levine - 2001 Flashcards
What is altruism?
A selfless concern of the wellbeing of others and the willingness to do things that would advantage others even if it disadvantages yourself
What are examples of altruism?
- giving money to a homeless person
- giving last piece of food to someone
What are not examples of altruism?
- offering something and then expecting something of equal value back
- wanting to be praised or rewarded for helping
What is the background to Levine?
The theories of helping behaviour
What is helping behaviour?
Voluntary actions intended to help others and is a form of pro-social behaviour
What is selection theory?
Suggests that people help those who are of a similar genetic base - family - as this may favour their chance of survival
What is the weakness of the selection theory?
It does not explain why people help those who are not related to one and other
What is Reciprocal Altruism?
Suggests that people are incentivised to help based on expectation of potential receipt in the future
What is an example of reciprocal altruism?
Big fish who let little fish into their mouths to clean their teeth without eating them
What is Responsibility-Prosocial Value Orientation?
Suggests that the reason people help is because we have a belief that it is one’s responsibility to help - especially combined with the belief that one is able to help the other person
What is Social Exchange Theory?
Suggests that people help because they want to gain goods from the one being helped and so they calculate the rewards and costs of helping - aiming to maximise the rewards and minimise the costs
How does culture affect helping behaviour?
Whether it is a individualistic or collectivist culture
What is a collectivist culture?
A collectivist culture tends to the needs and goals of the group they belong to
What is an individualist?
People who focus on themselves
How do collectivists and individualists relate to helping behaviour?
Collectivists are more likely to help in-group members BUT less likely than individualists to help strangers
Why did Levine want to conduct the research?
Because almost no systematic cross-cultural research of helping behaviour had been conducted prior
What is the aim of Levine’s study?
To investigate helping behaviour in a wide range of cultures
What were the 4 community variables?
1- population size
2- economic well-being
3- cultural values (individualist, collectivist & simpatia )
4- walking speed (pace of life)
What is Simpatia?
An important value in Latino culture meaning: accord, agreement, and harmony in relationships, marriage, the family, and society
What are the 3 main goals of the study?
1- to determine if a city’s tendency to offer NON-EMERGENCY help to strangers is stable across situations over a wide range of cultures
2- to obtain a descriptive body of data on helping behaviour across cultures using identical procedures
3- to identity country-level variables that might relate to differences in helping
What was the sample?
individuals within the large cities of 23 countries (in most cases the largest in each)
What are 4 examples of the cities that the sample was from?
- Rio de Janerio (Brazil)
- Madrid (Spain)
- Rome (Italy)
- New York (USA)
Who was excluded from the sample?
- Children (younger than 17)
- People who were physically disabled
- Very old
- Carrying packages
How were participants selected?
By approaching the second potential person who crossed a predetermined line
What are the strengths of the sample?
- large = representative = generalisable
- diverse = less affected by culture bias
What are the weaknesses of the sample?
- still affected by culture bias - does not investigate every country in the world
- therefore not completely representative and diverse
What is the sampling technique?
Opportunity
What is a strength of this sampling technique?
available at the time - quicker to obtain
What is a weakness of the sampling technique?
- unrepresentative as all of the sample for each of the countries are likely to be the same type of people as they are all in the same place
What is the method?
Quasi-experiment