Chapter 10 Flashcards
the gorilla debate - what question does this raise?
Was this an act of kindness and compassion, or did the gorilla just do what she had been trained to do—pick up and fetch things dropped into her cage? Cases like this raise the more fundamental question of whether concepts such as morality and empathy can apply to nonhuman animals.
empathy
Unfortunately, the exact definition of empathy is much debated; for example, Dan Batson (2009b) identified no fewer than eight distinct definitions of empathy that scholars use. Most researchers regard empathy as having both a cognitive component of understanding the emotional experience of another individual and an emotional experience that is consistent with what the other is feeling
a major cog component of empathy
A major cognitive component of empathy is perspective taking: using the power of imagination to try to see the world through someone else’s eyes
a key emo component of empathyt
A key emotional component of empathy is empathic concern, which involves other-oriented feelings, such as sympathy, compassion, and tenderness.
what did frans de waal find in primates like chimps? 3 examples
Frans de Waal (2008, 2013), has cited numerous and startling examples of primates such as chimpanzees and bonobos seeming to show empathy. d Figure 10.2 depicts a juvenile chimpanzee putting an arm around an adult male who had just been defeated in a fight. This kind of consoling behavior is not uncommon in chimpanzees, and it has been shown to reduce the recipient’s arousal. de Waal also reports examples of chimpanzees who risked their lives trying to save companions from drowning, even though they themselves were unable to swim. Less dramatically, young chimps have been seen helping to push an old and arthritic group member up onto a climbing frame for a grooming session. The examples de Waal has collected suggest at least some degree of perspective taking and sympathy among nonhuman primates. Some research suggests that even rodents show evidence of being sensitive to the pain of other individuals of their species
connect animal empathy to benti
The gorilla Binti Jua very well may have been acting on maternal caregiving impulses as she gently held the little boy who had fallen into her area. The importance of caring for offspring may have played a critical role in the evolution of empathy (
researchers and money spending experiment
When Elizabeth Dunn and colleagues (2008) asked people which would make them happier, most people said they’d be happier spending the money on themselves. But in a clever set of studies across several cultures and age groups, the researchers actually gave people money with one of those two sets of instructions, and they found that people who spent the money on others were significantly happier than those who purchased something for themselves. This held true across a wide variety of age groups and cultures, even in places in which resources were very limited (
beneifts of helping?
The simple but important point is: Helping often feels good. A growing body of research reveals a strong relationship between giving help and feeling better, including improvements in mental and physical health (Dillard et al., 2008; Omoto et al., 2009; Mojza et al., 2011; Piliavin & Siegl, 2008; Post, 2005).
what does neurosci research support the idea of?
Neuroscience research supports the idea that the capacity for empathy is part of our biology. Seeing someone else experience positive or negative emotion triggers in an empathic perceiver’s brain activation of neural structures associated with the actual experience of that emotion
katie experiemnt similar to batsons hypothesis goal
told kids a story about a girl whose parents were killed in a car accident and she had to care for her sblings. wanted to see if students would help her or forget about her if they could
what is an imp charactersitc of mammals related to empathy> what must caregivers understand
An important characteristic of mammals related to empathy is how much care their offspring require to survive. Caregivers must understand the emotional communications from their young and respond to their emotional need
results of katie exp
The results supported the empathy–altruism hypothesis. In the low–empathy condition, students’ helping decisions seemed to be governed by egoistic concerns—they agreed to help Katie only if they thought they would remember her problems. In the high-empathy condition, however, they agreed to help her regardless of whether they thought they would remember her or not (see d Figure 10.5).
what did judith berkhart say about a key feature in human ev
According to anthropologist Judith Burkart (2014), a key feature in human evolution was when our hominin ancestors began to raise their offspring cooperatively, with fathers, siblings, aunts, and others occasionally helping to support the helpless infant rather than just the mother. This set the foundation for what Burkart calls the “hyper-cooperation” that is characteristic of humans
when r ppl more likely to help in an emergency
People are more likely to help someone in an emergency if the potential rewards seem high and the potential costs seem low.
what happened to kitty genovese?
she was attacked outside her apartment building and 38 people saw but noone did anything. one man called the police 45 minutes later but kitty died before they could get her to the hospital.
what does social neurosci research support
Social neuroscience research provides additional evidence for the rewarding feeling of helping. Numerous studies have shown that engaging in altruistic behavior—even though it costs the self—activates areas of the brain associated with receiving actual material reward
In their negative state relief model, Robert Cialdini and his colleagues (1987) propose and examples
In their negative state relief model, Robert Cialdini and his colleagues (1987) propose that because of this positive effect of helping, people who are feeling bad are inclined to help others in order to improve their mood. People who have experienced traumatic events, for example, show mental and physical health benefits from helping others (Frazier et al, 2013; Vollhardt & Staub, 2011; Waym
lara aknin= what did she investigate and find
The relationship between helping and feeling good might be a psychological universal. Looking at 136 countries across the world, Lara Aknin and her colleagues (2013) found a positive correlation between donating money and happiness in the majority of the countries. They found that altogether, charitable giving had twice the association with happiness as income did. According to their analysis, people who do not donate their money would have to be twice as rich to have the same predicted amount of happiness. Furthermore, when they asked participants in Canada, Uganda, and India (a diverse bunch) to think about a time they spent money on someone else, they were subsequently happier than those asked to think about a time they spent money on themselves.
cons of helping people
Clearly helping has its rewards, but it has its costs as well. The firefighters in Ladder Company 6 who somehow survived the collapse of the North Tower of the World Trade Center while saving Josephine Harris were among the lucky ones. Many people were killed while helping others that day, such as Abraham Zelmanowitz, a computer programmer who refused to leave his quadriplegic friend who could not descend the stairs. And beyond 9/11, we often are moved by stories of the costs paid by those who offer help, such as Donald Liu, who in August 2012 saw two boys swept up by rip tides in Lake Michigan and swam in to save them, despite the protests from his own children about the dangerous conditions. The boys were saved, but the 50-year-old chief of pediatric surgery at the University of Chicago and father of three young children did not survive (Dizikes & Sobol, 2012).
Sharon Shepela and others (1999) call this type of thoughtful helping in the face of potentially enormous costs courageous resistance.
Other helpers have done more sustained and deliberate helping, such as the people who helped hide runaway slaves in the nineteenth-century United States or the people who helped hide Jews during the Holocaust. =
what do mos tpoeple do before deciding to help
what are good samaritan laws and what are they meant for
Although some people sometimes help despite tremendous risk, most people often seem to conduct a cost–benefit analysis before deciding whether or not to help (Dovidio et al., 2006; Fischer et al., 2011; Fritzsche et al., 2000). To lower some of the costs of helping, some legislatures have created “Good Samaritan” laws that encourage bystanders to intervene in emergencies by offering them legal protection, such as for doctors who volunteer medical care when they happen upon emergencies, or for people who otherwise would worry about criminal prosecution if they call the police to report a drug overdose (
Batson’s model of altruism is based on his view of the consequences of empathy. According to Batson,
if you perceive someone in need and imagine how that person feels, you are likely to experience other-oriented feelings of empathic concern (similar to what some call compassion—DeSteno, 2015), which in turn produce the altruistic motive to reduce the other person’s distress. There are, however, instances in which people perceive someone in need and focus on their own feelings about this person or on how they would feel in that person’s situation. Although many people (and some researchers) may think of this as empathy, Batson contrasts this with instances in which people’s concern is with how the other person is feeling. It’s when your focus is on the other person that true altruism is possible.
How can we tell the difference between egoistic and altruistic motives?
=In both cases, people help someone else, but the helpers’ reasons are different. Confronted with this puzzle, Batson came up with an elegant solution. When a person’s motive is egoistic, helping should decline if it’s easy for the individual to escape from the situation and therefore escape from his or her own feelings of distress. When a person’s motive is altruistic, however, help will be given regardless of the ease of escape.
omoto and synder- Why were the more egoistic goals associated with longer service
? Snyder and Omoto (2008) observed that purely altruistic motives may not keep individuals motivated long enough to withstand the personal costs associated with some kinds of prolonged helping. As Mark Snyder noted, “The good, and perhaps romanticized, intentions related to humanitarian concern simply may not be strong enough to sustain volunteers faced with the tough realities and personal costs of working with [persons with AIDS]” (Snyder, 1993, p. 258). When helping demands more of us, self-interest may keep us going.
when can egoistic motives be put to good use
Egoistic motives, therefore, can be put to good use. This was evident in a set of studies by Eamonn Ferguson and others (2008). They conducted a longitudinal study of blood donation in the United Kingdom and found that having other-oriented beliefs about blood donation (for example, society benefits from blood donation) and having self-oriented beliefs (for example, the donor would benefit by donating blood) each predicted people’s later actual blood donation, but having the self-oriented beliefs was the stronger predictor.
what does david rand think about whether ppl are inhernetly selfish in their motives
hey point out that for most of us, being helpful and cooperative with others is the sensible way to act much of the time. We typically spend most of our time with people we can trust, and when we help others we’re likely to receive help in turn. Therefore, our default inclination may prime us to be helpful, and only if we have time might we reconsider this in light of the potential costs.
Rand and Ziv Epstein (2014) also examined the testimony of people awarded medals by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission for extreme acts of heroism.
The statements of these heroes overwhelmingly emphasized intuitiveness rather than deliberativeness. In other words, they consistently described themselves as acting on instinct, without thinking.
To test their ideas, Darley and Latané (1968) set out to see if they could produce unresponsive bystanders under laboratory conditions. Let’s take a look at one of their studies.
When a participant arrived, he or she was taken to one of a series of small rooms located along a corridor. Speaking over an intercom, the experimenter explained that he wanted participants to discuss personal problems college students often face. Participants were told that to protect confidentiality, the group discussion would take place over the intercom system and that the experimenter would not be listening. They were required to speak one at a time, taking turns. Some participants were assigned to talk with one other person, whereas other participants joined larger groups of three or six people. then someone had a seizure.
To test their ideas, Darley and Latané (1968) set out to see if they could produce unresponsive bystanders under laboratory conditions. Let’s take a look at one of their studies. what happened when the people were in a group?> did this influence their responsises?
As it turns out, participants’ responses to this emergency were strongly influenced by the size of their group. Actually all participants were participating alone, but tape-recorded material led them to believe that others were present. All the participants who thought that only they knew about the emergency quickly left the room to try to get help. In the larger groups, however, participants were less likely or were slower to intervene. Indeed, 38% of the participants in the six-person groups never left the room at all during the 6 minutes before the experimenter would finally terminate the study! This research led Latané and Darley to a chilling conclusion: The presence of others inhibits helping. This came to be known as the bystander effect.
why may people not help a victim?
Participants in the seizure study could not help but notice the emergency, but the presence of others can sometimes be distracting and divert attention away from noticing a victim’s plight. People who live in big cities and noisy environments may become so used to seeing people lying on sidewalks or hearing screams that they begin to tune them out, becoming susceptible to what Stanley Milgram (1970) called stimulus overload.
pluralistic ignorance
entire group may be paralyzed by indecision. When this happens, the person needing help is a victim of pluralistic ignorance. In this state of ignorance, each individual believes that his or her own thoughts and feelings are different from everyone else’s, when in fact, many of the other people are thinking or feeling the same way
smoke questionaitre
there were ppl in aroom working on a questionaire when it got smoky. when alone, much more ppl took action than when they were with others, or with passive confederates. they would normally think its dangerous but bc no one else seemed to think so they defined it as nothing to b concerned abt.
diffusion of responsibility:
the belief that others will or should intervene.
Diffusion of responsibility cannot occur if
an individual believes that only he or she is aware of the victim’s need
Some research suggests that the presence of others can even be imaginary and still produce some diffusion of responsibility. describe a study that tested this idea.
Participants in studies in which they simply imagined being in a crowd as opposed to being alone, or in which they played a video game with multiple characters rather than with a single character, were subsequently less likely to help someone (Garcia et al., 2002; Stenico & Greitemeyer, 2014).
in plotner’s study with the five year olds and knocking over a cup of water to see if anyone would help, what was the third variable she added to see if shyness or not wanting to look weird in front of others inf their behavior?
Plötner and her colleagues cleverly added a third condition. In this condition, there again were two confederates, but in this case, the confederates were sitting behind a barrier that made it difficult or impossible for them to get to the paper towels (see d Figure 10.7). In this condition, therefore, the responsibility was solely on the one child who could help. Would this child help? Indeed, the children in this condition—in which diffusion of responsibility was no longer plausible—were as likely to help as if they had been the only witness.
