influence this behavior by making representations more accessible. Planned helping, systematic processing Decisions based on extensive thought produce long-lasting commitments that are not easily changed. Thinking thoroughly about helping and repeated involvement in helping behavior reinforce that behavior. Processes of self-perception, self-efficacy, and positive health benefits also strengthen the prosocial behavior. There are six motives for helping: expressing personal values related to humanitarian concern for others; gaining understanding, new knowledge, and skills; socializing with friends and earning approval; obtaining career benefits; helping solve personal problems; and enhancing self-esteem and personal growth. Volunteering in the AIDS epidemic There are a lot of different reasons to become an AIDS volunteer. However, all volunteers' decisions to do the work are the result of lengthy consideration. Remarkably, research found that volunteers who expressed the more selfish motivations were more likely to stick with their service. Helping in organizations Organizational citizenship behaviors, helping with tasks that go beyond the formal job description, arise from the motivation to help the organization, not from the motivation to look good. Personality Differences in Helping Research by Piliavin et al. (1981) showed the importance of situational factors in helping behavior, rather than personality factors. However, other research showed that there are two important personality factors that play a role (the higher people score on these factors, the more likely they are to help): Empathy or the concern for others' welfare Self-efficacy or the confidence that your actions are successful. Related website: More on empathy The tendency to cooperate in social dilemmas is related to helping behavior, which suggests that these two forms of prosocial behavior have common motivational roots. So what does this mean?When desires and norms conflict, various factors may be considered superficially or thought through extensively before a decision about helping is made. Emotions can play a role in this process, because strong emotion disrupts extensive processing. When helping is a considered decision, though, it can result in a long-term commitment. Personality factors related to helping and cooperation include differences in empathy and concern for others' welfare, as well as in self-efficacy or the confidence that one's actions will be effective.