Altruism

Question 1

Who saved 1000 Jewish people from extermination?

Answer 1

Oskar Schindler

Question 2

Who was attacked by a man with 38 witnesses?

Answer 2

Kitty Genovese

Question 3

What is altruism?

Answer 3

any act of voluntary self-sacrifice intended to benefit another with no expectation of reward

Question 4

What is pro-social behaviour?

Answer 4

Any act performed by an individual with the goal of benefiting another person

Question 5

Altruism is a special case of what?

Answer 5

Pro-social behaviour

Question 6

How could altruism fit into evolutionary perspectives.

Answer 6

• 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

Question 7

Who studied helpfulness to close vs distant kin?

Answer 7

Burnstein et al 1994

Question 8

What did Burnstein et al find?

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Who repeated Burnsteins experiment using real kin?

Answer 9

Korchmaros & Kenny (2011)

Question 10

What did Korchmaros and Kenny find?

Answer 10

Genetic closeness predicts tendencies to help.

Emotional closeness had a stronger relation to tendency to help than genetic closeness

Question 11

What is the social exchange theory?

Answer 11

Behaviours are motivated by the desire to maximise rewards and minimise costs

Question 12

What is the negative state relief hypothesis?

Answer 12

When we expect to engage in alternative mood enhancing activities, we are less inclined to help (Schaller & Cialdini, 1988)

Question 13

Who investigated the experience of empathy and cost of not helping?

Answer 13

Toi & Batson (1982)

Question 14

What did Toi and Batson find?

Answer 14

In a high empathy condition, people help in high and low cost but in low empathy, the decision to help follows the cost

Question 15

What did Batson et al 1991 find about feedback motivating behaviour?

Answer 15

With high empathy, it is the empathy and not the feedback that motivates the behaviour

Question 16

What is the bystander effect?

Answer 16

People are reluctant to help because they think others will

Question 17

Who investigated the bystander effect?

Answer 17

Latane & Darley 1970

Question 18

What did Latane & Darley find about bystander effect and reporting smoke in a room?

Answer 18

Participants approached the experimenter:
– 75% of time if they were alone
– 38% of time with strangers
– 10% of time with strangers who ignored

Question 19

What did Garcia et al 2002 investigate?

Answer 19

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

Question 20

What is a lexical decision task?

Answer 20

Testing overlap of stuff in a particular category

Question 21

What did Garcia research using the lexical decision task?

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

Who repeated Garcia’s experiment?

Answer 22

Levine et al (2010)

Question 23

What did Levine et al (2010) find??

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Who re-examined the historical record of Kitty Genovese and what did they find?

Answer 24

Manning, Levine & Collins (2007)

and found:
– Kitty Genovese was attacked behind a building
– There were not 38 witnesses
– People did intervene

Question 25

Who investigated crowds/teams affecting helpful thoughts?

Answer 25

Levine et al, 2005

Question 26

What did Levine et al 2005 find about Manchester city fans?

Answer 26

For these Manchester united fans, they are much more likely to help the people who fall if they support Man United.

Question 27

What did Levine et al find about the Man City fan when they before talked about football as a whole?

Answer 27

Helped all football fans more than non-fans

Question 28

Who came up with the model of bystander intervention?

Answer 28

Latane and Darley 1970