Lecture 10 - Altruism and Prosocial Behaviour Flashcards
What is altruism?
any act of voluntary self-sacrifice intended to benefit another person with no expectation of reward (e.g., donating a kidney to a stranger)
What is prosocial behaviour?
any act performed by an individual with the goal of benefiting another person
What is the evolutionary perspective of altruism?
Contemporary evolutionary theory rejects the notion of straightforward individual selection:
1. Behaviours are thought to be displayed to the extent that they are adaptive and contribute to ‘inclusive fitness’
2. The GENE is the unit of selection, not the individual
→ Natural selection should favour altruistic acts directed toward kin
What did Burnstein et al find about the evolutionary perpective?
- If an evolutionary approach can explain helping, then we ought to help kin more than non-kin
- Participants – 292 US undergraduates
- Participants presented with hypothetical scenarios – help or not?
- Manipulated:
- Degree of relatedness to target (close kin v. distant kin)
- Health of target (good v. poor)
- Situation (everyday v. life or death)
- Overall, participants more likely to help someone who is closer in relation (e.g., a sister over a niece)
- Under life-or-death conditions, participants more likely to help someone who is in good health
- Under everyday conditions, participants more likely to help someone who is sick
What did Korchmaros & Kenny find when replicating Burnstein et al’s study?
- Replicated Burnstein et al.’s experiment – but asked participants (29 college students) to imagine real (rather than hypothetical) family members
- Measured how emotionally close / connected the participants felt with different relatives
- Emotional closeness predicted willingness to help more strongly than genetic closeness
- Genetic relatedness plays a role – but is strengthened by developing emotional bonds with family members
What did Wu et al (2016) do when looking into the cultural differences?
- Participants: 443 college students in Taiwan and 598 college students in the US
- Task: Participants asked to imagine themselves as 30-years-old, married, financially independent, and living separately from their parents
- Presented with life-or-death scenario (burning home) or everyday scenario (favour at supermarket)
- Mother or spouse – who do you help?
What did Wu et al (2016) find in their cultural difference study?
- In Taiwan, in both everyday and life-or-death scenarios, participants prioritise saving their mother
- In US, in both scenarios, participants prioritise saving their spouse
- Relative evolutionary advantages?
- More importantly – cultural dissimilarity
What are the limits to the evolutionary approach?
- Demonstrating causal relationships is difficult, if not impossible
- We might help close kin more, but for reasons other than genetics (e.g., emotional attachment, cultural norms)
- Although we are more likely to help close kin, this is not the only helping – how do we explain instances of helping complete strangers?
What is the social exchange theory?
- Builds on behaviourist notions related to human learning (e.g., Skinner) – behaviour is motivated by the desire to maximise rewards and minimise costs
- Rewards can be:
- Tangible (e.g., money)
- Intangible (e.g., social approval)
- Removal of aversive states (e.g., distress)
→ Negative State Relief Hypothesis: When we expect to engage in alternative mood enhancing activities, we help less (Schaller & Cialdini, 1988)
What is the empathy-altruism model?
Batson (1991) suggested that whether people help depends on how they respond emotionally to the victims plight
- The experience of empathy (or its absence) leads people down different paths:
- If you DO NOT feel empathy for a victim, then help is only given if it is in your interest to do so (i.e., social exchange view)
- If you DO feel empathy for a victim, then help is given regardless of self-interest – even when the costs outweigh the rewards
What did Toi & Batson (1982) do when testing the empathy-altruism model?
- Participants: 84 female undergraduate participants
- Task: Listen to a radio show “News on the Personal Side” – story about a fellow student on your course who broke both legs in a car crash
- Conditions – low cost of not helping v. high cost of not helping (student will be working from home v. student will be in your class)
- Conditions – low empathy v. high empathy (maintain your emotional distance v. put yourself in the shoes of the person in the story)
What did Toi & Batson (1982) find when testing the empathy-altruism model?
Despite the cost, when there was high empathy, a similar amount of people agreed to help
- When there was low empathy, less people chose to help if there was a low cost
What are the situational factors of helping others?
- The behaviour of others is important when we consider whether to offer our own help
- Kitty Genovese murder suggested people were reluctant to help because they assumed others would do so
- This spurred interest in a phenomenon termed the ‘bystander effect’
How did Latane & Darley (1970) test the bystander effects?
- Students sit in a room to complete a series of questionnaires
- Smoke begins to fill the room…
- 75% of participants approached the experimenter when they were alone
- 38% of participants approached the experimenter if they were with strangers
- 10% of participants approached the experimenter if they were with strangers who ignored the smoke
Who deserves our help?
Identity of the victim is a strong cue to how deserving someone is of help
How did Levine et al (2005) test who deserves our help?
- Recruited Manchester United fans
- Identity task – think and write about what it means to you to be a Man Utd fan
- Walk across campus to next part of study…
- … Run into fallen victim in need of help
What did Levine et al (2005) find?
They were more likely to help a Manchester United fan than neutral or Liverpool
