9 - Prosocial Behaviour

Question 1

Altruism

Answer 1

• an action performed to benefit a person without benefitting the self
• does true altruism really exist?
  > positive affect is often a result

Question 2

Predictors of altruism

Answer 2

Negative predictors
- machiavellianism (manipulating others for personal gain)

Positive predictors

• empathy
• high sense of moral reasoning
• religiousity (sometimes)
• women (more long-term helping)
• men (more brave)
• positive role models
• positive mood (dictates likelihood of carrying out their social value orientation
• specific emotions

Question 3

Social Value Orientation

Answer 3

Prosocial orientations:
- cooperative (value equality most)

Proself orientations:

• individualistic (value personal gain most)
• competitive (value relative gain most)

Question 4

Moral Emotions (Haidt, 2003)

Answer 4

relate to judgements of morality

4 moral emotion ‘families’:
Other-Condemning
- contempt, anger, disgust

Self-Conscious
- guilt, shame, embarrassment

Other-Suffering

• distress-at-another’s-distress (DAAD), sympathy, compassion
• schadenfreude

Other-Praising
- awe, grattitude

Question 5

Who receives prosocial behaviour?

Answer 5

Negative Predictors

• age
• high self-esteem (though these people tend to have stronger social networks)
• anxiety

Positive Predictors
- women
- attractiveness (Halo effect)
> Halo effect = people generalise one known quality about a person to all qualities (i.e. high attractiveness is generalised to high intelligence)

Question 6

Bystander effect

Answer 6

• the more people are around, the less likely anyone does anything

Why?
- diffusion of responsibility
- pluralistic ignorance
> bystanders form an 'unspoken' group
> when observing that no one is helping, the norm of that group is to do nothing, and people are strongly compelled to act in accord to group norms

Question 7

Genovese case

Answer 7

• a woman in an alleyway screamed for help, nobody helped and she was killed
• due to the bystander effect

Criticisms:

• how many bystanders were there actually?
• did they know there were other witnesses?
• police were actually contacted
• different locations during event
• witnesses did not know what was going on
• one witness shouted to scare the attacker
• so the genovese case is not a good example of the bystander effect

Question 8

Social Dilemmas

Answer 8

Prisoner’s Dilemma
- can cooperate or defect, defecting is always preferable
- Tit-For-Tat approach:
> most successful approach in this dilemma
+ start cooperatively
+ when the partner defects, defect (retaliate)
+ then act forgivingly (go back to cooperation)
> leads to the most overall cooperation

Public goods dilemma

(i. e. taxes)
- the individuals are better off if they do not contribute, but the group is worse off

Commons dilemma

(i. e. fishing)
- individual interests are served by using a resource but collective interests suffer because the resource is depleted

Question 9

How to promote cooperation

Answer 9

• shared goals
• promote more prosocial values
• promote same-group identification
• promote communications and agreement
  > not in the case of collusion
• reward and punishment

Question 10

Evolution and Altruism

Answer 10

• helping those with similar genes allows genetic propagation
• so humans (and other animals) are more likely to help those who are more closely related to them
  > sibling > nephew > cousin > acquaintance
  (could be factors other than genetics, i.e how well you know them)

Hawks and Doves generational model

• hawks always beat doves
• doves v doves is non harmful
• hawk v hawk is harmful

generational:

• high hawk numbers will reduce hawk numbers and increase dove numbers
• high dove numbers will increase hawk numbers and reduce dove numbers