Pro social 1st year Module 2

Question 1

What is pro-social behaviour?

Answer 1

Behaviour which focuses on helping other people
This behaviour may or may not help the person receving the help

Question 2

True or false.

Pro-social behaviour might be harmful

Answer 2

False.

Because it can be advantageous to the person receiving the help, and to the person giving help to the other person

Question 3

Mention a type of pro-social behaviour.

Answer 3

Altruism

Question 4

Explain altruism

Answer 4

Altruism is the desire to help someone in need. And it is not motivated by expecting something else in return
Altruism can be costly to the person performing it.

Question 5

What causes altruistic behaviour?

Answer 5

Empathy

Question 6

Define empathy

Answer 6

Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person’s feelings and put yourself in someone else’s shoes. (you put yourself in the emotional frame of mind and perspective of another person)

Question 7

Give examples regarding altruism

Answer 7

Charities
Feeding stray animals
Giving money or food to a homeless person
Blood organ donation
saving lives during the war

Question 8

True or false
Altruism is associated with selfishness

Answer 8

False
It’s associated with SELFLESSNESS

Question 9

What is the empathy altruism hypothesis? And how it is divided.
(BATSON)

Answer 9

The founder of this theory stated that altruistic behaviour is mostly caused by empathy

There are 2 main types of emotional reactions when observing someone in distress.

Personal distress and emphatic concern

Personal distress: you want to reduce your discomfort when watching a person in distress

Empathic concern: want to reduce the person’s suffering (the person here is compassionate and soft-hearted)

Batson believes that altruism is caused by empathic concern

Question 10

What does the negative state relief model state?

Answer 10

Cialdini who is the founder of this theory stated that when we feel empathy for a person, we feel sad at the same time. So we help the victim to reduce our sadness, this is selfish. (It is not genuine)

Question 11

Do children show pro-social behaviour?

Answer 11

According to psychologists children do not show pro-social behaviour.

Freud and Piaget argued that children often engage more in self-centred egocentric and anti-social behaviour

Question 12

However, research found other interesting things. What did Zahn Waxler et al conclude?

Answer 12

They concluded that children do show altruistic behavior and this increases with age

They have 2 children: 1 year and a month and a year and 8 months old, and it showed that 10% of the time they showed pro-social behaviour. Ex: sad or troubled faces

Empathetic concern: doubled with older children. ExL sharing food,o r giving a hug,sharing a favourite toy

1 yr 11 months and 2 yrs and 1 month

Question 13

Svetlova et al came up with 3 types of pro-social behaviour in children. Mention and explain them

Answer 13

THERE IS A LIMIT TO HOW MUCH CHILDREN SHOW PRO-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

Instrumental: Helping to help a person achieve something ex: climbing on a chair
Empathic: feeling troubled and worried for another person
Altruistic: helping someone at a personal cost ex: giving a toy to another child

Question 14

Which type of pro-social behaviour do children manifest the most and which is the one which manifests the least?

Answer 14

Instrumental: the most common
Emphatic: much less than instrumental
Altruistic: rare

. Altruistic behaviour was mainly shown by the adults. If altruistic behaviour was done by children it was mainly done to get a reward and not in a genuine altruistic spirit.

Question 15

Mention some factors which influence pro-social behaviour in kids.

Answer 15

Genetic factors: studies have shown that identical twins showed more pro-social behaviour rather than fraternal twins

Environmental factors: having a loving relationship with the parents increases high levels of pro-social behaviour

Question 16

Mention some types of behaviour which are not pro-social.

Answer 16

Taking the last piece of cake
Jumping a queue
Taking up 2 parking spaces because it is easier

Question 17

Why do we engage in altruistic behaviour?

Answer 17

4 reasons:

Evolutionary Theory and Reciprocal altruism
For good status
To avoid 3rd party punishment

Question 18

Explain from an evolutionary perspective.

Answer 18

This means that people might manifest pro-social behaviour because they work hard to ensure their survival and the transmission of their genes. ex: a mother helps her child to ensure the transmission of genes.

Studies have shown that people act altruistically because it is partly influenced by genetic factors and also partly influenced by emotional closeness.

Question 19

Explain reciprocal altruism.

Answer 19

Reciprocal altruism refers to helping strangers in need

Reciprocal altruism: I will help you because you are going to help me

So people can show altruistic behaviour to another person if they anticipate that the person will show altruistic behaviour towards them.

Question 20

Who came up with the reciprocal altruism?

Answer 20

Trivers

Question 21

When is reciprocal altruism displayed?

Answer 21

The cost of helping is low and gains are high.
And we can identify cheaters because they get helped but then they do not reciprocate

Question 22

Explain the 4 stages of empathy development by Hoffman

Answer 22

Stage 1: Global Empathy: this happens during the first year of life. For example, a baby will cry if they see another baby cry.

Stage 2: Egocentric empathy: happens during the first 2 years of life. The baby will figure out that someone else is in distress because they start to develop a sense of self.

Stage 3: empathy for another’s feelings: at 2 or 3 years the child develops genuine feelings of empathy

Stage 4: empathy for another’s life condition: this happens in late childhood, Able to understand other person’s feelings even if the behaviour is unclear.

Question 22

True or false.

There are still people who behave altruistically even if the people who help might not help back

Answer 22

True

Question 23

What theory did Fehr and Fischbacher come up with?

Answer 23

People might show altruistic behaviour towards others to get a good reputation for being altruistic individuals. So, this would help them to get assisted by others due to their status

Question 24

What is the reason behind 3rd party punishment?

Answer 24

People could show altruistic behaviour to avoid 3rd party punishment

This means punishing someone who has treated another person unequally, even though it involves a personal sacrifice.

Third-party punishment encourages altruism since it reduces selfishness and increases cooperation.

Question 25

There are cross-cultural differences. Meaning that people from different cultures are altruistic to various degrees. Mention an experiment which was done to show the different degrees to which people show pro-social behaviour.

Answer 25

So research was done in America which is mainly an individualistic culture, and Kenya which is mainly a collectivistic culture. This was done with a bunch of other countries as well. This experiment was done by Whiting and Whiting (1975), they focused on studying pro-social behaviour in children, in 6 different cultures.

8% of American children showed altruistic behaviour

100 % of Kenyan children showed altruistic behaviour

The other countries placed in between.

Question 26

Explain in detail the findings of this experiment.

Answer 26

It can be said that the findings of this experiment were influenced by 3 factors.

Individualism: (individualistic cultures): countries like the US and Okinawa have an emphasis on personal success and being competitive. This is a normal occurrence in industrialized cities. So this would lessen altruistic behaviour and cooperation.

Family structures: (family structures): In industrialized cultures family structure is different from cultures like Kenya and Mexico. In these types of cultures, families are larger and children are given more responsibilities from a young age like taking care of their siblings. So this will cause more collectivistic values and altruistic behaviour in children, to develop altruism. The children focus more on the group’s needs rather than the individual’s

Reciprocal altruism(similarities between both cultures): both cultures expect to be helped in exchange for helping. However collectivistic cultures expect to be helped more as they offer more help than individualistic cultures.

Question 27

How can we encourage pro-social behaviour?

Answer 27

The main factor which encourages pro-social behaviour is parental influence.

Parents are the best role models for their kids. They are the ideal people to promote altruistic and pro-social behaviour in their children.]]

Or television or video games

Question 28

Who came up with 4 types of behaviours that parents show which would help children elicit pro-social behaviour?

Answer 28

Schaffer (1996)

Question 29

Explain what Schaffer came up with.

Answer 29

1) Providing clear and explicit guidelines
:

Share your toys with other children or be kind to other children even if they are unkind
or you need to treat people in the same way even if they have a different colour skin

2) Emotional conviction

Parents should be emotionally convincing when providing these guidelines

3) Parental modelling:

Parents should teach by example, and parents should behave altruistically towards their children

4) Empathic and sincere parents:

parents should try and understand their children’s point of view. They need to understand their children’s emotions and treat them with warmth and love.

Question 30

What do studies show about children who play and watch pro-social television or pro-social video games?

Answer 30

These children exhibited more pro-social behaviour

When children watched pro-social television they showed altruistic behaviour especially if the behaviour was viewed as easy to replicate and imitate.

However, children who played pro-social video games helped to promote pro-social behaviour because it provided them with pro-social scenarios, and they caused pro-social behaviour to be easily accessible, which in turn promoted pro-social behaviour.

Research has shown that children who engage In pro-social video games have an increase in empathy which leads to more pro-social behaviour. However, research also found that still, parental influence is still the most important when it comes to pro-social behaviour.