Helping others Flashcards
(38 cards)
What is helping behaviour?
Actions intended to provide some benefit to or improve the situation of others
May be paid for
What is prosocial behaviour?
Defined by society as beneficial to others
Excludes behaviour driven my professional obligations
May be driven by more selfish or selfless motivations
What is altruism?
Behaviour that has the ultimate goal of benefiting another person with no anticipation of rewards.
Driven by exclusively empathetic motivation
What are 4 main explanations for motivation to help others?
- Prosocial behaviours help our groups survive - evolutionary perspective
- Because we care - empathy-altruism hypothesis
- To avoid negative emotions - negative-state-relief model
- Prosocial social norms increase helping behaviour - role of group processes.
What is the evolutionary perspective of helping others?
Groups of organisms work/act together for common or mutual benefits - cooperation
Need for approval, acceptance and being connected to supportive communities
What is kinship selection according to the evolutionary perspective?
We are more likely to do things that further the progress of a shared gene pool, even at the expense of our own wellbeing
Result=an evolutionary urge to favour those with closer genetic relatedness.
What is social exchange according to the evolutionary perspective?
Evolution of prosocial trading that strengthens the group eg. sharing food; communal child-care
What is reciprocal altruism according to the evolutionary perspective?
Expectation that our helpfulness will be returned in future
What is the altruism-ego debate for helping others? Who are 2 notable figures?
Batson vs Cialdini
Do we help others, or do we only help ourselves?
What are community helping motives (Batson, 1994) as part of the altruism-ego debate?
Principlism (acting to uphold principle)
Collectivism (acting to benefit a group)
Egoism (ultimate goal is self-benefit)
Altruism (increase a person or group’s welfare)
What is Bateson’s empathy-altruism hypothesis?
Pure altruism is a possible underlying motivation in helping behaviours
If someone feels empathy towards another person, they will help them regardless of what they can gain from it
What is empathy?
Experience of understanding or sharing the emotional state of another person
What is the altruism-egoism debate?
Witnessing distress causes unpleasant mood in observer who is then motivated to act in order to reverse this mood
Who coined the negative-state-relief model?
Cialdini et al., 1987)
What is the negative-state-relief model?
Human beings have an innate drive to reduce their own negative moods
Helping behaviours as a path to elevate mood
People help for egoistic rather than altruistic reasons
Person observes a suffering victim -> person feels negative emotion (sadness) -> person helps to alleviate their own sadness
How did Batson et al. (1981) study the empathy-altruism hypothesis?
Ps watched fellow student (confederate) get an electric shock.
Ps could offer to take remaining shocks themselves.
Difficulty and empathy manipulated.
Results are said to support empathy-altruism hypothesis.
Results lead to more debate.
What are the origins of research on bystander intervention?
38 witnesses to the murder of Kitty Genovese, New York, 1964
What were some attempts to explain the lack of bystander intervention in Kitty Genovese’s murder?
Moral decay, social alienation or state of contemporary urban life
What is the bystander effect?
The likelihood of any one person helping in an emergency situation decreases as the number of other bystanders increases
What is the number effect as a part of the bystander effect?
The larger the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that anyone will help
What is the 5 step decision making model of bystander behaviour (Latane and Darley, 1970)?
External event -> high/low awareness of event -> interpretation of event as emergency/non-emergency -> Personal/no personal responsibility -> Mode/no mode of assistance available -? implementing intervention/no intervention
Bystander intervention is inhibited by what three social psychological processes?
- Diffusion of responsibility - process by chich responsibility is divided between number of bystanders (more people, less individual responsibility)
- Pluralistic ignorance - emergency bystanders look to others in reacting to event - as each person fails to react, they look at non-reacting bystanders and interpret event as not requiring a response
- Audience inhibition - bystanders may fear embarrassment by their actions, resulting in a lower likelihood of them helping - audience inhibition process is particularly strong when bystanders feel they lack competence to provide help -> self-efficacy - beliefs about one’s ability to carry out certain actions required to attain a specific goal
How did Philpot et al (2020) research the bystander effect?
Will I be helped if victimised in public?
Reviewed 219 videos of violent incidents.
in 9 out of 10 public conflicts at least 1 member of public intervened - most commonly, multiple intervened
The more bystanders present the greater the likelihood of bystander intervention
Responsibility diffusion vs mechanical helping potential
Call for change in focus from an absence of help to when help is successful or unsuccessful
What is the cost-reward model of helping?
Motivational construct - vicarious model.
Cognitive, decision-making components: calculation of costs and rewards of actions
Includes concept of we-ness
