Psych 252 Chpt 10

diffusion of responsibility

The belief that others will or should take the responsibility for providing assistance to a person in need.

why feeling good might not lead to doing good

-Costs of helping are high -Positive thoughts about other social activities that conflict with helping

can we encourage helping

-foster a sense of connection -->cognitive and emotional

Attributes of responsibility

-more likely to help those we feel shouldn't be held responsible for their situation eg. caregivers of those with lung cancer were less supportive if they believed the individual was responsible for their condition ( was a smoker)

5 steps to helping in emergency

1-notice 2-interpreting: overcome pluralistic ignorance 3- taking responsibility: overcome diffusion of responsibility 4- deciding to help 5- providing help: overcome audience inhibition

pluralistic ignorance

The state in which people in a group mistakenly think that their own individual thoughts, feelings, or behaviours are different from those of the others in the group.

social norms

A general rule of conduct reflecting standards of social approval and disapproval.

norm of social responsibility

A moral standard emphasizing that people should help those who need assistance. -creates a sense of duty and obli- gation, to which people respond by giving more help to those in greater need of it

prosocial behaviour

Actions intended to benefit others

attractiveness

Attractive people are more likely to be offered help and cooperation across a number of different settings, whether it be asking for directions on campus, playing a game that could be either competitive or cooperative, or requesting money in a health emergency

gender & helping

Help-seeking is less socially acceptable for men and is more threatening to their self-esteem -Women are more likely to help those they already know -Men are more likely to help strangers in emergency situation

altruistic

Motivated by the desire to improve another's welfare.

egoistic

Motivated by the desire to increase one's own welfare.

bad moods and helping

Negative Moods Make Us More Likely to Help Others: -If we take responsibility for what caused our bad mood -if we focus on other people -If we think about our personal values that promote helping Negative Moods Make Us Less Likely to Help Others: -If we blame others for our bad mood -If we become very self-focused -If we think about our personal values that do not promote helping

volunteering

Some of these motives are associated with empathy, such as perspective taking and empathic concern, whereas other motives are more egoistic, such as wanting to enhance one's résumé, relieve negative emotions, or conform to prosocial norms

audience inhibition

Reluctance to help for fear of making a bad impression on observers. -When people think they will be scorned by others for failing to help, the presence of an audience increases their helpful actions

good mood effect

The effect whereby a good mood increases helping behaviour. -Desire to maintain ones good mood -Positive expectations about helping -Positive thoughts and expectations about social activities

bystander effect

The effect whereby the presence of others inhibits helping.

group selection

The idea behind group selection is that groups with altruistic members may be more likely to thrive and avoid extinction than groups with only selfish individuals

empathy-altruism hypothesis

The proposition that empathic concern for a person in need produces an altruistic motive for helping. -According to the empathy-altruism hypothesis, taking the perspective of a person in need creates feelings of empathic concern, which produce the altruistic motive to reduce the other person's distress. When people do not take the other's perspective, they experience feelings of personal distress, which produce the egoistic motive to reduce their own discomfort

negative state relief model

The proposition that people help others in order to counteract their own feelings of sadness -Helping others may help one heal oneself.

arousal: cost-reward model

The proposition that people react to emergency situations by acting in the most cost-effective way to reduce the arousal of shock and alarm. -Emotionally, bystanders experience the shock and alarm of personal distress; this unpleasant state of arousal motivates them to do something to reduce it. What they do, however, depends on the "bystander calculus," their computation of the costs and rewards associated with helping.

threat-to-self-esteem model

The theory that reactions to receiving assistance depend on whether help is perceived as supportive or threatening.

similarity & ingroups

We are more likely to help others who are similar to us. All kinds of similarity—from dress to attitudes to nationality—increase our willingness to help, and signs of dissimilarity decrease it

empathy

Understanding or vicariously experiencing another individual's perspective and feeling sympathy and compassion for that individual.

moral principles

We help because we believe we "should" (religion, philosophy)

culture & help recieved

collectivists may be more likely to help ingroup members but less likely to help outgroup members -people are less likely to help if they think the person is responsible for his or her plight.

indirect reciprocity

described as "I help you and somebody else helps me"

evolutionary perspectives

emphasize the genetic connection of reciprocal, kin, and within-group helping.

reciprocal altruism

helping someone else can be in your best interests because it increases the likelihood that you will be helped in return -monkeys and babies show altruism

empathetic concern

involves other-oriented feelings, such as sympathy, compassion, and tenderness. -Two qualities that do predict helping behaviors are empathy and advanced moral reasoning.

self-evaluation maintenance model

people sometimes offer more help to a stranger than to a friend if the help is for something that can be threatening to the helper's ego. We may prefer that a stranger steal the spotlight than a friend whose success we'll be reminded of all too often.

kin selection

preferential helping of genetic relatives, which results in the greater likelihood that genes held in common will survive eg. Lemur -For higher-risk helping, in contrast, participants were more willing to help a sibling than a friend, with willingness to help a half- sibling coming in the middle.

implicit social support

support that comes from just thinking about close others but that does not involve actually seeking or receiving their help in coping with stressful events.

Economic well being

the more well off, the less help provided (internationally) -Notion of simpatico- concern for well being of others, which is an important element in Spanish and Latin American cultures -Kemmelmeier and colleagues found that people from the more individualistic states tended to exhibit greater charitable giving and volunteering than people from the more collectivistic states, particularly donations and volunteering that were not specific to one's ingroup affiliations.

perspective taking

using the power of imagination to try to see the world through someone else's eyes.

norm of equity

when people are in a situation in which they feel overbenefited (receiving more benefits than earned), they should help those who are underbenefited (receiving fewer benefits than earned).

personal distress

which involves self-oriented reactions to a person in need, such as feeling alarmed, troubled, or upset