Week 11 - Altruism and Prosocial Behaviour Flashcards
Who was Kitty Genovese?
1960s New York
- Was stabbed, raped, and murdered
- Allegedly witnesses by over 30 people - but NO ONE HELPED
Compare the definition of altruism vs prosocial behaviour?
Altruism - any act of voluntary self-sacrifice intended to benefit another person with NO EXPECTATION OF REWARD
Prosocial Behaviour - any act performed by an individual with the goal of benefiting another person
Why are we helpful: Evolutionary Perspective
Natural selection is a poor fit for altruism (risky behaviour = dangerous?)
Contemporary evolution suggests that altruistic behaviours contribute to INCLUSIVE FITNESS
–> The GENE is the unit of selection, not the individual
Study: Burnstein et al (1994) - Kinship and Helping
Degree of relatedness, health, and situation all matter
-> overall: participants more likely to help someone who is CLOSER IN RELATION
-> in a life or death situation - helping someone who is in good health
-> under normal situation - helping someone who is sick
Study: Korchmaros & Kenny - Emotional Connection
Emotional closeness predicted willingness to help MORE STRONGLY than genetic closeness
Genetic closeness plays a ROLE but is STRENGTHENED BY EMOTIONAL BONDS
Study: Wu et al (2016) - Cultural Differences
Taiwan: in everyday and life-or-death scenarios - participants prioritise their mother
US: in both situations - participants prioritise saving their spouse
CULTURAL DISSIMILARITY: strong cultural component that cannot be explained by evolution (social roles)
What are the limits to an evolutionary perspective?
Demonstrating causal relationships is difficult, if not impossible
There are reasons beyond genetics that we choose to help - emotional attachment
How would we explain instances of helping complete strangers
Alternative Theories: What is social exchange theory?
Builds on behaviourist notions –> behaviour motivated by the desire to maximise rewards and minimise costs
Rewards can be:
Tangible (eg. money)
Intangible (eg. social approval)
Removal of aversive states (eg. distress)
Negative State Relief Hypothesis: Seeing people in need causes us to feel distressed, so we try and help them (to enhance our mood)
What is the Empathy-Altruism Model?
“Whether people help depends on how they respond emotionally to the victim’s plight”
Empathy is the critical factor - it decides the action:
1. If you DO feel empathy: help is given regardless of self-interest
2. If you DO NOT feel empathy: help is given if it is in your interest to do so
Toi & Batson - Testing the empathy altruism model (1982)
Found that in a low empathy situation (maintaining emotional distance) - more % willing to help in the high cost situation (student will be in their class vs working from home)
Found that in high empathy situation (putting yourself in their shoes) regardless of cost helping was similar
Batson et al. (1991) - Empathetic Joy
Empathetic Joy - a warm glow
- Are people’s actions guided by the egoistic motivation to experience empathetic joy
Batson - told they would or would not hear back from the person they helped
FOUND:
- Work shows that the experience of empathy for another person over-rides cost-benefit analysis
–> altruistic helping is independent from any rewards including emotional ones (‘glow’)
Study: Latane & Darley (1970) - The Bystander Effect, Situational Factors that influence helping behaviour?
Students sit in a room to complete a series of questionnaires and smoke begins to fill the room:
–> 75% called out when alone
–> 38% called out when with strangers
–> 10% called out when with strangers who ignored the smoke
Study: Garcia et al. (2002) - The Bystander Effect (thinking about others)
Even THINKING about other people can elicit the BYSTANDER EFFECT
- thinking about a large group - willing to donate a much smaller proportion of their income
Study: Levine (2010) - Repetition of Levine with varied audience
Female undergraduates - thinking about other women provokes thinking about gender identity group membership…and the stereotypes about communality that come with it
What is attribution theory (responsibility and control)
Who is ‘deserving’ of our help?
- Responsibility: is the person responsible for their situation?
- Control: do they have control over their predicament
