prosocial behavior Flashcards
what is prosocial behavior
opposite of aggression, helpful behavior
what are three implications of prosocial behavior
- Says nothing about motive or circumstance
- Can be selfishly motivated
- Can occur with or without a cost to oneself
how is altruism different than prosocial behavior
Helping others without regard to (or despite) the costs to oneself
what are the two motives
egoistic motives and altruistic motives
what are the two broad categories of egoistic motives
- social rewards motives
- experienced distress motive
what is social rewards motive
- Social rewards motive: helping to increase one’s esteem in the eyes of others
- Considerable research that others like people who help, we rate them positively, we are more likely to give money to someone that we have seen help someone else
what is experienced distress motive
- Experienced distress motive: Helping to reduce one’s own distress caused by witnessing another’s distress
- A person gets worked up and distressed when they see someone else get worked up and distressed, so it can calm us down to help them (helping them is a way for us to feel better)
- This is why many pleas for help/donations try to increase a person’s distress
what is the altruistic motive
empathetic concern motive
what is the empathetic concern motive
- Helping to reduce the other’s distress, which is felt empathetically
- We help because we want to reduce someone else’s distress not our own
what is the empathy altruism hypothesis
The idea that when we feel empathy for a person we will attempt to help hat person purely for altruistic reasons
what can we take the empathy altruism hypothesis to mean
- Can take it to mean that the only truly altruistic help is the help driven by empathy
- Or, take it to mean that inducing empathy will then lead to help
- When we get a person to take another’s person perspective they are more likely to help
explain the Cialdini et all study that sees if empathy affects willingness to help (getting participants to take another persons perspective)
- Dependent measure: will a participant share notes and help a person study when they miss class, was in a huge class (intro to psych) so people did not know everyone in their class
- Participants watched a video of a girl being interviewed, recently in car accident and broke leg so it was hard for her to get around and get to class
- Participants given opportunity to say they would help the girl in the class (give her notes and help her study)
- Empathy manipulation: imagine what she must be feeling, put yourself in her head
- Control condition: watched the video of her being interviewed
Results: consistent with the empathy-altruism hypothesis, when participants took her perspective they were more willing to help and put in more hours to help her, but we still do not know what happened when they took her perspective (did they want to help her reduce her distress, or did they want to reduce their own distress when they took her perspective?)
what was the follow up Cialdini et al study
- seeing if empathy-altruism hypothesis or experienced distress motive is right
- Had same set up as first study but added another independent variable, participants were led to believe their mood was frozen or not (either drank beverage that was “found to make a person’s mood stuck” for a period of time or did not drink this beverage), people actually do believe this manipulation (Brown studied this herself)
- If people think their mood cannot be changed, they would not help to make their own distress feel better because they think that their mood cannot be changed
- So if people actually do help to decrease someone else’s distress, they should still help regardless of if they drank the drink or not
-So 2 (perspective vs. no perspective) x 2 (mood frozen vs. not frozen)
-Results: find that empathy increases helping, but when there is nothing to do to change feelings empathy does not increase willingness to help (people help to eliminate their own distress) GRAPH ON PAPER
Shows that on average, when perspective taking increases empathy we help because this perspective taking increases our own distress (not wholly altruistic, but this does not mean that altruism does not exist)
who do we tend to help
family and people who have helped us
explain helping family
those who receive help are family members, most likely to help other family members and receive help from them
explain kin selection
those who help genetic relatives increase the likelihood that their genes will be passed on (evolutionary perspective), evolution favors helping genetic relatives
where do we see kin selection
across species
-the animals that have the highest rate of sacrifice in groups have the highest amount of genetic similarities
explain kin selection study
hypothetical extreme helpful behavior, trolley problem, imagine there is a trolley coming to a fork (no matter what someone is going to die), one track has one person the other track has up to 5
when they are all strangers people choose to save the group of 5 people, but choose a family ember over a higher number of strangers
-70% choose saving brother over 15 strangers, 60% choose saving cousin over 15 strangers
explain reciprocal altruism
we are more likely to help those who have helped us, in fact there are some theories that feeling gratitude for receiving help may have evolved to give us motivation to help others
-people can even feel a weight, a burden, that they have to help someone else
what happens if we develop a positive reputation for helping others in reciprocal altruism
if we develop a positive reputation for helping others, that benefits us because we are then more likely to receive help (even if we did not help someone directly
what is the “but” in if something is evolutionary beneficial
just because something is evolutionary beneficial, it does not mean it is guaranteed (there are cases of familial abuse, etc)
what are the situation determinants of helping
1) costs and rewards
2) number of bystanders
3) diffusion of responsibility
4) clarity of the situation and pluralistic ignorance
explain costs and rewards
they matter when choosing to help or not to help someone
what are some potential costs of helping
personal safety, being a witness, being implicated in the event, potentially making something worse, inconvenience to one’s own life
what is social exchange theory relevant to helping others
relative costs and rewards matter not only in relationships, but in choosing to help or not help
-if helping comes with few costs and the potential to look good, we are more likely to help
what is the costs and rewards activity we did in class
ranking likelihood of helping (picking up teacher’s papers vs. helping intervene in a fight outside of a bar)
how are there multiple kids of helping
there can be direct and indirect ways of helping (intervening yourself vs. calling the police)
what happens if blood is present in a situation
the likelihood of help decreases
study: person fake falls, in one condition there is fake blood and in the other condition there is not, people re less likely to help with blood (potential for transmitting diseases)
what is the bystander effect
the more people present when a person needs help, the less likely it is that help will be given (and if give, the slower it will arrive)
-as number of people present increases, the likelihood of helping others decreases
what was Brown’s example of the bystander effect
two different car accidents
1) outside of DC on the beltway, 4 in the afternoon and 6 car chain reaction, while waiting for tow truck people drove by and yelled and cursed at Brown because they were pissed about the traffic
2) driving in the middle of the night in Ohio, drove car off the road, every car except one asked Brown if they were okay
explain the bystander effect study about the survey and smoke in room
Study: participants were completing a survey in a room, researchers manipulated if they were alone, with two other real participants, or two confederates (told to do nothing, focus on survey)
-Smoke starts entering the room, record how long it takes participant to do something after they first notice the smoke
Results: People with confederates look at the other people first to see what they are doing, takes them a lot longer to report that there is smoke in the room or do not report it at all (after twenty minutes)
-When participants were alone over 70% got up within two minutes, only 10% in confederate condition, slightly over 10% in participant condition
what do the findings in the smoke study and bystander effect show us
striking finding, as soon as there are other people present we are less likely to act, even when everyone was capable of saying something about the smoke in the participant condition
explain the study about the bystander effect with people thinking someone else was having seizure
Study: participants heard a staged incident that sounded like someone else was having a seizure (all freshmen at a university), experiment described as college adjustment study- told the point was to have people talk with each other about their adjustments to college (could not see each other’s faces), talking over intercom, took turns talking for 2 minutes then onto next person, participant was always second person talking
- Manipulated number of people: participant and one person, participant plus two people, participant plus five people
- First person described himself as being from small town, mentions he has epilepsy and that when stressed he can have a seizure, second time the intercom came back to him he sounded like he was getting a seizure (could not speak coherently, other symptoms), measured how long it took people to help (could not talk to other people talking)
what were the results of the seizure study
Results: average time to help
- Alone: 100% left room to seek help, average time to help was 52 seconds
- 1 other person: only 85% helped, average time to help was 93 seconds
- 5 other people: only 60% helped, average time was 3 minutes
so, the belief that other people are just listening still affects one’s likelihood to help
what are the explanations for the bystander effect
- diffusion of responsibility
- anonymity
- clarity of the situation and pluralistic ignorance
explain diffusion of responsibility
the feeling of responsibility gets diffused across everyone present when there are more people present
what is diffusion of responsibility similar to
social loafing
-when there are more people working on a task people do not give as much effort as they would if they were alone
explain anonymity as a factor in the bystander effect
if we are the only person present, if we help or not is known to the individual who needs help
-when other people know our identity we feel more accountable for helping
if we are in a larger crowd, we feel anonymous which decreases out likelihood to help
what is anonymity similar to
deindividuation, anonymity changes behavior (more likely to act in a way you would not if you were by yourself)
explain clarity of the situation
a lot of situations are ambiguous if help is needed or not
- when the situation is not clear we do not think it is a situation we need to intervene
ex. seeing a man on the ground in the city (maybe he is homeless or maybe he is having a medical issue) - if everyone else is walking by we assume that the person does not need help
explain pluralistic ignorance
- we look to others to try and figure out how we should act
- look around to see if anyone else is doing anything, if no one is, assume it is not an emergency (everyone else is doing the same thing, so everyone is concluding nothing is wrong, even if something is wrong)
what is pluralistic ignorance similar to
group think, people might disagree, but these individuals are waiting to see if someone else speaks up and if no one does they assume they are the only one who disagrees and do not say anything (even though there are multiple people who disagree that are going through the same process)
what two influences can affect helping or not helping
normative and informational
what is normative influence
we change our behavior because we do not want to be embarrassed and we want other people to like us
-If we are not sure that someone needs help (ambiguous), and no one else is doing anything, we do not want to embarrass ourselves by overreacting
what is informational influence
we do not know what is actually happening so we look to others to see what is actually happening (do not know if someone actually needs help)
-If no one else is acting, we assume that it is not an emergency
what is beneficial to do in potential help situations and Brown example
- it could be beneficial to ask someone if they need help so you are not influenced by the above factors
ex. Brown, because she teaches this, feels the responsibility to help because she knows that other people could be affected by these factors
what is Darley and Latane’s Bystander Intervention Decision Tree
Shows that there are a lot of stages where help could potentially not be given
-Do not notice the incident, do not interpret as emergency, do not assume responsibility
(show chart on paper)
summary: when do people help in emergencies
- Clear emergency
- Danger to helper is minimal
- Helper is asked
- No one else can help
- Helper has time to help
