Chapter 14: Morality: Altruism and Cooperation Flashcards
What is altruism?
prosocial behaviour that benefits others without regard to the consequences for oneself (evolutionary behaviour)
What is social reward/EGOISM?
being esteemed and valued by others in the form of praise, an award, or recognition (motivation for helping is self-interest)
What is personal distress?
People are motivated to help people in need in order to reduce their own distress (potential motive for altruism)
Negative-state relief hypothesis?
people help others to alleviate their own distress
What is empathic concern?
the feeling people experience when identifying with someone in need, accompanied by the intention to enhance the other person’s welfare (motive for altruism)
What is volunteerism?
Assistance a person regularly provides to another person or group with no expectation of compensation
What is bystander intervention?
Assistance given by a witness to someone in need
What is diffusion of responsibility?
A reduction of the sense of urgency to help someone in an emergency or dangerous situation based on the assumption
that others who are present will help
People are most likely to help when
the harm to the victim is clear and the need is unambiguous and makes noise and people that are similar to themselves
What is PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE?
If someone’s in trouble, bystanders may do nothing if they aren’t sure what is happening and don’t see anyone else responding.
People in — communities are more likely to help others than people in— settings are.
rural
urban
people from – socioeconomic backgrounds help more than people from– socioeconomic backgrounds
lower
higher
What is kin selection?
An evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of one’s genetic relatives, even at a cost to one’s own survival and reproduction
What is reciprocal altruism?
Helping others with the expectation that they will probably return the favour in the future
What is the prisoner’s dilemma?
A situation involving payo s to two people who must decide whether to cooperate or defect. In the end, trust and
cooperation lead to higher joint payoffs than mistrust and defection do
What is reputation?
The collective beliefs, evaluations, and impressions people hold about an individual within a social network
What is the tit-for-tat strategy?
A strategy in the prisoner’s dilemma game in which the player’s first move is cooperative;
then the player mimics the other person’s behaviour, whether cooperative or competitive. This strategy fares well when used against other strategies
What is prosocial behaviour?
any action that benefits another person
What is HELPING?
particular type of prosocial behaviour that is intended to offer air to other people
What are the 4 types of helping?
- Casual
- emergency
- emotional
- substantial personal helping
What are the conditions of casual helping? Example?
- recipient: stranger
- cost: low
- ex. small donation, give directions
What are the conditions of emergency helping? Example?
- recipient: stranger
- cost: high
- ex. CPR
What are the conditions of emotional helping? Example?
- recipient: close other
- cost: low
- Ex. physical affection
What are the conditions of substantial personal helping? Example?
- recipient: close other
- cost: high
- Ex. helping someone move
What are the factors influencing casual helping?
- social norms
- presence of helpful model
- perceived responsibility of victim
- positive mood
- embarrassment
- identifiable victim effect
norm of reciprocity is common in
small community because more frequent contact
What is the presence of a helpful model experiment?
- broken car on roadside
- people help more if they previously saw someone else fixing their tire
- shows a social norm
people are motivated to restore threatened beliefs, like the Just World Theory by
rationalization (reduce cognitive dissonance)
How do we restore threatened belief when seeing a victim?
- help victim
- blame victim
- ignore victim
good mood effect:
tendency to be more helpful when we’re happy
in terms of embarrassment, people help more when
less embarrassment
What is the IDENTIFIABLE VICTIN EFFECT?
endency for people to eagerly help a single victim, while ignoring the plight of victims of a
large - scale tragedy
- COMPASSION COLLAPSE
calculation of kin selection theory?
of relatives saved x genetic overlap = genetic fitness
In hypothetical life-or-death scenarios, Ps typically report they’d save relatives with …
- greatest genetic overlap
- healthy relatives and younger relatives
- more reproductive value
In hypothetical everyday scenarios, Ps typically report they’d save relatives with …
= more sickness
= older people
What are the five obstacles that must be overcome for emergency helping?
- notice event
- interpret as emergency
- accept personal responsibility
- decide how to help
- implement help
What is pluralistic ignorance?
if someone else ignores a threat, you will too
how can you eliminate the diffusion of responsibility?
single out person to help and tell them what to do
Selfless Acts of Helping?
Attempt to save others from harm while knowingly putting own life at risk
What is the Arousal/Cost Reward Model?
motive for helping others by combining egoism and altruism
behaviour in social dilemmas is influenced by…
- situational labels (community vs wall street game)
- priming (schema for coop. or competition)
Ways of socializing altruism?
- teaching moral inclusion
- modelling altruism (parents)
- attributing helpful behaviour to altruistic motive (reward prosocial acts)
- increase awareness of barriers to helping
- step by step ascent into goodness
What was the Virtuous Authority Experiment?
- instead of shocks, each button represents a greater act of VIRTUE
- eventually person will go all the way to more extreme act of VIRTUE
- step by step ascent into goodness
