Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Pro-Social Motivation
80
Pro-social
Motivation
Created by Group 7
for Social Psychology
The History of Prosocial Motivation
The history of Prosocial motivation
Two Categories of Research
1.)Evolutionary Research
- Done by biologists
- Mostly study chimpanzees
- Objective and logical basis for establishing functional systems of the mind that encourage psychological responses
- Important for understanding the role of delayed gratification, inferring people’s mental states from their behaviour and ability to learn from one another
2.) Theoretical Research
- Interdisciplinary approach
- Studies behaviour and motivation
- Renewed understanding of factors that increase people’s capacity to help or be helped
Origin of the Term
- Prosocial as the antithesis to “anti-social”
- Distinguish between Altruism and Prosocial Behaviour
- Wispé’s definition: behaviour that is intended to help others and improve their psychological well-being without the expectation of personal gain
Definitions
- Original definition based on the notion of altruistic motivation
- 1987, C. Daniel Batson
- helping behaviour might be motivated by egoistic motivations
- New developments: kin-selection theory, defensive helping, the negative-state relief model, situational factors = egoistic motivation
Why people help?
Baron & Brascombe (1994) :
- Empathy-altruism theory states that pro social acts are driven by the desire or feeling to help someone in need.
Motives for Pro-social Behaviour
Tesser (1995) suggested three categories that facilitate people to help:
1) To gain material rewards
2) Negative State Relief
3) Avoid punishment.
1) People tend to help other people when they know they will owe them a favour in the future
2) Negative State Relief also known as mood enhancement:
- State that people tend to help other people when they are having unpleasant feelings to actually get rid of those feelings.
3) In other Countries people help in order to avoid punishment
The Joy of Helping
- Empathetic joy simply means the satisfying feeling that one gets after helping someone.
- This reality has been demonstrated through the empathetic Joy hypothesis, which stipulates that “helpers enjoy the positive reactions shown by others whom they help”.
- contingent upon empathetic joy, is, that the person who helped another must know whether his or her actions have had a positive effect.
- Knowing=validates efforts ; self-validation= is not enough, one must witness positive reactions.
- Empathetic joy= boosts self-esteem, rewarding, and re-inforces prosocial behaviour.
COMPETITIVE ALTRUISM: THE PHILANTHROPIST
- This is when individuals engage in prosocial and empathetic behaviour/acts such as philanthropy, with the aim of gaining a competitive edge in status in a particular context.
- E.G= corporate world, philanthropy and social responsibility
- Competitive altruism is done with the intention of furthering one’s own agenda and interests through helping another.
- Furthermore for competitive altruism it is important for empathetic acts/behaviour to be witnessed and validated by a group of people who value prosocial behaviour so that the competitive edge is established.
- It is centred around boosting your status in a context that values co-operating behaviour
Kin Selection Helping Theory
According to the kin selection theory, we are more likely to help:
- those who are close relatives
- young at age.
Why ??
- We all want our genes to be passed on.. Create bigger family trees and larger legacies…
- Thus, individuals who share our genes and are young at age ensures reproductivity which inevitably ensures that our genes are carried forward into the next generations
What about helping “non-relatives?”
We may find ourselves in situations where we help people who are not necessarily related to us and this can be answered by the …
Reciprocal altruism theory
This theory suggests that this is a method of ensuring survival. A “I will help you and someday you will help me” thing
It is based on reciprocity whereby when help is given, the favour is usually always returned
Cava the never ending cycle…
Defensive Helping
Help that is given to outgroups to reduce any threats that they may pose to the ingroup
Characteristics of defensive helping
- Target of help and social identity
The targeted group is one that poses a threat. The reason why individuals act upon a posed threat is because from a social identity perspective, when there are any threats to a group that one commits to extensively, it is seen as a threat to their very own personal identity and this causes them to respond in a protective manner.
- The responsiveness of help to the recipients needs and help as a vehicle to positive regard
The extension of the help is independent of the recipients expressed or perceived needs. Also enables the ingroup to establish a positive regard from those of the outgroup. Additionally, the ingroup creates a sense of competency within themselves which distinguishes them from the other group who perceives that they do not possess that competency
- Dependency- oriented nature of help and status
The nature of the help proposed to outgroups creates a sense of dependency because it is a way of subtly putting down the members of the outgroup. Therefore “defensive helping is an instrument used to avert or ameliorate status threat, whether structural or situational” .
Situational status refers to contextual differences that arise as groups are placed in different situations and one outperforms the other.
Structural status refers to the innate characteristics that enable one group to be better than other as well as being placed in advantageous positions.
The Bystander Effect
The Bystander Effect
- If you witnessed an emergency happening right before your eyes, you would certainly take some sort of action to help the person in trouble, right? While we might all like to believe that this is true, psychologists suggest that whether or not you intervene might depend upon the number of other witnesses present
- The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others discourages an individual from responding in an emergency situation
Kitty Genovese
- Social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley popularized the concept of the bystander effect after the infamous 1964 Kitty Genovese murder in New York City.
- Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment while bystanders who observed the crime did not step in to assist or call the police.
- Latané and Darley attributed the bystander effect to the perceived diffusion of responsibility and social influence (individuals in a group monitor the behavior of those around them to determine how to act). In Genovese's case, each onlooker concluded from their neighbors' inaction that their own personal help was not needed
Diffusion of responsibility
- Diffusion of responsibility arises when people who need to make a decision to act on something, wait for someone else to act instead. The more people involved, the more likely it is that each person will not react, believing that someone else from the group will probably take action.
Diffusion of responsibility
- Diffusion of responsibility makes people feel less pressure to act because they believe correctly or incorrectly, that someone else will do so. And when we don’t feel responsible for a situation, we feel less guilty when we do nothing to help. In this way, diffusion of responsibility keeps us from paying attention to our conscience and to act in a pro-social manner
Understanding the bystander effect: Five crucial steps in deciding to help-or not
The 5 Steps involved in engaging in Prosocial Behaviour
1) Noticing or failing to notice that something unusual is happening
2) Determine if the event is an emergency
3) Determine if it is your responsibility to help
4) Decide if you have the skills or knowledge to help
5) Make the final decision to help
South African Context
- The bystander effect of the murder of Kitty Genovese is also a reflection of the individualistic society of Western cultures, where a person’s life is lived in service of the self
- In the collectivistic culture of South Africa, the bystander effect does not have much relevance as it is a communal society, “where mutuality exists and where members recognize the obligation to be responsive to one another’s needs”
- Rural areas foster the collectivistic culture of harmony and helping each other whereas in the urban areas in which life is much more Western-like, the bystander effect is more prominent.
Factors that increase or decrease the tendency to help:
Factors that increase or decrease the tendency to help
SITUATIONAL FACTORS
1.) WE ARE MORE INCLINED TO HELP PEOPLE WE LIKE
- We have more empathic concern toward people we like and therefore we feel that we better understand their situation
- People are also more inclined to help attractive people/ people belonging to the same group as them
- The latter is a better predictor of helping behaviour than attractiveness, confirms the fact that we help people we identify with
SITUATIONAL FACTORS
2.) WE ARE MORE INCLINED TO HELP THOSE WHO WE FEEL ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR NEGATIVE SITUATION
- The Just-World Theory: people get what they deserve
- Undeserved suffering undermines this theory
- There are two factors that assist people in determining the extent to which an individual is responsible for their suffering:
i.) if we feel that the situation is an exception
ii.) if the person’s negative situation is temporary rather than persistent
- Both relate to which we identify with others
Exposure to live prosocial models
- The presence of a helpful bystander provides a strong social model.
-Results in an increase in helping behaviour
- Modeling is one way in which behaviour is learned
- Modeling may teach a new behaviour, influence the frequency of a previously learned behaviour or increase the frequency of a similar behaviour
Exposure to live prosocial models
Bandura indicated three kinds of models
- Live model
- Demonstrates behaviour in person
- Verbal model
- Does not perform behaviour, explains or describes the behaviour
- Symbolic model
-The symbolic presence of one or more helping models can increase social behaviour
Exposure to live Prosocial models
4 steps are involved in the modeling of behaviour:
- STEP 1- attention
- STEP 2- retention
- STEP 3- reproduction
- STEP 4- motivation
Prosocial video games
- Playing prosocial video games might prime prosocial thoughts and schemas (cognitive frameworks for helping)
- Repeated exposure to prosocial games might over time generate prosocial attitudes and emotions consistent with them
- Study by Greitmeyer and Osswald (2000) indicate how prosocial video games influenced actual helping by influencing participants’ thoughts
Gratitude: How it increases further helping
- Gratitude is derived from the latin word gratia that represents grace, graciousness and gratefulness and implies kindness, generosity, gift, good of receiving and giving, and asking for no return
- Gratitude expressions can increase prosocial behaviour through both
- Agentic
-Self efficacy
- Communal mechanisms
-Social worth
Emotions and Prosocial Motivation
Emotions and Prosocial Motivation
Empathy: An important foundation for helping
- Some people help
while others do not
- Empathy seems to be
the most important factor
- External factors as well
as personal characteristics
have an impact on
prosocial behaviour
Empathy: An important foundation for helping
- Emotional empathy – experienced as early as 12 months; also seen in other primates
- People more likely to help in-group than out-group members
- Women experience higher levels of empathy (biology or socialisation?) – does not always lead to more prosocialbehaviour
Factors that reduce helping
- Social exclusion:
Too busy dealing with own
rejection
Cautious towards social relations
- Darkness:
Anonymity - deindividuation
- Putting an economic value on our time and effort
The effects of being helped: Why perceived motives really matter
- Helping does not always lead to positive reactions
- Receiving help can affect self-esteem
- Help stemming from autonomous motivation – perceived positively
- Help stemming from controlled motivation – perceived negatively
Prosocial motivation and aggression – opposites?
- Overlap to some extent
- Prosocialbehaviour – not only to help, but to showcase favourable image
- Aggressive behaviour – not only to harm, but to achieve long-term benefits (e.g. surgeon, tattoo artist)?
- Same people can engage in both behaviours to gain popularity and status