Prosocial Behaviour Flashcards
What is prosocial behaviour vs altruism?
- prosocial: actions that benefit others
- altruism: helping others with no benefit to self
What is inclusive fitness?
when copies of genes survive, we experience reproductive success
What is kin selection?
help people who are genetically related to you to increase reproductive success
What was the relatedness experiment? What was the result?
- how closely related do you feel to parent, grandparent, uncle, stranger
- feel most related to people we share genes with
- feel more related to step-kin than acquaintances
- results across culture (likely due to evolution)
What was the relatedness scenario study method?
- scenario study: imagine self in situation and answer questions about behaviour
- imagine person asking for small favour or life/death situation
- 3 different people you can help (different ages, genders and relatedness)
What was the relatedness scenario study findings?
- relatedness: more likely to help genetic people in both situations, MUCH more in life/death situations
- age: on easy task help youngest and oldest, on life/death help youngest (highest reproductive success)
- gender and age: easy task slightly more likely to help women (men greater fluctuation with age); life/death slightly more likely to help women (declines with age for both genders)
What was the result of who you would help in a famine study?
most likely to feed 10-18 year olds (high likelihood of reproductive success)
- don’t feed baby because unlikely to survive
What is reciprocal altruism?
We help others with expectation that they will help us later
Are small groups or large groups more helpful? What about cities?
- small is more helpful
- higher chance favour is returned
What is proximate causation?
current events/situation impacts thoughts, feelings and behaviour
What is the bystander effect?
the more people witnessing the emergency, less likely person will be helped
What is the explanation behind the bystander effect?
- ambiguous situation: don’t know if it’s an emergency
- evaluation apprehension: will others judge me
- pluralistic ignorance: everyone pretending to be calm and conforming to each other
- diffusion of responsibility
What was the woman in distress experiment method?
- fill out survey alone or other person in room
- other person: another participant, unfazed confederate or friend
- hear loud fall from room lady just went into
What was the woman in distress experiment findings?
- alone: very likely to help
- friend: very likely to help
- another participant: lower chance of helping
- unfazed confederate: lowest chance of helping (pluralistic ignorance)
What was the seizure experiment method?
- have discussion over intercom about uni student’s problems
- “experimenter not listening in on convo”
- either told 1, 3 or 5 other people
- mic turns on for 2 minutes and cycles through
- one guy says he has history of seizures and says he is having one
What was the seizure experiment findings?
- only participant and seizure man: helped
- participant and 3 confederates: less help
- participant and 5 confederates: least help
Compare the woman in distress and seizure experiment in regards to ambiguity, communication, witness makeup and what they test
WID - ambiguous, could communicate, if you know other witness more likely to help (pluralistic ignorance)
Seizure - unambiguous, could not communicate, more witnesses = less help (diffusion of responsibility)
What is the 5 step bystander prevention model?
- notice the event
- interpret event as emergency (overcome pluralistic ignorance)
- responsibility to help (overcome diffusion of responsibility)
- decide how to help + implementation
- make conscious decision to help
How do you increase helping?
- reduce ambiguity
- clarify responsibility (single someone out)
- less likely to do bystander effect if educated about effect
When is the effect reversed? Why?
- in dangerous situations (more witnesses = more help)
- in clear situation focus on costs of NOT helping (ambiguous focus on costs of helping)
- heightened arousal creates drive we want to reduce
- also if need multiple people to help
- also if we think we’ll be ridiculed for not helping
What is the empathy-altruism model?
- pure altruism exists
- happens when we empathize with sufferer
What is the effect of empathy?
- creates higher quality and amount of help
- less calculation of cost vs reward of helping
What was the empathy learner shock experiment method?
- participant assigned observer and confederate learner
- can give 0-5 hints when learner is struggling
- induce high or low empathy
- either potential negative effect of helping (give too many hints, will hurt in long run) or not (more hints = easier)
What was the empathy learner shock experiment findings?
- low empathy: give same number of hints if negative effect or not
- high empathy: give fewer hints if negative effect of helping
- empathy increases quality of help
What is the negative state relief model?
- pure altruism does NOT exist
- help others because it benefits us somehow
What are the 2 mechanisms behind the negative state relief model?
- helping others boosts own mood (socialized)
- if easier way to boost our mood, won’t help
What was the method behind the mall field experiment?
- confederate 1 asks person to take picture
- camera “breaks”
- confederate 1 either induces guilt or not
- later, confederate 2 is carrying bag leaking candies
What were the mall field experiment findings?
- no guilt: unlikely to help
- guilt: very likely to help
Which negative states leads to not helping? Why?
- depression: too self focused
- anger: helping others doesn’t boost mood
What was the radio station experiment method?
- there to “evaluate effectiveness of radio program”
- given an outline of experiment (sad, sad OR sad, happy OR sad, easy help)
- 1st sad program about girl in car crash needing help with school
- what number of hours would you help her for?
- don’t actually need to do second task
What was the radio station experiment findings?
- sad, sad: very likely to help
- sad, happy/easy help: unlikely to help
- if other way to boost mood, won’t help
How do we test which helping model is correct?
do experiment that creates empathy without negative state
What was the learner shock feedback experiment method?
- participant is observer
- confederate is learner
- fill out personality questionaire
- participant induced with high or low empathy
- either receives positive or no feedback on questionaire
- asked to take learner’s spot for any of last 8 questions
What was the learner shock feedback experiment findings?
- low helping: low empathy condition and high empathy with positive feedback
- high helping: high empathy with no feedback
- empathy increases helping because it creates negative state
What was the experiment on positive states?
- knock on door and asked to rate stationary (some given free sample, some not)
- 1-20 mins later, asked to relay phone call because wrong number
- control: only asked to relay phone call
What were the findings of the positive state experiment?
- less than 7 mins: highest rate of helping
- 10-16 mins: less helping
- 20 mins: same amount of helping as control
What is the mechanism behind positive states helping?
- pay it forward mentality
- good mood -> positive thoughts -> positive behaviour -> good mood
When do we not help people when in good mood?
If we think helping them will ruin good mood
What is the evolutionary origin of empathy?
responding to infant’s needs
What is courageous resistance
helping in the face of potentially enormous costs (e.g. helping jews in halocaust)
What is the relationship between empathy and remembering person?
- low empathy only help if we think we’ll remember person in distress
- high empathy help if we think we’ll remember them or not
Are people more likely to continue in long-term, demanding helping if self-focused or other-focused?
self-focused
How does time affect likelihood of helping?
- if rushed to act, tend to help
- if busy, not likely to help
Is good or bad moods a stronger predictor of helping?
Good moods
When do bad moods lead to helping?
If we blame self for it (induces guilt); if we blame others it induces anger
What is reluctant altruism?
Behaviour resulting from peer pressure/other social influence
What factors are correlated to helping?
- helping in preschool
- high agreeableness
- high openness
- high conscientiousness
- empathy and moral reasoning skills
What are simpatia cultures?
More concern for other’s well-beings; more likely to help
Are collectivists more likely to help than individualists?
- more likely to help in-group; less likely to help out-group
- less likely to help in ambiguous situation
What is the helping norm in an exchange relationship?
Give help and expect similar level of benefit in return (e.g. classmate)
What is the helping norm in a communal relationship?
Feel responsible for other’s needs so not concerned with cost/rewards of helping (e.g. partner)
What are factors in target that increase our helping towards them?
- nice
- attractive
- similar to us (exception: race, don’t want to be racist)
When do women vs men help?
- women seek help more than men
- men help in physically demanding/dangerous situation
- women help with emotions/social support
How do different cultures vary in how they seek help?
- europeans seek more help than asians
- asians benefit from implicit social support (imagining close others)
