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Questions and Answers
What is the definition of altruism?
What is the definition of altruism?
Which emotion is not considered to promote altruistic motivation?
Which emotion is not considered to promote altruistic motivation?
What percentage of people donated after 9/11 to relieve their pain and distress?
What percentage of people donated after 9/11 to relieve their pain and distress?
What primarily motivates egoistic prosocial behavior?
What primarily motivates egoistic prosocial behavior?
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How does empathy influence prosocial behavior?
How does empathy influence prosocial behavior?
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What is a common reason for individuals to help others in a situation where they see suffering?
What is a common reason for individuals to help others in a situation where they see suffering?
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Which of the following is true about helping behavior when empathy is lacking?
Which of the following is true about helping behavior when empathy is lacking?
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Which category of prosocial behavior includes the expectation of receiving help in return?
Which category of prosocial behavior includes the expectation of receiving help in return?
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What factor is likely to reduce the bystander effect in emergency situations?
What factor is likely to reduce the bystander effect in emergency situations?
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What psychological theory suggests you would be more likely to help a biological parent over a friend in a life-threatening situation?
What psychological theory suggests you would be more likely to help a biological parent over a friend in a life-threatening situation?
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Which of the following scenarios is most likely to increase the likelihood of bystanders helping in an emergency?
Which of the following scenarios is most likely to increase the likelihood of bystanders helping in an emergency?
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Which research finding suggests that men may be more effective in providing physical support in emergencies?
Which research finding suggests that men may be more effective in providing physical support in emergencies?
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What was the main finding from Regan's 1971 study concerning the sale of raffle tickets?
What was the main finding from Regan's 1971 study concerning the sale of raffle tickets?
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What is the primary reason people engage in prosocial behaviors according to the norm of reciprocity?
What is the primary reason people engage in prosocial behaviors according to the norm of reciprocity?
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In the context of the norm of reciprocity, when helping someone, what do they often feel?
In the context of the norm of reciprocity, when helping someone, what do they often feel?
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What term describes a cluster of social qualities such as friendliness and agreeableness that support prosocial behaviors in certain cultures?
What term describes a cluster of social qualities such as friendliness and agreeableness that support prosocial behaviors in certain cultures?
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Which factor did Isen & Levin's research indicate played a significant role in prosocial behavior?
Which factor did Isen & Levin's research indicate played a significant role in prosocial behavior?
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What effect describes the phenomenon where individuals are more likely to perform prosocial actions when in a good mood?
What effect describes the phenomenon where individuals are more likely to perform prosocial actions when in a good mood?
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Which of the following is NOT a way to induce a good mood as outlined in the content?
Which of the following is NOT a way to induce a good mood as outlined in the content?
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Research shows that people in a good mood are more likely to do which of the following?
Research shows that people in a good mood are more likely to do which of the following?
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Which scenario best exemplifies the concept of reciprocity as described?
Which scenario best exemplifies the concept of reciprocity as described?
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In life-or-death situations, what factor primarily influences individuals' willingness to help?
In life-or-death situations, what factor primarily influences individuals' willingness to help?
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What is a consistent finding regarding helping behaviors in the presence of bystanders?
What is a consistent finding regarding helping behaviors in the presence of bystanders?
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What belief did Japanese participants express in everyday situations concerning help from strangers?
What belief did Japanese participants express in everyday situations concerning help from strangers?
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Which of the following statements is true regarding women past menopause in comparison to men?
Which of the following statements is true regarding women past menopause in comparison to men?
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What aspect of prosocial behavior does Krebs (2015) emphasize?
What aspect of prosocial behavior does Krebs (2015) emphasize?
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In studies about the bystander effect, what did the results show about the relationship between bystander numbers and helping behavior?
In studies about the bystander effect, what did the results show about the relationship between bystander numbers and helping behavior?
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Which of the following statements accurately describes prosocial behavior?
Which of the following statements accurately describes prosocial behavior?
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Which of the following is considered an extreme prosocial behavior?
Which of the following is considered an extreme prosocial behavior?
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What limitation was noted in the studies regarding individuals' helping behaviors?
What limitation was noted in the studies regarding individuals' helping behaviors?
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Which of the following does not describe the preferences observed in helping behaviors?
Which of the following does not describe the preferences observed in helping behaviors?
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What is one of the primary motivations behind egoistic helping?
What is one of the primary motivations behind egoistic helping?
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Under what circumstances is an act not considered prosocial?
Under what circumstances is an act not considered prosocial?
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Which of the following is NOT a cost associated with helping others?
Which of the following is NOT a cost associated with helping others?
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Which theory suggests that prosocial behavior occurs when the perceived benefits outweigh the costs?
Which theory suggests that prosocial behavior occurs when the perceived benefits outweigh the costs?
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What example illustrates egoistic helping behavior?
What example illustrates egoistic helping behavior?
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Which of the following benefits does altruism NOT typically rely on?
Which of the following benefits does altruism NOT typically rely on?
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What is the primary factor that affects how quickly someone helps a victim in a crowd?
What is the primary factor that affects how quickly someone helps a victim in a crowd?
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What defines the concept of 'pluralistic ignorance' in the context of helping behaviors?
What defines the concept of 'pluralistic ignorance' in the context of helping behaviors?
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What is the effect of 'diffusion of responsibility' when bystanders are present?
What is the effect of 'diffusion of responsibility' when bystanders are present?
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Which of the following is NOT a step in the psychological process of helping in the presence of bystanders?
Which of the following is NOT a step in the psychological process of helping in the presence of bystanders?
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Which barrier to receiving help is mitigated by directly communicating the need for assistance?
Which barrier to receiving help is mitigated by directly communicating the need for assistance?
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Which situational factor is crucial for an individual deciding to help someone in distress?
Which situational factor is crucial for an individual deciding to help someone in distress?
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What does 'evaluation apprehension' refer to in the context of bystander intervention?
What does 'evaluation apprehension' refer to in the context of bystander intervention?
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What was a significant factor in Gassama's decision to help the child dangling from the balcony?
What was a significant factor in Gassama's decision to help the child dangling from the balcony?
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Study Notes
Prosocial Behaviour Definition
- Act with the goal of benefiting another person.
- A behaviour, not cognition or affect.
- Intentional.
- Intended to benefit someone else.
- Even if the act goes wrong, it's still prosocial behaviour.
- The intention must be to benefit someone else.
- All benefits count – financial, emotional, physical.
- Even if the person doesn't want the help, it's still prosocial.
- It is not prosocial if you do something and it accidentally benefits someone else; it must be intentional.
Examples of Prosocial Behaviors
- Picking up something someone dropped.
- Giving money to a homeless person.
- Charity work.
- Helping family members move house.
- Running into a burning building to save a family.
- Jumping onto train tracks to save someone.
- Donating organs.
Reasons People Act Prosocially
- Egoism/self-interest:
- Reciprocity
- Cultural influences
- Mood
- Evolution
- To help others with an act
- To benefit themselves
- To get something out of it/self-interest
- To get some help in return later on
- To improve self-esteem
- To feel good
- To relieve negative states
- To reduce guilt for not helping later on
- To alleviate distress over the situation
- Helping others can be an investment for the future as they might return the favour
- Gain reward of social approval
- Karen volunteers for the local sports club so she can elect herself captain.
Social Exchange Theories: Egoism
- We only engage in prosocial behaviour if the benefits outweigh the costs.
- We are only ever helping others because it benefits us in some way.
- Rewards for helping:
- Get help in return later
- To improve our reputation
- To feel good
- Negative state relief
- The Costs of helping:
- Physical danger or discomfort
- Embarrassment
- Effort and time
Piferi et al. 2006 Egoism 9/11 Attacks
- The most frequent prosocial behaviour was donating money.
- The top reasons for Egoistic Prosocial behaviour are:
- Negative state relieve for themselves
- To gain help in return later
- Reasons found for donating money were:
- To feel better about/relieve personal pain due to the event
- Because they would expect others to help them in that situation
- Because others were suffering
- To show allegiance to the United States
- Because it's their social responsibility
- Because they knew someone involved
Altruism
- Helping another person, even if it involves a cost to the helper.
- To help others even when there is nothing in it for you.
- Helping others even when the cost of helping outweighs any benefit to you.
- Example: Peter has donated blood every 3 months for the last 5 years. He donates blood because he feels like he feels tenderness for those who may need blood.
- Pure Altruism: Helping others when the only goal is to help another person, there are no ulterior motives for helping.
Empathy Definition
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The ability to put oneself in another person's shoes and experience events and emotions the way that person experiences them.
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The motivation to help others depends on whether or not you feel empathy towards that person.
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If you feel empathy, you will help another person regardless of what you have to lose or gain.
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The goal of empathy is to relieve another person's stress and not to gain something for yourself.
Empathic emotions
- Compassion
- Sympathy
- Tenderness
- Empathic Anger:
Empathy - Altruism Hypothesis
- Empathy evokes an altruistic motivation to protect or promote the welfare of a person; we feel empathy for them regardless of any benefit to ourselves.
- Empathy is a significant condition that promotes helping
- A lack of empathy leads to social exchange, helping If you don't feel empathy, your selfish concerns will come into play.
Research Looks at Motivation for Prosocial Behaviour
- Is it Egoism or Altruism driving prosocial behaviour?
- Research investigates motivation.
- Asking individuals about their motivations directly
- Compare the strengths of relationships with behaviours
- Manipulate empathy and escape from discomfort of a situation
How emotionally effected a person was by 9/11 was...
- significant predictor of how much a person helped immediately after the disaster.
- Motivation to help:
- To relieve personal distress
- Cognitive empathy was a significant predictor for helping
- Egoism:
- People will only help others if they have difficulty leaving the situation
- People would rather leave an emotionally distressing situation than help.
- If they can't leave the situation, they are motivated to help to relieve their own discomfort and personal distress.
- Altruism:
People high in empathy...
- will always help someone else.
- They will help even if they could easily escape or leave themselves
- They will choose to stay and help due to empathy.
- Those low in empathy will only help and stay if they can't escape, they help to relieve their personal distress
Stocks et al 2009 Memory Training Experiments
- People do tend to help others when they are manipulated or primed to feel high empathy, even when they have a chance to escape.
- When empathy is low, people choose to escape regardless of its easy or hard to do so rather than help.
Reasons People Become Prosocial
- Prosocial behaviour is a behaviour developed from attitudes.
- Operant Conditioning & Prosocial Behaviour: Prosocial behaviour can be developed through rewarding and punishing certain behaviours.
- Parenting children
- Some countries have good Samaritan laws that require you to help others and provide aid in an emergency.
- Angel of Mercy laws: promising protection if they accidentally harm someone they are trying to save
- Medal like Order of Australia for helping others
- Cognitions & Prosocial Behaviours: Thoughts about doing the right thing, impact a person's prosocial behaviour.
- Beliefs about helping others being the right thing to do
- Cognitive Dissonance: if we see others being harmed, we feel dissonance if we don't help.
- Social Learning Theory & Prosocial Behaviours: We learn prosocial behaviour through social learning, observation, modelling and video games.
- Affects/ Emotions & Prosocial Behaviours: Empathy drives prosocial behaviours.
- Culture: Social and cultural norms drive prosocial behaviours.
- Genes: Family and peers play a role in motivating prosocial behaviour through evolution theories for genetic survival.
- The Norm of Reciprocity Drives Prosocial behaviours: The norm of reciprocity suggests that people act prosocially because:
- Others have acted prosocially towards them in the past
- They want others to act prosocially towards them in the future
Helping because you want to...
- other people to help you.
- When you help people they feel the need to help you back to relieve their own feelings of being uncomfortable owing someone.
- We return and repay others with:
- Gifts
- Favours
- Concessions (even if…)
- Don't know the person
- Didn't want the gift/favour
- Gift/favour is in a different domain
- Gift/favour is disproportionate
- Gift/favour is never delivered
Reciprocity Example
- Manuel helps his friend Javier put together an IKEA couch because Javier helped him install a toilet.
Prosocial cultural study
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Culture does influence prosocial behaviours.
- Dropped pen: how many people assisted
- Hurt leg: dropped magazine, couldn't pick them up who helped
- Helping a blind person cross the street:
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Simpatia/simpatico: refers to a group of social qualities, including friendliness, niceness, agreeableness, and good-natured prosocial behaviours. Founded in Latin America and Spain.
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A culture that values amiable social qualities and helping strangers over achievement and productivity. Simpatia cities are significantly more helpful and altruistic.
Mood and Prosocial Behaviour
- Isen & Levin 1972 Mood Research: 84% people who found the coins became helpers to others.
- Mood played a major role in prosocial behaviour.
- The Feel Good, Do Good Effect: People in a good mood are more likely to act prosocially.
- Happy Mood can be induced with:
- A good grade on a test
- Receiving a gift
- Thinking happy thoughts
- Listening to pleasant music
- Pleasant smells
- Good mood increases these prosocial behaviours:
- Donating Money
- Helping find a contact lens
- Tutoring other students
- Donating Blood
- Helping co-workers
- Giving others the benefit of the doubt
- Good mood increase self awareness and self attention
- Helping others prolongs a good mood
- Bad moods can help prosocial behaviours: Guilt; makes us more likely to compensate for a misdeed.
Positive and Negative Affect and Prosocial behaviours
- Amnesty International and Casa Guatemala.
- Having a positive effect from a website increases the intention for positive prosocial behaviours.
- Experiencing both negative and positive effects from a website does not influence prosocial behaviours.
How to get people to act Prosocially
- If you want people to act prosocially, you must evoke either a positive or negative affect, but not both from your website.
- If your website looks really professional, you don't need to work as hard at convincing prosocial acts and donations.
- If your website is basic, you must have a strong argument to convince people to act prosocially and donate.
- Higher quality website, the higher the prosocial behaviours.
Evolution & Prosocial Behaviour
- Natural selection favours genes that aid in survival; prosocial behaviours also contribute to survival.
- Any gene that lowers survival or reduces the chances of producing offspring is less likely to be passed on.
Kin Selection
- Prosocial behaviours don't ensure the survival of the individual but rather the survival of their biological family members, to increase the chances that their own genes will be passed on.
- Individuals will act more prosocial towards their own genetic relatives.
- This is implicit; more likely to help genetic relatives than strangers.
- Examples:
- Birds will call alarm when predators are around to protect other birds even putting themselves at risk
- Dolphins with push sick animal to the surface to help it breath
- Bats have a feeding buddy system
Kinship Selection Burnstein et al.
- Japan and Americans.
- Life or Death situations Vs Everyday situations
- Close family relationships
- Age of family members
- Sex of family members
- Results
- In Life or Death situations: Individuals prefer to help a closer family than distant genetic relatives, especially in life-or-death situations.
- The younger family members are more likely to be helped to ensure genes can be passed on.
- Women will receive more help than males, to help with reproduction
- Women past menopause helped equally to men
- Prefer to help those who are healthy over those sick relatives
In everyday conditions
- More likely to help any person regardless of age and relationships based on who actually needs the everyday help the most, not based on survival.
- Culture: No difference found between cultures.
- This effects was universal
- Limitations: They just used scenarios; Participants only imagined how they would react; Could not observe how they would actually behave in real life
Hitokoto 2016
- Hitokoto (2016) found that Japanese participants reported that they would feel a stronger sense of indebtedness across many everyday situations where a person was given help, especially when the helper was a stranger
Krebs 2015
- Prosocial behaviour came about to help people survive, adapt and pass on their genes.
Bystander Effect
- Kitty Genovese
- Study 1
- DARLEY & LATANÉ (1968): Bystander effect on prosocial behaviour.
- Psych students
- Effect size on helping behaviours
- The more bystanders, the less likely people were to help the person having a seizure, and the slower they were to offer help.
- The less bystanders, the more responsible you feel to help and the more likely and faster you are to help.
- 2 participants: 85% got help faster
- 6 participants: 31% slower and less likely to get help, if they're going to help they help quickly, otherwise they won't help at all.
- Study 2
- FISCHER ET AL. (2011): Bystander Effect on Prosocial Behaviour Meta-analysis of Bystanders 105 studies; There is a significant negative relationship between the number of bystanders around and the probability of any bystanders helping; As the number of bystanders increases, helping decreases; Sex of the victim; How well you know the victim; Or how physically close you are to the victim; These do not affect how quickly you help, it's the number of people around you which have the biggest impact.
- Study 3
- LATANÉ & DARLEY (1970): Bystander effect what inhibits helping in large groups: 5 Step Psychological Process to Helping with Bystanders Around.
- --Notice the event
- --Pluralistic ignorance
- --Interpret event as emergency
- --Diffusion of responsibility
- --Assume responsibility
- --Know how to help
- --Evaluation apprehension
- --Decide to help
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- When we notice an event to reacting to it first
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- We use others as a source of information when we are unsure
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- Bystanders tend to freeze, watch and listen when they try to figure out what is going on
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- Pluralistic Ignorance: when we don't understand its actually an emergency. Stage 2 Interpret event as emergency,
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- Diffusion of Responsibility: as the number of bystanders increases, the individual sense of responsibility decreases
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- Evaluation Apprehension: Can happen at any stage; Fear of being judged by others or making a public mistake prevents prosocial behaviours
- Bystander Situational Factors that need to be overcome to help someone: First, they need to notice the event.
When bystanders are helpful
- The bystander effect is reduced when
- The situation is dangerous
- The bystanders are real
- In dangerous situations, all the bystanders are men
- The bystanders know each other
- The Bystander effect reversed and helping increased when: The situation is dangerous and bystanders are real.
- Bystanders have to intervene physically
- Bystanders are instructed to be active
- A perpetrator commits a crime
- The perpetrator is present
- The bystander effect is reduced or reversed in dangerous situations because:
- It's more obvious that the situation is an emergency
- Bystanders are viewed as providers of physical support, reducing fear of intervention
- Men may be more effective providers of physical support than women
- We rely more on people who are familiar to us.
Regans 1971 Study Raffle Tickets
- Participants in Regan's (1971) study bought more raffle tickets from the confederate when the confederate had bought the participant a Coke in the study break.
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