Chapter 8 - social relations Flashcards
altruism
A motive to increase another’s welfare without conscious regard for one’s own self-interests.
social-exchange theory
The theory that human interactions are transactions that aim to maximize one’s rewards and minimize one’s costs.
Rewards
- may be external or internal
external. eg. When businesses donate money to improve their corporate image
internal. eg. Nearly all blood donors in Jane Piliavin’s research agreed that giving blood “makes you feel good about yourself”
egoism
A motive (supposedly underlying all behaviour) to increase your own welfare; the opposite of altruism, which aims to increase someone else’s welfare.
Internal rewards
The benefits of helping include internal self-rewards. When we are near someone in distress, we may feel distress. A scream outside your window arouses and distresses you. If you cannot reduce your arousal by interpreting the scream as a playful shriek, then you may investigate or give aid, thereby reducing your distress
Guilt
people seek to relieve guilt
David McMillen and James Austin (1971). You and another student, each seeking to earn credit toward a course requirement, arrive for the experiment. Soon after, a confed-
erate enters, portraying himself as a previous subject looking for a lost book. He strikes up a conversation in which he mentions that the experiment involves taking a multiple-choice test, for which most of the correct answers are “B.” After the accomplice departs, the experimenter arrives, explains the experiment, and then asks, “Have either of you been in this experiment before or heard anything about it?”
- after the test they were asked if they could help mark the tests
On average, those who had
not been induced to lie volunteered only two minutes of time. Those who had lied were apparently eager to redeem their self-image
- feel bad, do good
exceptions to feel bad - do good
- depression
- grief
- in these cases, when a person feels bad, they may only focus on themselves
- study, imagine your best friend has cancer, people tend to focus on themselves
Feel good - do good
Joseph Forgas and his colleagues (2008) had a confederate offer a Target department store salesperson either a mood-boosting compliment or a neutral or mood-deflating comment. Moments later, a second confederate, who was “blind” to the
mood-induction condition, sought the employee’s help in locating a nonexistent item. Among less-experienced staff (who lacked a practised routine for answering such requests), those receiving the mood boost made the greatest effort to help.
Alice Isen, Margaret Clark, and Mark Schwartz (1976) had a confederate call people who had, 0 to 20 minutes earlier, received a free sample of stationery. The confederate said she had used her last dime to dial this (supposedly wrong) number and asked each person to relay a message by phone. As Figure 8–1 shows, the individuals’
willingness to relay the phone message rose during the five minutes afterward. Then, as the good mood wore off, helpfulness dropped.
Social norms
sometimes we help because we feel like we ought to - social norms are these oughts
reciprocity norm
An expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them.
The reciprocity norm reminds us to balance giving and receiving in social relations.
social-responsibility norm
An expectation that people will help
those dependent upon them.
With people who clearly are
dependent and unable to reciprocate, such as children, the severely impoverished, and those with disabilities, another social norm motivates our helping.
that people should help those who need help, without regard to future exchanges
Gender and receiving help
Women offered help equally to males and females, whereas men offered more help when the strangers in need were females.
Evolutionary psych
theory. Evolutionary psychol-
ogy contends that the essence of life is gene survival. Our genes drive us in ways that have maximized their chance of survival. When our ancestors died, their genes lived on, predisposing us to behave in ways that will spread them into the future.
- Kin selection: If you carry my genes, I’ll favour you.
- Direct reciprocity: You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.
- Indirect reciprocity: I’ll scratch your back, you scratch someone’s, and someone will scratch mine.
- Group selection: Back-scratching groups survive.
kin selection
The idea that evolution has selected altruism toward one’s close relatives to enhance the survival of mutually shared genes.
helping others that are not completely related to us
We feel more empathy for a distressed or tortured person in our in-group and even schadenfreude (secret pleasure at their misfortune) for rivals or out-group members
Reciprocity
Genetic self-interest also predicts reciprocity. One organism helps another, biologist Robert Trivers argued, because it expects help in return (Binham, 1980). The giver expects to be the receiver later on.
group selection
To a much lesser extent, humans exhibit in-group loyalty by sometimes sacrificing to support “us” against “them.” Natural selection is, therefore, “multi-level,” according to
some researchers (Mirsky, 2009): It operates at both individual and group levels.
empathy
The vicarious experience of someone else’s feeling; putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.
- feeling empathy may not be genuine altruism, because feeling bad for someone makes us sad, and when we act, we act to alleviate those negative feelings that we feel
In one of their experiments, they led people to believe that their sadness was going to be relieved by a different sort of mood-boosting experience—listening to a comedy tape. Under such conditions, people who felt empathy were not especially helpful. Schaller and Cialdini concluded that if we feel empathy but know that something else will make us feel better, we aren’t so likely to help.
However, after some 25 experiments testing egoism versus empathy, Batson (2001) and others (Dovidio, 1991; Staub, 1991) believed that sometimes people do focus on the
welfare of others, not themselves.
bystander effect
Bibb Latané and John Darley (1970) had compared help given by bystanders who perceived themselves to be either alone or
with others. Given unrestricted communication among the bystanders, a person was at
least as likely to be helped by a lone bystander as when observed by several bystanders
as the number of bystanders increases, any given bystander is less likely to notice the incident, less likely to interpret the incident as a problem or emergency, and less likely to assume responsibility for taking
bystanders - noticing
- people were either alone or in a group
- smoke filled the room
- people who were alone noticed the smoke within 5 seconds
- people who were in a group took 20 seconds to notice the smoke
So it happened in the actual experiment. When those working alone noticed the smoke,
they usually hesitated a moment, then got up, walked over to the vent, felt, sniffed, and waved at the smoke, hesitated again, and then went to report it. In dramatic contrast, those
in groups of three did not move.
bystanders - interpreting
Once we notice an ambiguous event, we must interpret it.
informational influence. Each person uses others’ behaviour as clues to reality. Such misinterpretations can
contribute to a delayed response to actual fires in offices, restaurants, and other multiple-occupancy settings
- Notice the incident - no = no help
yes = 2 - Interpret as an emergency - no = no help
yes = 3 - Assume responsibility - no = no help
yes = 4 - Try to help
bystander effect
The finding that a person is less likely to provide help when there are other bystanders.
Latané and Judith Rodin (1969) staged an experiment around a woman in distress. A female researcher set men to work on a questionnaire and then left through a curtained doorway to work in an adjacent office. Four minutes later, she could be heard (from a tape recorder) climbing on a chair
to reach some papers. This was followed by a scream and a loud crash as the chair collapsed and she fell to the floor.
Seventy percent of those alone when they overheard the “accident” came into the room or called out to offer help. Among pairs of strangers confronting the emergency, only 40 percent of the time did either person offer help.
They placed people in separate rooms from which the participants would hear a victim crying for help.
Of those led to believe they were the only listener, 85 percent left their room to seek help. Of those who
believed that four others also overheard the victim, only 31 percent went for help.
Helping when someone else does
Prosocial models do promote prosocial behaviour.
In one field study, James Bryan and Mary Ann Test (1967) found that drivers were more likely to offer help to a female driver with a flat tire if a quarter-mile (0.4 km) earlier they had witnessed someone helping another woman change a tire.
time pressures
A person not in a hurry may stop and offer help to a person in distress. A person in a hurry is likely to keep going.
similarity bias
Because similarity is conducive to liking, and liking is conducive to helping, we are more empathic and helpful toward those similar to us
personality traits in being helpful
First, they have found individual differences in helpfulness, and they have shown that these differences persist over time and are noticed by a person’s peers
Second, researchers are gathering clues to the network of traits that predispose a person to helpfulness. Those high in emotionality, empathy, and self-efficacy are most likely to be
concerned and helpful
Those high in self-monitoring are attuned to the expectations of others and are especially helpful if they
think helpfulness will be socially rewarded
gender in helping
when faced with potentially dangerous situations in which strangers need help (such as with a flat tire or a fall in a subway), men more often help.
In safer situations, such as volunteering to help with an experiment or spending time
with children with developmental disabilities, women are slightly more likely to help.
How to increase helping
- Reduce Ambiguity, Increase Responsibility - Both face-to-face comments substantially boosted reporting of the crime. The potency of personal influence is no longer in doubt. - personally telling others what we should do
- personal appeal - Personalized nonverbal appeals can also be effective. A personal approach makes people feel less anonymous,
more responsible. - They found that bystanders who had identified themselves to one another—by name, age, and so forth—were more likely to offer aid to a sick person than were anonymous bystanders. - helpfulness also increases when you expect to see the victim and witness again
Guilt and Concern for Self-Image - people who feel guilty will act to reduce guilt and restore their self-worth. - when visitors to a zoo fed unauthorized food to the bears, some of them were admonished with, “Hey, don’t feed unauthorized
food to the animals. Don’t you know it could hurt them?” In both cases, 58 percent of the now guilt-laden subjects shortly thereafter offered help to another experimenter who
had “accidentally” dropped something. Of those not reprimanded, only one-third helped.
Guilt-laden people are helpful people.
moral inclusion
Regarding others as within your circle of moral concern
They include people who differ from themselves within the human circle to which their moral values and rules of justice apply.
moral exclusion
The perception of certain individuals or groups as outside the boundary within which you apply moral values and rules of fairness.
It justifies all sorts of harm,
from discrimination to genocide
