Chapter 14: Altruism and Cooperation

altruism

-prosocial behavior that benefits others without regard to consequences for oneself

#2. is the situation interpreted as an emergency situation?: "The smoke filled room study"

-you are filling out forms for a study, and white smoke starts coming out from underneath one of the doors -dependent variable: percentage of people who notify the experimenter that something was going on -alone: 75% of people tell the experimenter -group of 3: one real subject and 2 confederates trained to do nothing -a special case of the conformity effect: they aren't doing anything, so we assume it's not an emergency -10%

boundary conditions

1. salience of the event as a true emergency 2. if they are in a situation where it is their responsibility (ex. wanting to go to an authority figure) 3. availability of resources, meaning if a person is time or attention constrained 4. in-group status (the similarity of the person) -ex. being more concerned if they knew the person 5. personality: individual differences in empathy is one of the most highly-studied ideas

urban vs. rural class explanation of two different hypotheses

1. socialization hypothesis -its about how people are raised -in this particular case, they were able to rule out the diffusion of responsibility 2. urban overload hypothesis -population density matters more -you are cognitively overloaded with too much info -test of the hypothesis: it's about your current environment, not where you were raised -2by2 chart of where you are raised and where you are now

the prisoner's dilemma

A situation involving payoffs to two people, who must decide whether to cooperate or defect -in the end, trust and cooperation lead to higher joint payoffs than mistrust and defection -the "best" choice for each person (defection) is a terrible choice from the standpoint of the two people in combination -participants are involved in just one round with someone they don't know or even see -as simple as the prisoner's dilemma seems, it nevertheless captures the essential features of many significant situations in life: ex. India and Pakistan pay dearly for a military balance that was attainable for less expense

social reward

-a benefit, such as praise, positive attention, something tangible, or gratitude, that may be gained from helping others and thus serves as a motive for altruistic behavior -social rewards can be so powerful that they can trigger arms races of altruism, referred to as competitive altruism: people will try to outdo one another in their altruistic acts, all in the service of being the most highly esteemed/greatest social status (group members will give greater social status to other members who act altruistically, such as giving away the most food)

Nash equilibrium

-a set of strategies, one for each player, such that no player has incentive to change strategy given what the other players are doing -it is a law that no one would want to break even in the absence of an effective police force -in most cases, following stoplights in a Nash equilibrium -some scholars have noted that the Nash equilibrium-and game theory in general-provides a useful contrast to a more simple strategy in which one simply goes for what is best for the self -Nash equilibrium says this is not true b/c we have to think about other people's actions

tit-for-tat strategy

-a strategy in the prisoner's dilemma game in which the player's first move is cooperative; thereafter, the player mimics the other person's behavior -start out cooperatively, and reciprocate your partner's previous move -five factors make it an especially compelling strategy: 1. it's cooperative, and thus encourages mutually supportive action toward a shared goal 2. it's not envious; a partner using this strategy can do extremely well without resorting to competitive behavior 3. it's not exploitable, meaning it's not easily taken advantage of (if you defect on the tit-for-tat, it will defect on you) 4. it's forgiving; that is, it's willing to cooperate at the first cooperation action of the partner, even after long runs of defection and competition 5. it's easy to read: it shouldn't take too long for others to know that the tit-for-tat strategy is being played

the "selfish gene" view

-according to Richard Dawkins (and others), apparent acts of self-sacrifice can be seen as ultimately selfish from the standpoint of your genes -it's not as simple as survival fo the fittest: not the fittest individual, it is survival of the fittest gene -famous metaphor: referred to humans as these awkward robots with genes that tell us what to do -the unit of analysis is that genes want to protect themselves -this puts the apparent "self-sacrificing" behavior of the father running into a burning building in a new light: he is selfish from the standpoint of the genes

kin selection

-an evolutionary strategy that favors behaviors that increase the chance of survival of genetic relatives, even at a cost to one's own survival and reproduction -from the perspective of kin selection, people should be more likely to help those who share more of their genes-for example, by helping siblings more than first cousins and so on -by helping relatives survive, people help their own genes pass to future generations

game

-any interaction b/w multiple people in which each person's payoff is affected by the decisions made by others -non-cooperative game theory covers interactions where there will be winners and losers, like the prisoners dilemma

situational determinants of cooperation: likelihood of future interaction and nonverbal cues

-as the likelihood of interacting with someone in the future rises, we become more cooperative -we study others' nonverbal behavior in search of cues that signal that that individual is likely to cooperate; and once these cues are detected, they trigger cooperation on our part -ex. in situations like the prisoner's dilemma game, people are more likely to cooperate with another person who smiles in a friendly fashion, laughs warmly, has a trustworthy-looking face, listens to others attentively, and has a physical appearance that resembles their own appearance

volunteerism

-assistance a person regularly provides to another person or group with no expectation of compensation -close to 30% of adults volunteer -as with altruism, a desire for social rewards, a desire to reduce personal distress, and feelings of empathic concern all predict the likelihood that an individual will volunteer -studies suggest volunteerism is good for your health: people who give more than others had longer longevity -recipients of help were no less likely to die than people who didn't receive help, suggesting it may be better to give than to receive -empathic concern can be cultivated by your environment: it is a powerful force for good in human societies and can be passed from parents parents to children

stages 2 vs. 3 *

-both relevant to the presence of others, but the reason of why the presence of others matters is different -step 2: the presence of others helps define the situation: people doing nothing serves as a cue that nothing is wrong -step 2: more about guessing other people will be helping: presence of others leads to diffusion of responsibility

combating pluralistic ignorance

-bystanders are less likely to fall prey to pluralistic ignorance when they can clearly see one another's initial expressions of concerns (and before these initial expressions are covered up out of the desire to seem less alarmed -to improve your chances of getting help, make your need clear and select a specific person to help you (which prevents people from concluding there is no real emergency thus eliminating the effect of pluralistic ignorance and preventing them from thinking someone else will help thus overcoming diffusion of responsibility

is cooperation contagious?

-cooperative acts inspire others to be more cooperative in ensuing situations -the popular movie Pay it Forward focuses on the theme of how one person's generosity leads to other acts of generosity

Lambert's study

-participants only read about one person, but you manipulate three things about the person they're reading about: biological sex, gender roles/hobbies, sexual orientation -towards the end of the survey, we also measure generalized prejudice towards gays and lesbians -gender "violators" were more likely to be perceived as gay than non-violators (even if we told them that they were dating someone of the opposite sex) -among participants holding general anti-gay prejudice, these inferences led them to dislike the target -gender role violation leads to inferences of gay/homosexual orientation and negativity, but only to the extent that people had pre-existing anti-gay prejudice -male subjects seem to be somewhat more rigid than female violators: they tend to dislike double role violators

Empathy vs Personal Distress (Batson's study)

-created a study to test whether empathic concern alone can motivate altruistic action by manipulating egoistic motives to make them less likely: there were no social rewards for helping and participants would have the opportunity to reduce personal distress by leaving the experiment -two conditions: easy-escape in which participants could leave and difficult-to-escape in which they couldn't -they watched a confederate receive shocks after making mistakes and were then divided into those who were feeling egoistic distress and those feeling empathic concern (based on their self report) -participants who mostly felt egoistic distress and could escape the situation took few shocks on behalf of the confederate -those participants who felt empathic concern, however, volunteered to take more shocks, even when they could leave the study -limitations: there could have been a selection bias, meaning that the high-empathy participants might just be more helpful in general for reasons other than a selfless response to the confederate in need -limitation: the experimenter would know how the participant acted, so aa social rewards account of this study can't ben ruled out

critical thinking about generalizing to the real world

-critics have concerns about the external validity of economic games 1. people are dealing with play money and not actual money they've earned, which raises the question of whether we would observe similar patterns of cooperation when the money is earned 2. critics suggest that being in a lab makes norms of cooperative behavior more salient 3. in lab studies people are acutely aware of being scrutinized, and scrutiny strengthens the likelihood of cooperative behavior -however, there is mounting evidence that a person's behavior in economic games does indeed predict forms of charity and working to help others -in a field experiment, it was shown that when people are aware of their own reputations, they're more cooperative in economic games of different kinds -study: when participants signed up for an energy-savings pledge using their own names, they were three times more likely to sign up for the service than when they do so anonymously

the understandable tendency to blame people who don't help is fundamental to what cognitive bias

-fundamental attribution error -we quickly leap to the assumption that a person who is not helping is a bad person without taking into consideration the context

one study on antigay prejudice

-gender conformity, not sexual orientation, was most predictive of being bullied -this is b/c gender norms are readily perceived: act and dress in certain ways -gay young me tended to be harassed to the extent that other people perceived them as feminine

inversion theory

-given a sexual orientation violation, people tend to assume gender role violation OR given gender role violation, people tend to assume sexual orientation violation -Freud said "gay men are feminine and gay women are masculine," but there is very little evidence of this -this is a phenomenon/stereotype, not the reality

reciprocal altruism

-helping other people with the expectation that they'll help in return at some other time -cooperation among non-kin provides many benefits that increase the chances of survival and reproduction for all parties/natural selection can create psychological mechanisms designed to deliver benefits even to non-relatives, provided that such actions lead to reciprocal beneficial actions in the future -reciprocal altruism reduces the likelihood of dangerous conflict, helps overcome problems arising from scarce resources, and offers a basis for people to form alliances and constrain more dominant individuals -the impulse to reciprocate acts of generosity is a likely human universal, such as being more likely to seek out and cooperate with individuals who have cooperated on the previous round of the game -in one study, researchers mailed Christmas cards to numerous strangers, and about 20% reciprocated by sending their own Christmas card back to the senders -expressions of gratitude act as social rewards and are a powerful trigger of subsequent cooperation, which fits the reciprocal altruism thesis

bystander intervention

-helping someone when people are witnesses to an emergency -people are less likely to help when other people are around: diffusion of responsibility

empathic concern

-identifying with someone in need, including feeling and understanding what that person is experiencing (sympathy/compassion), accompanied by the intention to help the person -the most "pure" form of altruism -this is a fast and intuitive process that produces selfless/other-oriented altruism (an automatic, emotion-like impulse to help others is the most common reason extreme altruistic helped others)

diffusion of responsibility

-knowing that others have seen the situation, each bystander tends to assume the others will intervene and thus each person feels less responsibility to help out -people are less likely to help as groups get bigger

a closer look: how selfish are we?

-not as selfish as people think -in experiments where subjects decide how much of a payment to give to another subject, people give 39% even though they can give as little as 1% -nearly 70% of 14-month olds will spontaneously assist an experimenter trying to pick up a pen -when people give money, the reward circuit of the brain is activated to the same degree as when they receive money -trust and economic growth: one study found a strong link b/w trust and income growth in nations around the world

anonymous altruism

-participants interacted with another person, a student confederate called Janet, who was seated in another cubicle and expressed that she was in need of a friend -empathic concern was manipulated and so was social evaluation -in the low-empathy condition, the participant was told to be as objective as possible when reading the notes, to concentrate on the facts at hand -in the high-empathy condition, the participant was told to imagine as vividly as possible how Janet felt -in the low social evaluation condition, the notes were anonymous so neither the experimenter nor Janet would know of the participants response -in the high-social evaluation condition, both the experimenter and the participant read Janet's notes -results: participants in the high-empathy condition volunteered to spend more time with her, even when no one would know of their action (so in both low and high social evaluation)

antigay prejudice: two types of perceived cultural violations

-violations: behaviors or characteristics that are, or can be, perceived as going against traditional cultural norms 1. sexual orientation norms/cultural default: in the absence of any other information, when we see someone on the street, we assume people are straight 2. gender role norms: we assume men are masculine and females are feminine

situational determinants of cooperation: reputtion

-participants will readily cooperate and give resources to an interaction partner who has a reputation for cooperation, but they'll defect and choose not to give resources to an interaction partner known to be greedy -one of the primary reasons we gossip is to figure out the reputations of other people; through gossip, we investigate whether other group members are inclined to act in ways that strengthen the group or in ways that might create friction -this analysis yields what might seem like a counterintuitive prediction-that groups in which gossip takes place might actually be more cooperative -the groups whose members could gossip became more cooperative than the groups who weren't allowed to gossip: the threat of gossip makes people aware of what might happen to their reputations should they choose to act selfishly, thus encouraging more cooperative behavior

situational determinant: victim characteristics

-people are more likely to help when the harm to the victim is clear and the need is unambiguous -people are more likely to help others who are similar to them, including those from their own racial or ethnic group or a similar social class background -studies of charitable contributions find that the wealthy tend to systematically direct their acts of philanthropy to institutions and organizations that benefit largely people like themselves, such as private universities, rather than social service organizations that benefit the poor -although it is true that the victim may be helped at similar rates whether there is one or a lot of bystanders, studies have found that single bystanders act more quickly than the quickest person to react in a group of bystanders

personal distress

-people are motivated to help people in need in order to reduce their own distress -neuroscientific studies find that when we watch someone else experience pain, the pain regions of our own brain are activated

altruism in urban vs. rural settings

-people in rural areas report higher levels of empathic concern -strangers are significantly more likely to be helped in rural communities than in urban areas (once the population rises above 50,000, there's little effect of increasing population) -the power of the situation: a person's current context, rural or urban, was a much stronger predictor of helping behavior than the person's rural or urban background -explanations for the rural-urban difference: 1. Miligram attributed to stimulus overload: the amount of stimulation in modern urban environments is so great that you need to narrow your focus in terms of attention and what circumstances you recognize as having a claim on your thoughts, so you are less likely to attend to the needs of others and less likely to act altruistically 2. the diversity hypothesis: you are more likely to help others who are similar to yourselves, so you are more likely to encounter someone similar to yourself in a rural environment than a diverse urban environment 3. more people are generally around to help in urban areas than in more rural environments, so a diffusion of responsibility could discourage people from helping out in urban settings 4. it's probable that in rural settings, people's actions are more likely to be observed by people who know them and who can comment on their reputation to others

social class and altruism

-people who have less give more, at least in terms of the proportion of their income that they donate to charity -a relative scarcity of resources leads lower-class individuals to be more empathically attuned to others, and they build strong relationships to help them or adapt to their more unpredictable, taxing, and sometimes threatening environments -lower-class people are more empathic, such as being better judges of people's emotions -in contexts in which economic inequality is high, the wealthy share even less or they choose to share mainly with other wealthy individuals, only augmented levels of economic inequality -a study demonstrated that lower-class people help more than upper-class people, except when both groups are made to feel compassion, demonstrating that it's possible to trigger empathic concern in well-off people -after watching a neutral film, lower-class participants offered to spend more time helping with the other participant's tasks than upper-class participants did -when upper-class people were made to feel compassion by watching a video of the suffering of children living in poverty, they responded in the same prosocial fashion as their lower-class counterparts

the Ultimatum Game

-player 1 has $100 and can choose to split it b/w themselves and player 2 -if player 2 accepts the split, they get the money and you keep the rest. otherwise you get nothing -there are many variations of the game: its a way to study social dilemmas/game theory in a social setting -ex. gender differences: women tend to be more generous -if you give player 1 an injection of oxytocin, it increases their generous offers by 70%

culture and cooperation

-researchers tested the ultimatum game with individuals from 15 different small cultures -the game works like this: one player, the allocator, is given a certain amount of money and chooses to allocate a certain amount to a second participant, the responder, who can either choice to accept or reject the allocator's offer -if the responder accepts the offer, the responder receives what was offered and the allocator keeps the balance -if the responder rejects the offer, neither player receives anything -in this version, what the participants were allowed to offer an anonymous stranger differed, in some cultures it was money, in others a cherished good such as tobacco -result: how much the individuals in a culture depended on one another to survive predicted the likelihood of cooperative generosity in the ultimatum game: the more the members of a culture depended on one another to gather food and meet other needs, the more they offered to a stranger when they were allocators in the ultimatum game (39% was above average) -this theme, that interdependence fosters cooperation, helps explain other cultural influences on cooperation -one could argue that religion, being poor, and exposure to violence each crease social conditions that require that people depend on one another to survive and that this interdependence prompts greater cooperation -even the discipline you choose to study in college and the degree of interdependence it encourages influences cooperation: undergrads majoring in Econ will act more selfishly

social dilemmas *

-situations in which collective interests (what's good for the group) are at odds with private interests, and vice versa -a particular type of situation relevant to game theory -ex. voter's paradox: due to the costs of voting, you could argue that it would be better for you not to vote, but if everyone followed this line of thought, we wouldn't have a democracy -the Matzo ball soup dilemma: if everyone takes as many matzo balls as possible, we would just have broth -contribution to public TV/radio: you can listen to public radio all you want without contributing, but if everyone did this, there would be no public radio -common goods dilemma: tragedy of the commons (classical example of a social dilemma): its in your best interest to water your lawn, but if everyone did that, we would have a water shortage

caveats/cautions about the evolutionary perspective

-social learning and norms can play an important role as well, in helping people who are not genetically related to us -genes do not operate at the minute level of calculating the degree to which we are genetically related

Step 1. Does the person notice that something unusual is taking place?: "The Good Samaritan study"

-subjects were seminary students told they were being recruited for a study on speech production -1/2 give a parable on the good samaritan 1/2 told they will give a talk about searching for jobs -people were randomly assigned to conditions: -independent variable: time pressure (no hurry, moderate hurry, high hurry) -dependent variable: % of seminary students in each condition who stopped to help homeless/distressed man who was having trouble breathing -called a 3 by 2 decision: most important variable is time pressure, other variable was topic -people were told that they need to give a talk on the Good Samaritan were in such a hurry that they wouldn't stop -no hurry: 63% stopped to help the homeless person -moderate hurry: 45% -high hurry: 10%: a huge effect showing the power of the situation -if you are in a hurry, you literally don't see them

situational determinant: construal processes/ambiguous situations

-the decision to help means that the potential helper first must believe that assistance is actually needed based on clues from the victim's behavior -people are more likely to be helped when they vocalize their dress as they are vividly aware of the events that led to the victim's distress -it's now believed that one reason many people didn't come to Kitty Genovese's defense is that few people saw the unfolding of the attack; instead they caught only glimpses of the murder and thus likely didn't understand the degree of harm taking place -the surrounding social context also influences whether bystanders will think help is needed: staying calm and collected in public is dictated by establishing social norms, and creates a form of pluralistic ignorance that occurs when people are unsure about what's happening and assume that nothing is wrong b/c no one else is responding or appears concerned -if you're in a situation with other people who remain calm, you are more likely to not report smoke b/c you don't think it's dangerous

Latane and Darley's famous model about non-helping

-the input factor is a "potential emergency" -their decision tree model is surprisingly cognitive for the time -if you fail a step, there's no intervention/help Step 1. whether you notice the event -simply didn't notice b/c distracted/in a hurry Step 2. interpret the event as an emergency -pluralistic ignorance: interpret the event as a non-emergency Step 3. whether you assume responsibility -diffusion of responsibility, most famous stage Step 4. know appropriate form of assistance Step 5. implement decision -legal concerns; embarrassment -the presence of other may play a role in stage 2 and 3, but for different reasons

construal processes and cooperation

-the way we explicitly label situations could influence levels of competition and cooperation -study in which they labeled the prisoner's dilemma in one of two ways: half were told they were going to play the "Wall Street" game and the other half were told it was the "community" game -those playing the community game cooperated on the opening round twice as often as those playing the Wall Street game, and were more likely to cooperate in future rounds -the Wall Street label made the participants adopt a perspective that made maximizing their own profits paramount -in contrast the community label conjured up a different set of images and motives that increased the appeal of maximizing the participants' joint outcomes

religion, ethics, and altruism

-the world's major religions emphasize compassion, altruism, and treating others, even strangers and adversaries, with kindness -the golden rule, treating others as we would like to be treated ourselves, is demonstrated in the texts of the major religions, which encourages a prosocial stance toward others -being primed with religious concepts leads to greater generosity/more prosocial behavior -secular, non-religious concepts related to kindness and ethical behavior generate similar levels of generosity -ex. in the "civic" condition, participants unscrambled sentences that included words related to the secular institutions and ideas that build more cooperative societies, such as civic, jury, court, police, and contract -these words generated the same high level of generosity in the economic game as the religious words prompted -the sense of being watched, so prominent in religions of different kinds, increases altruism -ex. a simple triangular arrangement of dots reminiscent of the human face (eyes and nose) is associated with a sense of being observed and encourages cooperation more than a triangular arrangement that does not evoke the human face

examples of good "samaritan cases:" why do these people help? why do they not help?

-they started sprinting at the same time: they are both sending cues to each other and both deciding together that it's an emergency -its easier to make a decision when the other person agrees with you that its an emergency -strength in numbers: if you have 2 people, you are more likely to be able to overpower them with sheer strength -fear of judgment if you're with someone else -the lack of help in the video of a child shouting your not my father could be attributed to all 3: #1: busy street/might not have noticed it, #2: might not have heard the words "you're not my father", or #3: thought other people would help

evolution and altruism

-two major evolutionary explanations: kin selection and reciprocal altruism

three motives in any altruistic action

-two selfish/egoistic: social reward and personal distress -one unselfish: empathic concern -Batson has made a persuasive case for a selfless, other-oriented state that motivates altruistic behavior

applications of game theory

-voters paradox: an application of game theory where people think that so many people vote, so their vote likely doesn't matter -voters paradox applies more to the US: people say "yes voting is important" but they don't vote -dynamics b/w Khrushchev and Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis: Kennedy said if you go any further with putting missiles in Cuba, we may declare war. Kruschev backed down (the decision of the US president was based off of how he thought Krushev would respond) -competition over desired mates/romantic partners -stoplights: if you assume the other person is rational, they will go on their green light, and you don't want to go on your red light b/c there would be a cost for both people: you would crash (if you have a green, you usually just go w/o looking b/c you assume that the other person won't go -sometimes people make a subjective determination by slowing down but keep on going if no one is coming -people are overconfident: they think they're being careful but they're not

discriminative parental solicitude (the Cinderella effect)

-when child abuse does occur, abuse is much more likely if the child is adopted -natural selection has designed psychological mechanisms to favor their own kin -it is about conditional probability/relative incidence of abuse -kin selection is a powerful theory but it doesn't explain why non-related individuals would help one another: reciprocal altruism does

side note on the role of target gender

-women are more likely to receive help from others -particularly true when women are dressed in ways that are perceived as attractive/feminine, they are more likely to get help from men -men may assume that women need help or were hoping to ask her out on a date

E.O. Wilson's study of ants

-worker ants will blow themselves up to kill intruders/prevent them from coming in -Darwin knew about these species and wondered why they were sacrificing themselves b/c he still had the mindset of survival of the fittest -each of the ants has a particular genetic makeup that is almost perfectly aligned by the genetic makeup of the offspring of the Queen -bottom line: they are sacrificing themselves to save the Queen and her offspring, who have almost identical genes

#3. does the person take responsibility? classic demonstration of diffusion of responsibility effect: the "seizure study" by Latane and Darley

-you are the only real subject in the experiment and are having a conversation about college though audio/without being able to see them -at some point, your partner clearly starts to suffer from an epileptic seizure and says "I seem to be having a seizure" -the independent variable was the number of other observers, aside from the person having a seizure, who knew about the potential emergency: 0 (real subject thinks he or she is along), 1 (1 other person could be helping), or 4 -dependent variable: percentage of people who helped by getting up to tell the experiment -this percentage went from 85 to 31 when you went from 0 to 1 people -as you increase the number of people aware of the situation, they take longer to help (delay in seconds among people who eventually did help)

introduction to game theory

-you need to consider 3 processes: motives for cooperation, motives for competition, and.... -game theory attempts to mathematically capture behavior in games where an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others -connection: your choices depend on the anticipated choices of the other "do what's best for yourself but you also need to take into account what the group is doing" -ex. one European country helps another in the expectation that they will help in the future

inversion theory highlights 3 testable hypotheses for dislikes of gays

1. inferred gender role orientation only (people don't like others b/c they violate gender roles, not b/c of their sexual orientation 1. sexual orientation violation only: people are comfortable with gender role violation, but sexual orientation violations upset them 3. the interaction of sexual orientation and gender role violation -the two things in combination is the source of the animosity -prototype matching hypothesis: both factors go hand in hand: masculine gay women, feminine gay man -note: it is also possible that different types of perceivers reflect different bases for their dislike