Altruism Flashcards
Who saved 1000 Jewish people from extermination?
Oskar Schindler
Who was attacked by a man with 38 witnesses?
Kitty Genovese
What is altruism?
any act of voluntary self-sacrifice intended to benefit another with no expectation of reward
What is pro-social behaviour?
Any act performed by an individual with the goal of benefiting another person
Altruism is a special case of what?
Pro-social behaviour
How could altruism fit into evolutionary perspectives.
- Contemporary evolutionary theory, rejects the notion of straight-forward individual selection:
- Behaviours are thought to be displayed to the extent that they are adaptive and contribute to ‘inclusive fitness’
- The gene is the unit of selection, not the individual.
- Natural selection should favour altruistic acts directed toward kin
Who studied helpfulness to close vs distant kin?
Burnstein et al 1994
What did Burnstein et al find?
Intention to help close kin are much higher than distant kin. tendency to help sick more than healthy everyday but healthy over sick in life or death
Who repeated Burnsteins experiment using real kin?
Korchmaros & Kenny (2011)
What did Korchmaros and Kenny find?
Genetic closeness predicts tendencies to help.
Emotional closeness had a stronger relation to tendency to help than genetic closeness
What is the social exchange theory?
Behaviours are motivated by the desire to maximise rewards and minimise costs
What is the negative state relief hypothesis?
When we expect to engage in alternative mood enhancing activities, we are less inclined to help (Schaller & Cialdini, 1988)
Who investigated the experience of empathy and cost of not helping?
Toi & Batson (1982)
What did Toi and Batson find?
In a high empathy condition, people help in high and low cost but in low empathy, the decision to help follows the cost
What did Batson et al 1991 find about feedback motivating behaviour?
With high empathy, it is the empathy and not the feedback that motivates the behaviour
What is the bystander effect?
People are reluctant to help because they think others will
Who investigated the bystander effect?
Latane & Darley 1970
What did Latane & Darley find about bystander effect and reporting smoke in a room?
Participants approached the experimenter:
– 75% of time if they were alone
– 38% of time with strangers
– 10% of time with strangers who ignored
What did Garcia et al 2002 investigate?
People imagined themselves at dinner with 30,10 or 1 friend and were later asked how much of their salary they’d donate to their uni.
The more people imagined beforehand, the less helpful they were
What is a lexical decision task?
Testing overlap of stuff in a particular category
What did Garcia research using the lexical decision task?
People imagine themselves in crowded scenarios or with just one friend. When people are in a crowd, they were much quicker at recognising the concept of unaccountability.
Who repeated Garcia’s experiment?
Levine et al (2010)
What did Levine et al (2010) find??
He finds that there is a difference between imagining strangers and imagining other women. Helpfulness for women is activated in the mind when there is more women.
Who re-examined the historical record of Kitty Genovese and what did they find?
Manning, Levine & Collins (2007)
and found:
– Kitty Genovese was attacked behind a building
– There were not 38 witnesses
– People did intervene
