Chapter 14 - Altruism, Helping and Cooperation

Question 1

1. Define and distinguish between altruism and egoism

Answer 1

-Altruism: motivation to increase another person’s welfare (“otherconcern”)
-Egoism: motivation to increase one’s own welfare
(“self-concern”)

Question 2

2. Describe social exchange theory and how it relates to helping (note: social
   exchange theory is also described in Chapter 10 in the context of interpersonal
   relationships)

Answer 2

Social interactions are guided by a (not always conscious) cost-benefit analysis
* Strive to maximize benefits while minimizing costs

Question 3

3. Identify some benefits and costs of helping
   a. Describe the negative state relief hypothesis and the role that guilt and
   personal distress may play in helping

Answer 3

Benefits:
-may involve tangible
rewards (e.g., material goods, money)
* Other rewards may be less tangible, but very powerful
* Recall that we are motivated to enhance our
self-esteem, and that our self
-esteem is strongly tied to social approval (sociometer
theory)
* Strongly responsive to social rewards like
praise, positive attention, gratitude * Being positively evaluated by others
leads to activation in same parts of the striatum as monetary rewards (Izuma et
al., 2008)
* Most eager to help people whose approval we desire (Krebs, 1970)
* Attractive people more likely to be
helped
* Altruistic people get rewarded
* More altruistic individuals are more sexually desirable, have more sex partners, and have more sex within relationships (Arnocky et al., 2017)

Costs:
* Helping also comes at a cost—time, energy, resources, risk of physical
injury
* May be less likely to help in situations where we have to confront feelings of disgust or aversion
* Subway study (Piliavin & Piliavin, 1972)
* Ps less likely to help person who had collapsed if he had blood trickling out of his mouth
* Other costs—fears of embarrassment if we misconstrued the situation
or if we do the wrong thing

a. * Negative state relief hypothesis: people help others in order to reduce
their own distress
* See person collapse on the metro, experience distress, one way to alleviate that distress is by helping the person
* Still driven by egoistic motives
Guilt:
* Often help not because we want to, but because we know we ought to
* That sense of ought comes from social norms—culturally inculcated standards for how we should behave
* E.g., social responsibility norm: should help those who need help, even if they cannot reciprocate
* Recall what happens when we don’t live up to those oughts (selfdiscrepancy theory)
* Feel guilty, tense
* Can reduce those unpleasant feelings by helping
* Won’t help in situations where we feel the norms don’t apply
* Piliavin et al., 1969:
* Another collapse on the subway study
* When target carried a cane, helped 90% of the time
* When appeared to be drunk, helped less than 20% of the time
* More likely to apply social responsibility norm in situations where the
victim’s hardship is not perceived as the consequence of their own
actions
* The kinds of attributions we make are important

Question 4

4. Describe the influence of social norms on helping
   a. When are we more or less likely to abide by the social responsibility
   norm?

Answer 4

• Often help not because we want to, but because we know we ought to
• That sense of ought comes from social norms—culturally inculcated standards for how we should behave
• E.g., social responsibility norm: should help those who need help, even if they cannot reciprocate
  More likely to apply social responsibility norm in situations where the
  victim’s hardship is not perceived as the consequence of their own
  actions

Question 5

5. Describe Batson’s empathy-altruism model and the experimental evidence for the existence of empathic concern
   a. Explain when we will be more likely to empathize with someone

Answer 5

• People are driven to help by empathy—their ability to understand and
  relate to the experiences of the other person
• Helping will depend on how much one empathizes with the victim
• When empathy is low, will help when benefits outweigh the costs
• When empathy is high, will help even at cost to oneself
• Prediction: greater similarity between oneself and someone in need à
  stronger feelings of empathy à more helping, regardless of the costs
• Empathy is a complex construct, comprising several components— including:
• Personal distress: “self-oriented” feelings of personal anxiety and
  distress
• Empathic concern: “other-oriented” feelings of sympathy and
  concern for the other
• High levels of personal distress may impede effective helping
• If you are overwhelmed with your own distress, may seek to escape
  the situation or be unable to respond in a way appropriate to the other’s needs
• Krol & Bartz (2021): individuals who lack a clearly defined, consistent,
  stable sense of self (low self-concept clarity) respond with more personal distress and less empathic concern—and are consequently less
  likely to actually help
• Anxiously attached individuals tend to be overwhelmed by personal
  distress, do not match care to level of need (Westmaas & Silver, 2001)

Question 6

6. Describe the evolutionary perspective on helping & cooperation, focusing on the
   role of kin selection and reciprocal altruism

Answer 6

• Selection happens at the level of the gene, not the individual
• It’s not about whether you make, it’s about whether your genes make it
• Our genes drive us to behave in adaptive ways that have maximized
  their proliferation in the past
• Kin selection: propensity to help genetic relatives, thus furthering their survival and reproductive success
• “Genes help themselves by being nice to themselves, even if they are
  enclosed in different bodies” (Barash, 1979)
• Likelihood of helping tied to closeness of genetic relationship (Burnstein
  et al., 1994; Segal, 1984)
• More likely to help parents or siblings than uncles/aunts or cousins
• Identical twins more likely to help each other than fraternal twins

Reciprocal altruism:
* Propensity toward reciprocity (exchanging
favours for mutual benefit) can provide
individuals and groups with an adaptive
advantage (Trivers, 1971)
* “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”
* Primates who groom others more likely
to be groomed in return (Schino &
Aureli, 2008) and more likely to have
their offspring survive (Silk et al., 2003)
* Moochers, those who fail to reciprocate are
liable to be ostracized

Throughout the course of our evolutionary history, we have relied on the
social group for survival—thus, tendency towards cooperation may be
part of our heritage (Axelrod, 1984)

Question 7

7. Describe the prisoner’s dilemma game and how it is used to study cooperation
   a. Describe the role of reputation in cooperation (text)
   b. Explain the role of construal processes in cooperation, focusing on the role of labels (text)
   c. Describe the tit-for-tat strategy and explain how it encourages
   cooperation (text)

Answer 7

Cooperation vs. competition. More reasonable to defect but more valuable to cooperate if both do! Trust and cooperation=higher payoff than mistrust and defection

Cooperate if partner has reputation for being cooperative vs. not

How we construe situation impacts results

tif for tat=first move cooperate, then other person copies and cooperates

Question 8

8. Define the bystander effect and describe how the presence of other people may inhibit helping during the three stages of the response to an emergency
   a. Noticing the emergency
   b. Interpreting the emergency
   i. Make sure you can explain how pluralistic ignorance comes into play in ambiguous situations
   c. Assuming responsibility
   i. Define diffusion of responsibility

Answer 8

• Bystander effect: finding that people are less likely to help in the presence of other bystanders

a. Noticing the emergency * Latané & Darley, 1968:
* Participants seated in waiting room,
either a) alone or in groups of 3
* The room begins to fill with smoke
* When alone, typically noticed the smoke within 5 seconds
* When in groups, typically took 20 seconds to notice the smoke

b. * Once you notice the emergency, you have to interpret it as an
emergency
* Many events we encounter are ambiguous
Are those kids hurting each other? Or just playfighting?
Is that woman being attacked by a stranger? Or just having a lovers’ spat with her boyfriend? Is that smoke from a fire? Or something harmless?
* Look to others to define the situation (informational influence)
* Pluralistic ignorance: failure to realize that others are
thinking and feeling the same thing we are. “others aren’t saying anything about the smoke, it must be nothing”…thinks everyone

c. Assuming responsibility
Diffusion of responsibility: less likely to take responsibility for helping
when there are other people around who could help

Question 9

9. Describe the Good Samaritan study and explain what it tells us about helping
   behaviour (covered in chapter 1 of textbook and final review lecture in class)

Answer 9

• Another demonstration of the power of the
  situation
• Ps were male seminary students
• Asked to give a talk about either the Good
  Samaritan parable (norm salient condition) or
  on topic unrelated to helping
• Some Ps told they were late (high hurry
  condition), others simply told to walk over
• Encounter individual slumped over in the alley
• Who helps?
• People who do not feel rushed

(see textbook, i think there is more info)

Question 10

10. Describe how situational factors relate to differences in helping in urban vs. rural
    settings

Answer 10

Come back. See textbook!