Prosocial Behaviour

Question 1

What is a prosicial behaviour?

Answer 1

acts that are positively value by society

Question 2

What is a helping behaviour?

Answer 2

acts that intentionally benefit someone else

Question 3

What is Alturism?

Answer 3

a special kind of helping behaviour, sometimes costly, that shows concern for fellow human beings and is performed without expectation of personal gain (Psychology perspective)  behaviour costly to the actor and beneficial to the recipient, measured in lifetime personal fitness consequences (Biology / Evolutionary Psychology perspective)

Question 4

Is Alturism evolutionary adaptive?

Answer 4

Kin selection
Evolutionary strategy that favours behaviours that increase the chance of survival of genetic relative (Hamilton, 1964)
Identical monozygotic twins 100%
Parents, children, siblings, and fraternal (dizygotic) twins 50%
Half-sibling, grandparent, and grandchild 25%
Cousins, great-grandchildren, great-grandparents, great-aunts, great-uncles 12.5%
Unrelated persons, such as a marital partner, brother in-law or sister-in-law, adopted or step-sibling, friend, or acquaintance 0%

According to evolutionary principles, the degree of genetic closeness should be positively correlated with the likelihood that we will help each of those people, which is confirmed in several studies (e.g., Neyer & Lang 2003).
• We also help people more similar to us (friends, members of the ingroup, strangers similar to us).

Question 5

What is reciprocal alturism?

Answer 5

Reciprocal altruism

• Helping others with the expectation that they will probably return the favour in the future (Trivers, 1971).
• Prerequisites

Cost of the altruistic act must be lower than the benefit

Must be able to recognize each other in order to reciprocate and detect cheats

Must have reasonably long life-span in order to re-encounter individuals and to have a chance for reciprocation to occur

• Individuals living in groups were best able to survive when they cooperated with one another

Reciprocal altruism

• Many animals also engage in reciprocal altruism (e.g., vampire bats, chimpanzees and bonobos, dolphins…)

Satisfied bats will regurgitate blood to feed bats that have given to them in the past, but will not make a donation to a bat that has not been a donor itself

Question 6

Outline why sexual selection may explain alturism

Answer 6

Sexual selection
• Altruism increases one’s reputation as a potential mate
Prosocial men were rated as more physically and sexually attractive, socially desirable, and desirable as dates than were non-prosocial men (Jensen-Campbell et al., 1995)
Altruistic men were considered more desirable long-term mates (Barclay, 2010)
Men were more generous in their charity contributions when in the presence of a potential mate (Iredale et al., 2008)
More altruistic people have higher mating success (more partners and more frequent sex within relationships) (Arnocky et al., 2016

Question 7

Explain how brain systems may explain alturism

Answer 7

Prosocial behaviours activate the same brain circuits involved in:
Parental caregiving (Swain et al., 2012)
Reward (the same circuits that are activated by having sex or eating food, (Moll et al., 2006), explaining why giving feels good
Empathy (Christov-Moore & Iacoboni, 2016)
Extraordinary altruists: people who have donated a kidney to a stranger were distinguishable by their larger right amygdala and the increase responsiveness of this part of the brain to fearful facial expressions, the opposite pattern of psychopaths (Marsh et al., 2014)

Question 8

Explain how hormones may explain alturism

Answer 8

Testosterone
Inconsistent findings in economic decisions paradigms (e.g., ultimatum game or the prisoner’s dilemma)
T promotes prosocial behaviour (Burnham, 2007; Eisenegger et al., 2010; Mehta and Beer, 2010)
T promotes antisocial tendencies, for instance in the form of decreased generosity (Zak et al., 2009).
Other studies did not find any behavioural effects of T during social exchange tasks (Zethraeus et al., 2009) or observed both, anti- and prosocial influences (Boksemet al., 2013).
• The assumption of a direct link between testosterone and prosocial behaviour is oversimplifying a rather complex relationship.

• Testosterone
‘Male warrior hypothesis’ - men are more prone to form coalitions, engage in intergroup conflicts and they display increased altruistic tendencies in the presence of an intergroup competition (Van Vugt et al., 2007; McDonald et al., 2012).
T might enhance different types of behaviour depending on the situation (individual vs. competition context) and interaction (own group vs. other group) rather than being restricted to promote either aggressive or altruistic behaviour.
Testosterone might be an important factor driving parochial altruism (a preference for favouring the members of one’s ethnic, racial or language group; Reimers & Diekhof, 2015).

• Oxytocin
• Involved in a host of physiological functions, including childbirth and lactation, and social behaviours like maternal care and pair bonding.
May increase prosocial behaviour
Ps given a dose of nasal spray OT were 80% more generous in an economic game compared to a placebo (Zak et al., 2007), and gave more money to charity (Barraza et al., 2011).
The opposite effects of T and OT on generosity may be caused by the interactive effects of these hormones; there is some evidence that T inhibits OT receptor binding (Insel et al., 1993).
However, OT decreased prosocial behaviours when… the other was not trustworthy (Mikolajczak et al., 2010)
they had no information about the partner (no prior contact) (Declerck, Boone, & Kiyonari, 2010).
the other was a member of the social outgroup (De Dreu et al., 2011)
Ps were highly rejection sensitive (Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2009)
in monkeys receiving oxytocin, they spent less time congregating and sharing food (Leverett et al., 2015).
• The effects of OT on prosocial behaviour are also probably context-dependent.

Question 9

explain how genetics explain alturism

Answer 9

The willingness to help others (becoming a volunteer blood donor) is partially genetically determined (Pedersen et al., 2015).  
 Trait prosociality (sharing, social concern, kindness, helping, empathy) is more similar in identical twins than in fraternal twins (Knafo-Noam et al., 2015). 
Genetics accounted for 34-53 % of the variation in prosocial behaviours in three-and-a-half-year old twins (Knafo et al., 2011).  
Some genetic variants related to the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin and the COMT gene (dopamine and norepinephrine) may be associated with more prosociality, but results have been mixed (Bakerman-Kranenburg & van Ikzendoorn, 2014).

Question 10

Outline the developmental roots of Alturism

Answer 10

The developmental roots of altruism
• Research suggest that altruism is deeply rooted in human psychology – the instinct to help others is at least partially innate
• 14-months old toddlers will help others on a variety of problems (Warneken & Tomasello, 2007)
• pairs of 18 to 24-month-olds will equally divide resources between themselves, even when one child has to sacrifice some of his/her own resources (Ulber et al., 2015)
• For 3-year old but not 2-year old children a partner’s previous sharing led to more sharing with that partner later (Warneken & Tomasello, 2013)
• 5-year olds but not 3-year olds increase the amount they shared with someone they thought might reciprocate (Sebastian-Enesco & Warneken, 2015).
• Children’s altruism begins to be more influenced by contextual factors

Question 11

What is the view of SLT on Alturism?

Answer 11

Human social behaviour is not innate but learnt from appropriate models (Bandura, 1973)
• Role-Modelling
Evidence for a intergenerational transmission of generosity (Ottoni-Wilhelm et at., 2008)
Parents who role-modelled charitable giving and talked to their children about the importance of donations were more likely to give and to volunteer (Ottoni-Wilhelm et at., 2014)
The effectiveness of role-modelling may be partially culturally dependent; parents from the US and India modelled a generous and a stingy donation in from of their 3 to 8-year old. Children from both cultures were influence by the stingy modelling, but only children from India responded to the generous modelling (Blake et al., 2016).

• Rewards, praise and reinforcement
Young children that were rewarded for offering to help were more likely to offer help again later, and when not rewarded less likely to help (Rushton & Teachman (1978)
But other studies suggest that offering an extrinsic reward can undercut a child’s natural altruistic tendencies. 10-year olds rewarded with a toy after helping were less likely to help again compared to children with no reward or who received verbal praise (Werneken & Tomasello, 2008)

Question 12

Give some examples of social behaviours whicj can be explained by SLT

Answer 12

• Television
Children who watched prosocial content were more cooperative, less likely to stereotype, less aggressive, more altruistic (Mares & Woodard, 2010).
Watching Sesame Street for a week significantly increased prosocial behaviour of pre-schoolers (Coates et al., 1976)
Children spent more time on a helping task after watching an episode of Lassie featuring helping than a different episode (Sprafkin et al., 1975).

Music
Ps were more likely to sign a petition after being exposed to up-lifting music at a gym compared to annoying (North et al., 2004)
Listening to songs with prosocial lyrics leads to prosocial behaviour (e.g., Geitemeyer et al., 2009)
14-month olds were more likely to help an experimenter after bouncing synchronously with her to ‘Twit and Shout’ than asynchronously (Cirelli et al., 2009)

Video-games
Cross-cultural relationship between prosocial video game and prosocial behaviour (Gentile et al., 2009) • Playing prosocial games increased prosocial thoughts (Greitmeyer & Osswald, 2011), interpersonal empathy, and decreased feelings of pleasure at another’s misfortune (Greitmeyer et al., 2010).

Question 13

Explain the influence of social norms on our behaviour

Answer 13

Reciprocity norm – ‘we should help those who help us’

there are social rewards for behaving in accordance with the norm and sanctions for violating the norm the extent to which we should reciprocate varies (e.g., we feel indebted when someone freely makes a big sacrifice for us, but much less so if what they do is smaller and expected)

• Social responsibility norm - ‘we should give help freely to those in need without regard to future exchanges’
not always easy because one of the basic human motives (other-concern) conflicts with another basic human motive (self-concern)
Reciprocity
People are more generous to those who have been generous or to those who they expect will pay back their generosity
• Social information
People are sensitive to information about the prosocial behaviour of others
People donate more when they are told that other people have donated a certain value compared to when they don’t have a reference (e.g., Alpizar et al., 2008)
• Reputation
People are more generous toward people whom they perceive as generous (Wedekind, 2000).
People tend to donate less when it’s anonymous (e.g., (Bereczkei et al., 2007)

Question 14

describe what situation factors affect our liklihood to help people?

Answer 14

Situational factors in helping :

 Spare time 

 Environment 

 Relationship with the person in need 

 Number of bystanders

Question 15

Explain how spare time can affect our liklihood to help

Answer 15

Good Samaritan Study (Darley & Batson, 1973)

Method:
Ps were Princeton theology students, told it was a study about persuasion
Prepare a speech for presentation to other students, randomly assigned
parable of the altruistic Good Samaritan
talk on the jobs that seminary students like best
On the way to the other building to give the speech, the students all passed a person in apparent distress:
Not in hurry: ‘You will have enough time to get there’
Moderate hurry: ‘You will have just enough time to get there’
Hurry/late: ‘You will be late’
the topic of the upcoming speech had no effect on the time but time pressure did, 63% of those who had plenty of time helped, 45% for moderate time and only 10% of those helped who thought they’d be late.

Question 16

Explain how the environment can affect our liklihood to help?

Answer 16

Do you think you are more likely to be helped if:

• A. You fall down and break a leg in the middle of Richmond park
• B. You fall down and break a leg in the middle central London
• C. Equally likely to get help in either case

People are more likely to help in rural rather than urban areas

Question 17

Explain how the number of bystanders affects our liklihood to help

Answer 17

• The greater the number of bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely that any one of them is to help

Latene and Darleys stages of helping
emergency -> notice the event –> interpret the event as an emergency –> assume the responsability –> know appropriate form of assistance –> intervene

Question 18

explain the smoking room study

Answer 18

Darley and Latané (1968)

• Participants to complete a questionnaire in a small room

Alone In small groups

• White smoke into the room
• Experimenters timed how long it took before the first person in the room looked up and noticed the smoke
• Results

people who were working alone noticed the smoke in about five seconds, and within four minutes most of the participants who were working alone had taken some action.

on average, the first person in the group conditions did not notice the smoke until over 20 seconds had elapsed; the smoke was reported in only 12% of the three-person groups by that time. In fact, in only three of the eight three person groups did anyone report the smoke at all, even after it had entirely filled the room!

Question 19

explain pleuristic ignoracne

Answer 19

occrus during the “ interpret event as emergency stage”

when they think others in the environment have more knowledge of the event than them and basettheir judgements on whats happening on what others are thinking

bystanders assume an emergency is not an aemergency because others aren’t looking concerned.

Question 20

Explain Bystander apathy

Answer 20

• Darley and Latané (1970)
• Ps discuss college life over headphones
• Group size manipulation
Lone witness: 1 participant = 1 confederate
Two witnesses: 2 participants = 1 confederate
Four witnesses: 4 participants = 1 confederate
• During the discussion the actor fakes a seizure

larger groups ps less likely to intervene only 31% of ps in larger groups responded by end of 6 minute session

Question 21

explain some processeses contributing to bystander apathy

Answer 21

Social influence
other onlookers provide a model for action. If they are passive and unworried, the situation may seem less serious

• Diffusion of responsibility
the presence of other onlookers provides the opportunity to transfer responsibility for acting, or not acting, to them
people who are alone are most likely to help a victim because they believe they carry the entire responsibility for action

• Audience inhibition
fear of social blunders: other onlookers can make people self-conscious about taking action

Question 22

How do you combat bystander apathy

Answer 22

Make your need clear - “I’ve twisted my ankle and I can’t walk; I need help”

Prevents people from concluding there is no real emergency (thereby eliminating the effect of pluralistic ignorance)

• Select a specific person - “You there, can you help me?”

prevents people from thinking someone else will help (thereby overcoming diffusion of responsibility).

Question 23

Outline 5 things that contribute to the liklihood of someone helping

Answer 23

Personality

Gender 

Religion 

Social Class 

Moods

Question 24

Outline how personality can influence whether or not someone helps

Answer 24

• Some people are more helpful than others across a variety of situations (Penner, Fritzsche, Craiger, & Freifeld, 1995).
• Children who were the most helpful when they were measured in their preschool classes also were the most helpful later in childhood and in early adulthood (Eisenberg et al., 1999)
• Identical twins are more similar to each other in both their helping related emotions (such as empathy) and their actual helping than are fraternal twins, who share only a portion of their genetic makeup (Davis, Luce, & Kraus, 1994)
• High levels of certain personality factors—guilt, extraversion, and religiosity—were correlated with measures of altruism in people across the different countries (Johnson et al., 1989).

Question 25

Outline how gender can influence how much someone helps

Answer 25

Findings for differences between men and women in prosocial behaviours are inconsistent.

• Men and women may be alike in the degree to which they behave prosocially, but differ in the kinds of actions that they perform (Eagly, 2009)

In general, men may be more likely to help in situations that involve physical strength

Women’s prosocial behaviours tend to be more communal and relational

Question 26

Outline how religion can impact if someone helps

Answer 26

• A study of nearly 30,000 people in the United States found that religious people were 25 percent more likely to donate money to a charity than were secular people (Brooks, 2003)
• However, many studies rely on self-report measures and data— people may inflate their charitable giving amounts (Galen, 2012).
• Experimental studies that have tested whether religious people give more in economic games have had mixed results.

Children from households identifying as either from the 2 major world religions (Christianity and Islam) were less altruistic than children from non-religious households (Decety et al., 2015)

The sense of being watched, so prominent in religions of different kinds, increases altruism.
When presented with dots upside-down on the response sheet, 40 percent of the participants decided to keep all the money for themselves.
This selfish tendency dropped to 25 percent when the dots representing the face were on the response sheet (Rigdon et al., 2009).
A meta-analysis of 25 eyespot experiments also found that short exposures, but not long exposures, to eyespots increased giving (Sparks & Barclay, 2013).

Question 27

Outline how social class can infleunce if someone helps

Answer 27

Those who have less give more, at least in terms of the proportion of their income they donate to charity (Greve, 2009).

• Lower-class people prove to be more empathetic than upper-class people in a variety of ways that assess empathy: they are better judges of the emotions of a stranger with whom they’ve just interacted, they are better judges of a friend’s emotions, and they are more accurate in their inferences about the emotions revealed in photographs (Kraus, Côté, & Keltner, 2010).
• When upper-class people are primed to feel compassion, they respond in the same prosocial fashion as their lower-class counterparts (Piff et al., 2010).

Question 28

Outline how good moods can infleunce how someone helps you

Answer 28

Good moods produce helpful behaviours under a variety of circumstances

Ps who were asked to do a writing exercise designed to elicit positive feelings— they either expressed gratitude, wrote about an ideal future self, or wrote about an intensely joyful experience—applied more effort when they were asked to perform acts of kindness than did participants who did a neutral writing task (Layous et al., 2016)

Feelings of awe can also increase prosocial behaviours; Ps who watched awe inspiring movies reported greater willingness to volunteer (Rudd et al., 2012)

Feelings of elevation – the feeling we get when witnessing someone perform a good deed or morally exemplary act can lead to prosocial behaviours (Keltner et al., 2003)

Lactating mothers who watched the same elevating film clip were more likely to nurse their infants, suggesting that elevation increases oxytocin release, which may help explain a mechanism for how elevation can lead to more generous and prosocial behavior (Silvers & Haidt, 2008)

Question 29

Explain why good moods can influence how people help

Answer 29

Positive mood indicates that the environment is not dangerous and therefore that we can safely help others

• We like other people more when we are in good moods, and that may lead us to help them
• Helping makes us feel good about ourselves, thereby maintaining our positive mood. In fact, people who are in good moods are particularly likely to help when the help that they are going to give seems likely to maintain their positive mood. But if they think that the helping is going spoil their good mood, even people in good moods are likely to refuse to help (Erber & Markunas, 2006).
• When people feel good, they are less preoccupied with themselves and are more sensitive to the needs and problems of others

Question 30

How do bad moods influence your liklihood to help?

Answer 30

Bad moods may or may not lead to prosocial behaviour

• If helping can reduce negative feelings we are experiencing, then we may help in order to get rid of those bad feelings - negative-state relief model
• Guilt

We feel guilt when we think that we (or others we feel close to) may have caused harm to another person (Tangney, 2003). Because we hate to feel guilty, we will go out of our way to reduce any feelings of guilt that we may be experiencing. And one way to relieve our guilt is by helping.

Question 31

Who are we likley to help and why?

Answer 31

Similarity, closeness, social affiliation (e.g., Dovidio, 1984)

• Identifiable victim effect: people are more generous toward one specific, identifiable person than toward multiple or anonymous victims (Jenni & Loewenstein, 1997).
• “Deservingness” of recipient: we tend to provide less help to people who seem to have brought on their problems themselves or who don’t seem to be working very hard to solve them on their own than we do to people who need help as a result of events that seem to be out of their control (e.g., Eckel & Grossman, 1996).
• Direct solicitation by recipient: people in need who vocalize their distress with loud cries, they are much more likely to be helped (Schroeder et al., 1995).

Question 32

Outline the cultural aspects of alturism

Answer 32

Differences in degrees of altruistic and prosocial behaviour between cultures
100% of children between the ages of 3 and 10 exhibited altruistic or prosocial behaviour in Kenya, contrasted with only 8% in the United States (Whiting et al., 1975)
children and adults in the United States (a Western and therefore individualistic culture) were less likely than children and adults in India (an Eastern and therefore collectivistic culture) to believe that people have an obligation to provide assistance to others (Miller et al., 1990)
the cooperative Semai people exhibit prosocial and altruistic behaviour, whereas the individualistic and warlike Waorani behave selfishly and reportedly save themselves if faced with danger as opposed to helping members of their society or family (Robarcheck & Robarcheck, 1992).
Societies that tend to focus on individual achievement and “success” result in children that are less prosocial and that exhibit fewer altruistic tendencies

Question 33

Why do we help?

Answer 33

• Two competing hypotheses behind alturism

Genuine altruism  

    Innate motive to help others in need, without conscious regard for one’s own selfinterest  

Social Exchange theory  

    All human behaviour, including helping, is geared toward maximizing benefits and minimizing costs to the self

Question 34

Outline selfish motives as a reason for alturism

Answer 34

Selfish motives

• Social rewards
• Reciprocity
• Negative state relief

Personal distress: It is upsetting to see someone else suffer, and people prefer not to be upset. To eliminate this aversive arousal one option is to relieve the other person’s suffering, because it is the stimulus causing one’s own suffering.

Question 35

Outline unselfish motives as a reason for alturism

Answer 35

Empathic concern: the feeling people experience when identifying with someone in need, accompanied by the intention to enhance the other person’s welfare.

• How can we know that altruistic action can be motivated by empathic concern alone, independent of the desire for social rewards or to reduce personal distress?

Question 36

Outline the escape situation experiment and what is highlighted

Answer 36

Batson et al., (1983)
• Ps watched another person who, as part of the experiment, supposedly received some mild electric shocks.
• Manipulation ease of escape
easy-escape condition: although the other person would be completing 10 shock trials, they only needed to watch the first two, after which they could leave
difficult-escape condition: they would need to watch all 10 of the shock trials.
• The person in other room began to look as if he or she was experiencing some discomfort
• Ps were asked to indicate the feelings he/she was experiencing in the moment
• The experimenter pointed out to the research participant that the other person was feeling uncomfortable and asked if he or she might be willing to change places with that person

person-situation interaction effect: when participents knew they could leave realitively quickly (the easy-escape condtion) then the people who felt empathy helped, wheras those feeling personal distress did not.