Week 9 - Prosocial Behavior Flashcards
Altruism
– behaviour that is aimed at benefiting another person
Type of prosocial behaviour
Can be motivated by personal egotism – motive to pursue personal gain or benefit
Can also be motivated by or “pure” empathy – an emotional response to the perceived plight of another person
Other contributors to altruism are collectivism valuing the group above oneself, and principlism, usually described as moral integrity
Types of Altruism
Reciprocity‐based altruism
– helping behaviour motivated by likelihood of reciprocity
An egoistic type
Some think this isn’t altruism - requires the benefits to the helper to outweigh their costs over the longer term if it is to be sustained
Types of Altruism
Care‐based altruism
– helping behaviour motivated by feelings of empathy or care for recipient
Connection or relativeness
An empathy type
helper being willing to take on personal cost to help a close friend.
Types of Altruism
Kin‐based altruism
– helping behaviour directed toward family ◦ Spans the gap between egoistic and empathy
egoism and empathy to some extent - closer personal relationship is often present, perhaps making the helper desire to ease the helpee’s distress, but at the same time some egoistic protection of genes may be involved in the motivation
Egotism
– perhaps one of the most influential human motives, o pursue some sort of personal gain or benefit through targeted behavior.
Helping person gets reward or praise
Helping person avoids societal or personal punishments for failing to help.
Helping person avoids distress - escape a sense of guilt for not helping when we step in and lend a hand to a needy person
The Empathy Motive and the Empathy– Altruism Hypothesis
Egotism cannot account for all altruism
Empathy leads to greater likelihood for helping
Can be moved by empathies
Correlates of Altruism
Positive emotions
Being in a positive mood stimulates altruism, altruism stimulates positive mood
Even when in negative mood, altruism helps self‐regulate negative emotion
Openness and agreeableness; honesty, humility
Correlates of Altruism
Altruistic acts make us happy
Dunn et al., (2014) gave students either $5 or $20 and told to spend it either (a) on selves or (b) on others
Those who spent $5 on others were happiest!
Correlates of Altruism
Eudaimonia
– part of the positive feedback loop -
helping and well-being such that people who feel happy are more likely to help others, and, in turn, helping others seems to further increase well-being and lower negative affect.
Related to Broaden and Build Theory
Correlates of Altruism
benefits drop when?
benefits begin to drop when one puts too much strain on personal resources of time and money
Correlates of Altruism
Compassion & empathy
Lab studies – compassionate people were likely to help the victim, but not likely to punish the transgressor
If they did decide to punish, the punishment was lighter
Correlates of Altruism
Gratitude may be the catalyst
In a study that compared groups who were induced experimentally to feel gratitude versus those induced to feel happiness, researchers found that those in the gratitude group were most likely to voluntarily help others.
feel grateful = they may be more likely to view future helping behavior with a pay-it-forward
Genetic and Neural Foundations Related to Altruism
Modest level of heritability for empathy
Prefrontal and parietal cortices are essential for empathy
Empathy requires the capacity to form internal simulations of anothers bodily or mental states
damage to the prefrontal cortex leads to impairments in appraising the emotions of other people
could be the result of trait-like behavior, as opposed to being state-like, leading people to act in this way more frequently
Cultural Variations in Altruism
Gender differences in altruistic acts
More often found in females; data are consistent across ages
This is heightened by being high in agreeableness, conscientiousness ◦
Gender norms may expect altruism from women
Cultural Variations in Altruism
Collectivism may be form of altruism (Batson et al., 2009)
Helping behaviour as part of the normed social structure
Japanese research shows altruism gets rewarded by mothers
Parochial altruism
–altruism that is directed in a preferential manner towards members of one’s own social group
Cultural Variations in Altruism
Religiosity and spirituality as related to empathy and prosocial behavio
Empathy related to religiousness
Altruism linked to spiritual experiences & spiritual cognitions
Nonreligious spiritual cognitions strongly liked to empathy ◦ “Ingroup favouritism “ – Galen, 2012 – this is likely egoistic
More altruistic toward those from same religious group
These relationships are not clear – related, but how?
Volunteerism rates and economy
Generational and cohort effects
Economic recession in 2008 may have led to more altruism
Increase in volunteerism
Important use of time for those who lost jobs
As economy has gotten better, volunteerism has dropped
Measuring Altruism
Hypothetical scenarios – e.g., read vignettes
Behavioural reports – e.g., magnitude of donations
Self‐report scales
Altruism scale
Compassionate Altruism Scale
Altruistic Personality Scale
Cultivating Altruism
Egotism‐based approaches
Helping another person and feeling good are compatible!
Helping can lead to higher self‐esteem
Engage in community volunteer work
BUT there are still greater gains for helping without self‐interest
Cultivating Altruism
Empathy‐based approaches
teach them to have greater empathy for the circumstances of other people
Interact more frequently with people who need help
This allows for learning and greater understanding
Empathy comes from affiliation
Ethnocultural empathy – developing empathy for people who are different ◦
Encourage children to develop wide and diverse social circles
Cultivating Altruism
Values‐based approaches
The idea of “helpers”
found that in individuals who value prosocial acts so strongly that this becomes a piece of their identity
Volunteering is an important source of self‐ esteem
Heroes
These types of helping jobs, although they may tend to draw individuals who already value prosocial behavior to them, at the same time promote further development of prosocial qualities
Helping behaviour may be habit forming
Gratitude
Robert Emmons’ definition of gratitude
Recognizing that one has obtained a positive outcome from another individual who behaved in a way that was
(1) costly,
(2) valuable to the recipient, and
(3) intentional.
Gratitude can come from another person’s actions or a nonhuman action or event - surviving a natrual disaster
Quality, not quantity is more important - not used to getting help - felt more grateful
Benefit finding – coming through a major problem and discovering benefits in that experience
Correlates of Gratitude
Elevated positive emotions, vitality, optimism, hope, satisfaction
Physical, psychological, and spiritual well‐ being
Empathy, sharing, forgiving, giving one’s time
Reframing of negative events
Less depression
More meaningful life
“Gratitude is the poster child of positive psychology”
Correlates of Gratitude
Strong social relationships
Forgiveness, attachment
Grateful people often have qualities that allow them to develop and maintain strong relationships with others, including a higher level of forgiveness
Correlates of Gratitude
May assist with materialism – Influencers!
Decreased gratitude mediated relationship between materialism and resulting lower life satisfaction
Cultural Variations in Gratitude
Cultural differences in expressions and reactions
US: “Thank you” - more positive reactions in US Samples compared to Korea
Korea: apology phrases like “I’m sorry” - prefer this
Which is better to save face
Differences between groups - gratitude techniques
White Americans benefited more from gratitude as a happiness‐enhancing technique vs. Asian Americans
Gratitude journals increased negative feelings for South Koreans
Necessity of reciprocity (guilt)
Cultural Variations in Gratitude
Religious identity
Positively correlated with gratitude
Interaction of religious commitment and religious gratittude - sensitive to being able to predict emotional well-being
Cultural Variations in Gratitude
Gender experiences with gratitude may vary
Women appear to benefit from gratitude more and experience it more often and more comfortably
In families where social support is high, boys benefited more from gratitude
Likely a complex relationship among gender/gratitude/outcome
Cultural Variations in Gratitude
Multiple cultural facets at play
Race, religious affiliation
Older African Americans and Mexican Americans reported being more grateful to God than White Americans
Cultivating Gratitude
Gratitude journals
gratitude journals (i.e., recorded events for which they were thankful) were superior in terms of
(1) the amount of exercise undertaken,
(2) optimism about the upcoming week, and
(3) feeling better about their lives
Naikan meditation in Japan
Meditate daily on three gratitude‐related questions:
What did I receive?
What did I give?
What troubles and difficulties did I cause to others?
Gratitude Letter study
write a letter of thanks to someone for whom they were grateful and to then deliver that letter in person. They then compared youth in their study who were high in positive affect with those who were low in positive affect in terms of the effectiveness of this gratitude exercise.
Youth low in positive affect had greater gratitude increases and higher positive affect than youth already high in positive affect
So…it might be more important to cultivate gratitude in youth whoare lower in positive affect/experiences
Cohort effects on gratitude
Gratitude toward first responders pre‐ and post‐9/11 terrorist attacks
Times of strife may lead to reprioritizing
Measuring Gratitude
Ask people to list the things about which they are grateful
Qualitative – coding stories that people wrote about their lives
Behavioural measurement – e.g., times a child says “thank you”
Quantifying grateful responses
Self‐report scales
Multidimensional Prayer Inventory
Gratitude, Resentment, and Appreciation Test (GRAT)
Gratitude Adjective Checklist (GAC)
Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ‐6)
gratitude - Neurobiological
activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (thought to be responsible for emotional regulation and other impulse control) and the medial prefrontal cortex (often associated with social cognition and decision-making) was found during the experience of gratitude
Workplace Gratitude
2012 US Survey found that:
People are less likely to express gratitude in the workplace than anyplace else ◦
60% never or very rarely thanked anyone at work
Only 10% expressed gratitude at work on a given day
35% worried that expressing gratitude would lead co‐workers to take advantage of them
Yet this and other surveys also show that:
Saying “thanks” at work makes people feel happier and hearing “thanks” made them happier and more productive (by 50%!)
Only 18% felt expressing gratitude made bosses seem weak; 93% said grateful bosses were more likely to succeed
In general, “Thank you” from a supervisor boosts self‐worth and self‐ efficacy; gratitude recipients become more trusting and more helpful
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number one reason why people leave their jobs is because they don’t feel appreciated.
Gratitude and Health Care Providers
Medical students and other health care professionals often show a decrease in altruistic mindsets and empathy as they move through their educational processes
43% of nurses and more than half of physicians say they have struggled with BURNOUT.
Burnout is a complex state of being, generally defined by:
Emotional exhaustion
cynicism and callous attitudes towards others
a reduced ability to be effective in our jobs and relationships.
Burnout can be caused by feeling unappreciated.
Gratitude Helps Health Care Providers
Study by Cheng, Tsui & Lam (2015):
Health care providers twice weekly wrote down things for which they were grateful.
RESULTS:
Reductions in perceived stress (28%) and depression (16%) in health care practitioners
“Such positive effects can also lead to an improvement in both productivity and quality of patient services.”
The Societal Implications of Altruism and Gratitude
Empathy/Egotism and Altruism
Cannot always expect pure altruism – it’s okay to feel good about helping other people
Innocent bystander effect – diffusion of personal responsibility
Decrease in altruistic mindsets and empathy – due to burnout, frustration
