Chapter 12: Prosocial Behavior: Helping Others

1. Chapter 12: Prosocial Behavior: Helping Others

2. Learning Objectives • Do women and men differ in the types of help they tend to offer? • How do bystanders at an emergency short-circuit our tendency to help? • What types of people are most likely to receive help when they need it? • Why does receiving help sometimes increase people’s stress and threaten their mental health?

3. Prosocial Behavior • Voluntary behavior carried out to benefit another person • Egoistic helping: help in exchange for something in return • Altruistic helping: help just to increase another’s welfare

4. Kin Selection • Individuals help blood relatives to increase genetic survival. • Observed in many species • Although individuals may incur costs of helping, genes are more likely to survive. • Does not explain why we help strangers or non-relatives

5. Reciprocal Helping • Individuals help others with the understanding that the favor will be returned. • Provides adaptive advantage • Can account for helping nonrelatives • Likely if benefit to recipient is high and cost to helper is low • Must be a way to identify “cheaters” • Most likely in certain social conditions

6. Three Norms that Influence Helping • Norm of reciprocity • We should help those who help us. • Norm of social responsibility • We should help those who need help. • Norm of social justice • We should help those who deserve help. • Not all norms hold equal sway over our decisions.

7. Political Ideology and Helping • Conservative ideology emphasizes individualism. • Liberal ideology emphasizes egalitarianism. • Willingness to help depends on the perceived morality of those in need. • Conservatives more likely to: • Endorse the norm of social justice • Make dispositional attributions blaming victims for their plight • Helpless • Liberals more likely to: • Endorse the norm of social responsibility • Make situational attributions • Helpmore

8. Social Class and Helping • High SES individuals put a higher priority on satisfying their own needs than low SES people. • Low SES people: • Express more concern for welfare of others • Are more trusting • Give higher percentages of their income to charity

9. Individualism and Collectivism • The norm of reciprocity appears to be universal. • Norm of social responsibility • Stronger for ingroup members in collectivist societies than individualist societies • Weaker for outgroup members in collectivist societies than individualist societies • Overall, people in collectivist societies help more than people in individualist societies and appear to enjoy it more.

10. Gender and Helping • For aiding strangers in emergencies, men help more than women. • Especially when there is an audience, there is danger, and the victim is female • For long-term helping such as caregiving, women help more than men.

11. Personality Differences • Two important emotional reactions to emergencies: • Empathy (feeling compassion for victim) • Personal distress (feeling anxiety when seeing victim) • People differ in the degree to which they habitually experience empathy and personal distress. • These reactions affect helping behavior.

12. Learning Prosocial Behavior • Observational learning can promote, or inhibit, prosocial behavior in children. • “Preaching” can produce some effects, though behaving is a stronger lesson. • Strongest effects are shown when adults “practice what they preach.” • Modeling prosocial behavior can affect other adults as well as children. • Participation in prosocial video games can increase helping tendencies.

13. Figure 12.1 Immediate and Log-Term Effects of Modeling and Preaching on Children’s Generosity

14. Benefits of Being Helpful • Happy and helpful people are more likely to have satisfying interpersonal relationships. • The resulting positive emotions of helping can enhance physiological and psychological resilience. • Helping others can also directly impact well-being in terms of generating higher degrees of peer acceptance.

15. Rewarding Prosocial Behavior • Social rewards are more effective reinforcers than material rewards. • Reinforcement influences adults as well as children. • Thanks are a form of reinforcement. • Thanks appear to increase self-efficacy.

16. Figure 12.2 The Effects of Positive Reinforcement and Punishment on Model-Induced Generosity in Children

17. Steps of Bystander Intervention Model • Notice something unusual is happening. • Decide whether something is wrong and whether help is needed. • Determine the extent to which helping is your responsibility. • Decide what kind of help to offer. • Implement the help.

18. Figure 12.3 The Model of Bystander Intervention:A Five-Step Decision Process

19. Audience Inhibition Effect • When others are present, we are: • Less likely to define a potentially dangerous situation as an emergency • Slower to act • Driven by pluralistic ignorance • Which, in turn, is caused by outcome and information dependence • Interferes with the bystander intervention model at Step 2

20. Figure 12.4 The Audience Inhibition Effect

21. Diffusion of Responsibility • The more people present at an emergency, the less each person feels responsibility for helping. • Less likely in clearly dangerous situations • People are unaware that the presence of others is affecting their results. • Interferes with the bystander intervention model at Step 3

22. Figure 12.5 The Diffusion of Responsibility Effect

23. Arousal: Cost-Reward Model • Witnessing an emergency is emotionally arousing. • We seek to decrease the discomfort of arousal. • Low cost of helping + high cost of not helping  intervention • High cost of helping + low cost of not helping  no intervention • Both costs high  indirect help, or redefinition of situation

24. Figure 12.6 The Influence of Costs and Rewards on Direct Helping

25. Mood and Helping • Good mood increases generosity. • Good mood can be generated by a smile. • Good mood effect holds only for tasks expected to be pleasant. • Bad mood may increase helping if it helps us escape the negative mood. • The reward value of behavior is high. • Bad mood may cause us not to notice the plight of others.

26. Figure 12.7 The Varied Effects of Mood on Helping

27. Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis • We experience either personal distress or empathy when we see someone in trouble. • If personal distress is high: • We will flee if possible. • If we cannot flee, we will help to reduce distress (egoistic helping). • If empathy is high: • We will be motivated to help the victim (altruistic helping).

28. Similarity and Helping • We are more likely to help someone who is like us in some way. • Physical cues are often used to gauge similarity. • Prejudices and cultural scripts influence helping. • We may not help a friend if doing so threatens self-evaluation.

29. Just-World Hypothesis • The (false) belief that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people • Associated with defensive attributions • Increases the tendency to blame victims for their misfortune

30. Costs of Being Helped • Being unable to reciprocate help can increase stress and lead to resentment. • Receiving help can conflict with individualist values. • Can create a threat to self-esteem