Helping Others

Question 1

Defining helping behaviour

Answer 1

Prosocial behaviour
Helping behaviour
Altruism

Question 2

What is prosocial behaviour?

Answer 2

Acts that are positively valued by society
Voluntary and has positive self consequences

Question 3

What is helping behaviour?

Answer 3

Subcategory of prosocial behaviour
Intentional and aimed at helping others

Question 4

What is altruism?

Answer 4

Subcategory of prosocial behaviour
Without expectation of personal gain

Question 5

Why do people help?

Answer 5

Biology and evolution
Empathy and altruism
Rewards of helping

Question 6

How does biology and evolution explain why people help?

Answer 6

Kin selection
- preferential helping of genetic relatives
- results in the greater likelihood that common genes will survive
- also found in capuchin monkeys

Reciprocal altruism
- involves helping another despite immediate risk/cost
- become more likely to receive help in return
- also found in chimpanzees

Question 7

Explain Bernstein’s study?

Answer 7

Used hypothetical situations to see how likely people were to help others in different situations
- degree of relatedness
- health of target
- situation

More help for close than distant kin
Tendency to help sick more than healthy was reversed in life and death situation

Question 8

Explain gray and Brogdon’s study?

Answer 8

Looked at whether biological grandparents and step grandparents differed in investment and emotional closeness with their grandchildren

Bio GM provided more direct childcare, financial expenditures and were closer emotionally than S-GM
Bio GF provided less direct care and had less emotionally close relationship than S-GF
Bio GM more than S-GF

Question 9

What are some critical thoughts around evolutionary theories of helping behaviour?

Answer 9

Difficult to demonstrate causal relationships
Although we are more likely to help kin, we help others as well
Difficulty explaining helping to a complete stranger

Question 10

How does empathy and altruism explain why people help?

Answer 10

Seeing someone someone else experience emotion activates the same part of the brain associated with that emotion in the perceiver, if they have high empathy
In turn this is related to more everyday helping behaviour

Question 11

What is empathy?

Answer 11

Understanding or vicariously experiencing another individuals perspective and feeling sympathy and compassion for that individual

Question 12

How does the rewards of helping others explain why people help?

Answer 12

Negative self relief model:
- helping makes us feel good
- people feeling bad will help others to feel better
- we help to reduce the negative feelings

Question 13

Difference between altruism and egoism?

Answer 13

Helping motivated by the desire to improve another’s wellbeing
Helping motivated by the desire to improve our own well-being

Question 14

What did batson discover about altruism?

Answer 14

Whether or not people help depends on how they respond emotionally to the victims plight
Empathy is critical

If you dont feel empathy towards the victim - only help if its in you interest

If you do feel empathy towards them - help regardless of whether it is in your interest to do so or not.

Question 15

Egoism

Answer 15

Perhaps altruism doesn’t exist
People help others to reduce feelings of distress. Sadness or guilt
When we empathise, we get a sense of oneness with the victim
Cialdini argues that we help for selfish reasons (self interest)

Question 16

Altruism or egoism (1997 saga)

Answer 16

Cialdini
- argued need to look at all egoistic motivators together, and empathy is due to oneness
- no relationship when all egoistic motives taken into account

Batson
- tested empathy=oneness hypothesis.
- found empathy helping relationship was not limited to shared group membership (shared group membership = more oneness.

Question 17

When do people help - Darley and batson

Answer 17

Ppts either believed they were early or late
Ppts either prepared to talk about being a minister, or about the story of the Good Samaritan
On way to give talk they encountered man slouched in doorway

Found Good Samaritan lecture always score higher than job lecture
Low need for hurry results in high help rate

Question 18

What is the bystander effect?

Answer 18

People are less likely to help in an emergency when they are with others than when they are alone

The greater the number the less likely it is that anyone will help

Question 19

What did Latane and Darley discover?

Answer 19

Asked students to fill in paperwork in a room
Gradually room filled with smoke
Participants alerted the experimenter:
- 75% of the time if they were alone
- 38% with stranger
- 10% passive confederate

Question 20

What processes are responsible for reluctance to help?

Answer 20

Diffusion of responsibility
Audience inhibition
Social influence

Question 21

What is diffusion of responsibility?

Answer 21

It’s not just my responsibility
Tendency of individual to assume that others will take responsibility (results in no one)

Question 22

What’s is audience inhibition?

Answer 22

What if i make a fool of myself

The dread of acting inappropriately or of making a foolish mistake witnessed by others
The desire to avoid ridicule inhibits effective responses to an emergency by members of a group

Question 23

What is social influence?

Answer 23

No one else seems worried

Other onlookers provide a model for action
If passive or unworried the situation may seem less serious

Question 24

How do mood states affect help?

Answer 24

Help more when sunny and pleasant smell

Good moods: increase helping. Less preoccupied with the self, more sensitive to others

Bad moods: decrease helping? Negative state relief model = more helping. More concerned with own issues, less concerned with welfare of others = less helping

Question 25

What is personal relative deprivation?

Answer 25

Dissatisfaction and resentment stemming from the beliefs that one is deprived of desire and deserved outcomes compared to some referent (e.g., what similar others have)

Question 26

What affects Who is more likely to help?

Answer 26

Individual differences
Competence
Leadership

Question 27

How do individual differences affect who will help?

Answer 27

Forgiveness - people willing to forgive can be more prosocial
Attachment styles - securely attached people are likely to be more compassionate

People coming from small towns are more likely to help

Question 28

How does competence affect who will help?

Answer 28

Having the skills to help increase helping
E.g., knowing first aid
I know what to do, I have the responsibility to help

Question 29

How does leadership affect who will help?

Answer 29

Competence aside, being a leader comes with more responsibility

Question 30

Whom do people help?

Answer 30

People make judgments regarding responsibility and controllability?

• is the person responsible for their situation
• do they have control over their predicament