13) Prosocial Behavior

The Basic Motives for Helping

True Altruism?

• Do you believe that true altruism exists?
• If an individual feels positive affect after helping someone, is it truly a selfless act?
• Can you think of any selfless acts with no benefit to the helper?

The Basic Motives for Helping

Prosocial Behavior

• Action by an individual that is intended to benefit another individual or set of individuals

Alturism

• Functional Approach: people’s actions are motivated by some degree of self-interest; egotistic motivations for helping (James, 1890)
• Altruistic Approach: the desire to help another purely for the other person's benefit, regardless of whether we derive any benefit (Batson, 1991)
• Common altruistic motivations (Fogelman & Wiener, 1985): from our moral values, out of a sense of empathy, and as a result of prosocial emotions

Human Nature & Prosocial Behavior

Genetic Influences

• People may be helpful because prosocial behavior is generally adaptive in the history of our species (aids survival)
• Kin Selection Theory: natural selection led to greater tendencies to help close kin than to help those with whom we have little genetic relationship

Example

• 1) If you were on a boat that was taking on water and you could only save one other person, who would you choose? A) Your 10-year-old nephew, or B) Your nephew’s 10-year-old friend
• 2) If you were on a boat that was taking on water and you could only save one other person, who would you choose? A) Your 10-year-old nephew, or B) Your 80-year-old grandmother

The Basic Motives for Helping

While the propensity for helping is especially strong among close kin, it is not restricted to them

Norms of Reciprocity

• An explanation for why we give help; e.g., "If I help you today, you might be more likely to help me tomorrow."
• Contributes to prosocial behavior, even among strangers
• Question: Would you publicize your helping behaviors on social media? Some might to appear altruistic, gain social status, or to increases odds others will help if in need
• Communal Orientation: family relationships are prototypical communal relationships
• Why don’t we typically keep track within communal relationships?
• E.g., Do you keep track of all the ways your parents have helped you over the years, and have you or do you plan to return the favor (reciprocate)?

The Basic Motives for Helping

Biological Bases of Helping

• Research with twins, toddlers, and animals points to an inherited biological basis of prosocial behavior
• Prosocial behavior is influenced by both genes (biology) and environment (parenting, social learning)

Video: “Born Good? Babies Help Unlock the Origins of Morality” (2012, CBS News, 60 Minutes). Explores whether babies can tell right from wrong. Review of studies conducted at Yale’s baby lab.

The Basic Motives for Helping

Learned Behavior

• Parents greatly influence prosocial behavior in children
• Parents who display more emotional warmth themselves tend to have children who show an increasing ability to empathize with others
• Children learn prosocial behavior in stages: to get things (e.g., gold stars), for social rewards, and to satisfy internal moral values

Media Influence

• Media can encourage prosocial behavior by making helping-related thoughts more accessible

Social Exchange Theory

Social Exchange Theory

• Suggests people do a quick cost–benefit analysis to determine whether to help someone

Example: You are on the bus going to work, and running a little late. You notice a man in the back of the bus is hunched over and not moving. You believe he might be homeless. You get to your stop, and you both get off of the bus. The man stumbles and bumps into you, and you keep walking. Nobody else is around. You starting walking quickly to get to work. After a few steps, you turn around and notice the man is now lying face down on the ground.

• Do you help? Yes/No
• What are the costs and benefits of helping?
• Does thinking about the costs and benefits of helping make you want to change your decision about helping the man? Yes/No

Social Exchange Theory

Example Scenarios

Review the following scenarios and indicate whether or not you would help the individual in need. Also indicate why you would or would not help.

• You are walking to class and someone who appears drunk is lying on the sidewalk, apparently passed out.
• Your friend missed class because she slept in. She was out late last night partying.
• Someone is hit by a car, which speeds off, and they are lying on the ground, moaning in pain.
• A hurricane devastates a small island, and a charity organization is asking for donations.
• A classmate who you don’t know asks if you would meet with him for an hour after class to review what happened in last week’s class. He missed the class while he was away on vacation.

Social Exchange Theory

Social Exchange Theory

People weigh costs and benefits in deciding whether or not to help (Piliavin, et al., 1969)

• Method: observed whether people helped a confederate who collapsed on a subway
• Results: helping behavior depends on aspects of the situation
• If confederate carried a cane, helped within 1 min. in ~ 90% of trials
• If confederate appeared to be drunk, helped in fewer than 20% of trials
• If confederate also had blood in mouth, less likely to help, if at all, due to disturbing situation (high risk to self; desire to help offset by a sense of disgust)
• Conclusion: we help to reduce arousal we feel when we see someone in distress
• Also more likely to help when the individual’s misfortune is out of their control

Empathy-Altruism Model

Empathy-Altruism Model (Batson, 1981)

• Empathy can lead to genuinely altruistic acts
• Helping others depends on how much one empathizes with those in need
• When empathy is low, people help others when benefits outweigh cots
• When empathy is high, people help others even at a cost to themselves (true altruism)

Batson et al. (2011)

• Low empathy Ps helped only if they would suffer by not helping
• Ps high in empathy helped regardless of the cost of not helping

Empathy-Altruism Model

Empathy

• Contributors to empathy: vicarious emotions (mirror neurons), feeling similar to those in need, and exposure to prosocial media

Egoistic Motivation (Cialdini et al., 1987)

• When people empathize, they feel another person’s pain; helping reduces their own pain
• However, helping research shows genuine altruism is more representative than egoistic helping

Some researchers found that empathy has decreased among Millennials.

• Why might have empathy decreased and narcissism increased in younger generations?

The Social & Emotional Triggers of Helping

Consider the last few times you have helped someone:

• How would you describe the person you helped?
• Would you be more likely to help someone from your school rather than another school?
• Why would you be more likely to help someone who is similar or has the same affiliations?

Similarity

• Helping is a social process that is influenced by how we think and feel about our relationships with others
• People are most likely to help those who are similar to

them

• This can lead to prejudicial behavior when people ignore

the plight of those who are different

The Social & Emotional Triggers of Helping

The Empathy Gap

• The underestimation of other's experience of physical pain as well as the pain of social rejection
• Underestimating others’ pain can result in an empathy gap and a reduced likelihood of offering help
• Strategies for closing the gap:
• Experiencing pain or rejection
• Taking the perspective of the person in need
• Focusing on suffering of single individual when group tragedy occurs

The Social & Emotional Triggers of Helping

The Role of Causal Attributions

• Because of attributional processes and a desire to see the world as just, people may convince themselves a person bears responsibility for his or her own troubles.
• This feeling can reduce empathy and helping

Other Prosocial Feelings

• People are motivated to help by feelings of guilt, communal connections, others’ gratitude, and feeling socially secure

The Social & Emotional Triggers of Helping

Priming Prosocial Feelings & Behavior

• Situations can trigger (prime) helping behaviors, even without our awareness

Positive Affect

• A good mood or intense feelings of awe can induce prosocial tendencies.

Priming Prosocial Roles

• People can become more prosocial when they commit themselves to a role defined by helping norms (e.g., friends and primes of friendship that cue a communal orientation)

The Social & Emotional Triggers of Helping

Priming Mortality

• Reminders of mortality are especially likely to increase social behavior when prosocial cultural values have also been primed
• Reminders of mortality...
• lead people to help someone who supports their worldview
• generally increase charitable giving, volunteerism, and blood donations

Priming Religious Values

• Religion typically provides a set of rules and restrictions that helps regulate behavior (i.e., “the golden rule”)
• The mere idea of religion can prime more positive acts

Why People Fail to Help

Kitty Genovese

• Was brutally murdered in 1964
• 38 witnesses remained inactive during the murder
• Witnesses heard the attack, but did not offer help, spurring the

study of the bystander effect

Bystander Effect (Darley & Latané, 1968)

• The greater the number of witnesses to a situation requiring help, the less likely any one of the witnesses will help
• Less likely to help when there are other bystanders present
• Effect increases as the number of bystanders gets larger
• More likely to occur when need for help is minor
• Less likely to occur among friends

Bystander Effect

Video: “The Bystander Effect” (2011, HeroicImaginationTV). Two social experiments that illustrate the bystander effect.

Video: Bystander Intervention: Baby in a Hot Car (ABC’s What Would You Do Series). People tend to see themselves as good, moral individuals and firmly believe that they will step up and do the right thing when faced with difficult situations. However, it is not always easy to turn those intentions into actions.

Why People Fail to Help

Bystander Effect & Intervention Sequence

• Helping behavior results from several steps in sequence:
• Attending to and interpreting the situation as an emergency
• Taking responsibility for

helping

• Deciding how to help
• Conducting a cost–benefit

analysis

• At any step, some aspect of

the situation (e.g., the

presence of others) can

short-circuit helping

Why People Fail to Help

Pluralistic Ignorance

• A situation in which individuals rely on others to identify a norm, but falsely interpret others’ beliefs and feelings, resulting in inaction
• Might fail to interpret event as an emergency due to pluralistic ignorance

Diffusion of Responsibility

• A situation in which the presence of others prevents any one person from taking responsibility (e.g., for helping)
• Might fail to take responsibility due to diffusion of responsibility

Why People Fail to Help

Population Density

• In bigger cities, people tend to be less willing to help strangers; help more in smaller cities
• Urban Overload Hypothesis: cope with stress of living in dense urban area by shutting out stimuli

Who Is Most Likely to Help?

Although situations matter, there are meaningful individual differences in prosocial tendencies.

Altruistic Personality

• A collection of personality traits (moral reasoning, sense of social responsibility, and empathy) that predict altruism
• Personality characteristics are more apparent when situations are more ambiguous

Individual Differences in Motivations for Helping

• People who identify themselves as being moral and helpful generally are more prosocial
• Those high in the trait of agreeableness show high prosocial motivation
• Higher levels of empathy and strong connections to others is linked to intrinsic helping motivations

Who Is Most Likely to Help?

Creating A More Prosocial Society

• Raise children to be empathetic adults with a strong moral identity
• Model showing warmth and seeing the perspective of others, especially of those different than oneself
• Teach children that prosocial behavior is an important basis for being a good, valued world citizen
• Provide media resources that reinforce the rewarding nature of prosocial behavior