altruism, empathy and prosocial behavior (social psych)

empathy vs personal distress

empathy: altruistic motivation to reduce other's distress personal: egoistic motivation to reduce own distress

metalizing

extracting/understanding another person's goals by making inferences

facial feedback hypothesis

facial movement can influence emotion (ex. if you're sad, put pencil in teeth to force a smile)

neural resonance

observation of actions activates same parts of brain that are active during actual performance of the action

sympathy

tenderhearted feelings of compassionate concern, "sorry" for the other

altruism

Helping behavior motivated purely by the desire to do something good for someone else and not the anticipation of personal benefit

empathy

process where observers come to understand/feel state of another through direct perception or imagination of their state

empathy altruism hypothesis

proposition that empathic concern for a person produces an altruistic motive for helping rate of helping stays the same, regardless of ease of escape, when emotion is empathy vs personal distress (Batson)

mirroring

simulating state of other person to understand their mind

limits of empathy- experiment (Gutsell)

watched vids of ethnic in-group and out-group members found that people resonate with in-group members but not out-group

helping in emergencies

1. noticing situation 2. labeling situation as emergency - less likely if situation is ambiguous and if people around seem unconcerned 3. assuming responsibility to help - bystander effect: helping behavior less likely when witness number increases. because of DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY (others will do it) and PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE (use other reactions/lack of --> victim doesn't need help) 4. deciding how to help - more likely if people believe they can 5. implementing decision to help - likely if costs to helping are low - likely if victim is deserving of help