Week 10 - Helping and Cooperating

Question 1

Prosocial behaviour (altruism and egoism) 
Florida flight 90

Answer 1

behaviour intended to help someone else

eg Florida flight 90, flight crashes into freezing lake in Washington, a guy helps people out again and again and eventually dies of hypothermia

Altruism - behaviour intended to help someone else without any prospect of personal rewards for the helper (does true altruism exist?)

Egoism - behaviour motivated by the desire to obtain personal rewards

Question 2

Bystander effect

priests study

Answer 2

the phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present.

Notice the event–> construction of reality –> might see/remember differently

Darley and Batson 1973 Preists in a hurry

• 2 conditions, 1 in a hurry (late for a meeting) one not
• primed with helping (good Samaritan lecture)
• guy is slumped in the doorway, only 10% in a hurry stopped, 63% not in a hurry stopped
• In a hurry said that they didn’t see the guy –> selective attention –> inattentional blindness (miss something really obvious because you’re focusing on something else eg gorilla when counting number of passes

Question 3

Pluralistic Ignorance & Audience Inhibition

woman attacked example

Answer 3

Pluralistic Ignorance - when people mistakenly believe that their own thoughts and feelings are different from others, even though everyone’s behaviour is the same

eg woman attacked in courtyard, 38 witnesses heard screams but no one called the police

Audience Inhibition - Fear of appearing foolish in front of others (pervasiveness of social influence)

Question 4

When do people help? (3 aspects)
responsibility, norms, deciding
woman scrapping car example
conference study

Answer 4

When they feel responsible
-Diffusion of responsibility - when other people are present, responsibility is divided and each person feels less responsible for helping (social influence)

eq woman scrapes massive guys car, he chases her and holds her over a bridge, nobody calls the police till he dropped her off

When norms make helping appropriate

• can be established/discouraged by group leaders
• social group norms eg people helped a victim quicker at a nursing conference than a business conference

Deciding to implement help
- Cost benefit analysis

Question 5

Why do people help? (3 aspects)

Answer 5

Biology
-helping ingroups was beneficial for our survival

Mastery
-personal rewards , Material ((helped in return) or emotional (gratitude)

Connectedness

• Interpersonal connectedness - empathy (share another person’s feelings)
• Intergroup connectedness - identification (help another group member)

Question 6

Does true altruism exist?
Negative state relief model
Empathy-altruism model
electric shock study

Answer 6

Negative-state relief model of helping
-Help as means to relieve personal distress (I want to feel better ie less distressed)

Empathy-altruism model
-Helping as expression of empathetic concern (I want the victim to feel better)

Study by Batson et al, 1981

• you and another person are randomly assigned to be a participant and an observer
• partner completes the task where they recieve electric shocks
• you observe via TV monitor

Manipulations

• Empathy - you share very similar values (high empathy) vs you share few values (low empathy)
• Ease of escape - you can stop observing after 2 trials (easy escape) vs you must watch all trials (difficult to escape)

More people traded places when it was difficult to escape
people switched more (in both escape conditions) when they had higher empathy
Proves empathy- altruism model

Question 7

Cooperation & Social dilemmas
Motivation and solution
jigsaw classroom example

Answer 7

Social dilemma - a form of interdependence in which the most rewarding action for each individual will produce a negative outcome for the entire group if chosen by all individuals eg resource depletion dilemmas, fishing in a lake

Motivation in Social Dilemmas
Problem - Individuals seek personal reward eg I’m a celeb, form alliances where group and personal interests are aligned then personal interests trump in the end

Solution
Structural solutions : Policies and Law
Social interdependence : expectation to help the ingroup
Task interdependence : change incentives for individuals
eg Jigsaw classrooms
minorities under preform in group tasks, instead each group member researches one aspect of the project and teaches it to the other group members, it was in the interests of the group members to help those that were struggling with their section, collective interests was to get everyone to know the material

Disadvantages group members performance increased and they felt more of a bond with their group.