Prosocial Behavior and Bystander Effect

• Prosocial behavior involves helping others.

Responding to Emergencies

• When a stranger is distressed, the situation can elicit either heroism or apathy.
• The Carnegie Hero Medal is awarded for acts of heroism.
• The bystander effect gained attention after the murder of Kitty Genovese.
• Research on the bystander effect was triggered by the Kitty Genovese murder case.
• Darley and Latane's 1968 study showed that participants in an emergency were more likely to help when alone versus when with one or more or four other bystanders.
• Thinking about being in a group can reduce helping behavior in unrelated future situations.
• As the number of bystanders increases, the percentage of individuals who help decreases.
• As the number of bystanders increases, the time elapsing before help is given increases.
• There are 5 steps to prosocial behavior in emergencies:
• Attending to the situation.
• Interpreting the situation.
• Assuming responsibility.
• Assessing ability to take action.
• Deciding whether to act.
• An individual becomes either more or less likely to engage in a prosocial response at each step.
• People are less likely to help if in a hurry; this was demonstrated by Darley and Batson (1973).
• Pluralistic ignorance occurs when people accept a comforting explanation that an emergency is not occurring when information is ambiguous.
• The smoke-filled room experiment by Latane and Darley (1968) exemplified pluralistic ignorance.
• People are less likely to interpret an event as an emergency if they are with friends rather than strangers, live in a small town versus a big city, or drinking alcohol.
• People may think that the person in the leadership role assumes all responsibility.
• The norm of social responsibility is a factor in deciding to take responsibility.
• If special skills are required, not everyone can help.
• Thoughts of negative consequences can inhibit helping; this relates to the Social Exchange Theory.

External and Internal Influences on Helping

• Situational factors can enhance or inhibit helping.
• Situational factors to enhance or inhibit helping include liking and attractiveness.
• Mimicry causes people to help others more.
• The perception of whether an individual is responsible for their problem affects helping behavior, and relates to the norm of social responsibility.
• Rural areas tend to have higher rates of helping compared to urban areas.
• Stimulus overload, rather than upbringing, may explain differences in helping between rural and urban areas.
• Observance of someone else helping increases the likelihood that a person will help.
• Helpful models in one's environment and in the media can promote helping.
• Positive emotions are associated with prosocial behavior.

Personal Determinants of Helping Behaviour

• Personality dispositions, gender, culture, and empathy are personal factors influencing helping behavior.
• Eagly and Crowley (1986) proposed a social role theory to explain gender differences in helping and Western cultures.
• Research supports gender differences in helping, as does the recipient list of Canada's Medal of Bravery.
• Western VS Eastern cultures differ in helping.
• Youths in more collectivistic cultures tend to be more empathic, altruistic, helpful, and cooperative, as noted by Hastings et al. (2007).
• Genetic factors play a role in about 33% of the affective components of empathy.
• Research explores how environmental factors have an affect on empathy.
• Empathy increases when the victim is similar and if one has experienced the same negative event.
• Empathy, belief in a just world (just world hypothesis), social responsibility, internal locus of control, and low egocentrism are personality variables associated with helping.

Long-Term Commitment to Helping

• People volunteer many hours to help others.
• 11.8 million Canadians volunteered almost 2 billion hours to charities and other non-profit organizations in 2004.
• Only 3.7% of Canadians aged 17-61 who are eligible to donate blood actually do so.
• Volunteering involves the same 5 steps as responding to an emergency.
• Volunteering occurs for mandates, altruism, or generativity.
• Some argue that requiring volunteer service can decrease interest in volunteering.
• Volunteers have similar personality traits as people who engage in other forms of altruistic behavior.
• Motivation and morality plays a role in Self-Interest, Moral Integrity, and Moral Hypocrisy

Effects of Being Helped

• Being helped can be unpleasant which may cause self-esteem to suffer.
• Being helped evokes the norm of reciprocity.
• Self-help can decrease feelings of dependence when help is unpleasant.

Basic Motivations for Helping

• There are four explanations that explains the motivation for helping.
• The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis posits that helping feels good, as studied by Batson et al. (1981).
• Negative-State Relief suggests helping makes one feel better, and relates to the Negative-State Relief Model by Cialdini et al. (1981).
• Empathic Joy posits helping as an accomplishment, as per the Empathic Joy Hypothesis by Smith et al. (1989).
• Genetic Determinism suggests helping is an adaptive response, based on the Genetic Determinism Model by Pinker (1998).
• Greater genetic similarity between two organisms is associated with an increased likelihood that one will help the other.
• Inclusive fitness involves behaviors that benefit other individuals with whom genes are shared, termed as kin selection theory.

Additional Information

• Children's prosocial behavior increases when they are rewarded.
• Reinforcing to children that they helped because they are helpful people, not for reward is important.
• Reinforcing helpfulness can lead to perceptions of self as altruistic people.
• Parents can model prosocial behavior.
• Lectures about Latané and Darley and bystander intervention can make people more likely to intervene in an emergency, even long after the lecture.