Chapter 12.docx

Chapter 12: Altruism and Prosocial Behaviour How do Personal Factors Influence Helping? • Prosocial Behaviour: Goal is to help another ◦ Desire to help your own circumstances ◦ Desire to help another’s well-being • Altruism: helping without expectation of personal gain • Personal factors that affe...

Chapter 12: Altruism and Prosocial Behaviour How do Personal Factors Influence Helping? • Prosocial Behaviour: Goal is to help another ◦ Desire to help your own circumstances ◦ Desire to help another’s well-being • Altruism: helping without expectation of personal gain • Personal factors that affect helping behaviour: ◦ Evolutionary factors ◦ Personality ◦ Religion Evolutionary Factors • Some act in altruistic ways to help another, even at great personal cost ◦ This is likely when it will help ensure the survival of their genes, which can then be passed on • Kinship selection: We are more likely to help those we are genetically related to Evidence of Kinship Selection • People should behave more altruistically to those who could potentially reproduce and pass on their own genes • People should be more likely to help those who are likely to reproduce and pass on their genes (vs. those who are in poor health and/or very old) Evidence for Reciprocal Prosocial Behaviour • People do show prosocial behaviour to non-relatives • Reciprocal altruism: We are motivated to help others because we expect that they will later help us in return Personality • We often assume that people who engage in highly altruistic behaviour have distinct personality characteristics ◦ We show an increase in empathy and prosocial behaviour as we mature, but we vary in our frequency and types of helping Empathy • Empathy: The ability to understand others’ perspectives and respond emotionally to their experiences ◦ People with higher levels of empathy engage in more prosocial behaviour (e.g., donating money to charitable causes and spending time helping people in need) ◦ Some people are more empathic than others Moral Reasoning • Moral reasoning: Extent to which a person’s willingness to help depends on larger moral standards rather than the person’s needs and the expected consequences for him or her of helping ◦ Those who exhibit high empathy traits tend to show higher moral reasoning ◦ Response to other’s distress is associated with prosocial behaviour ◦ Parents’ direct teaching of prosocial behaviour can influence children’s moral reasoning ◦ We are, to some extent, “hardwired” in our ability to learn morality Religion • Some religious teachings emphasize the importance of engaging in cooperative and prosocial behaviour • Other religions encourage people to treat others as they would like others to treat them • Religious beliefs are sometimes associated with more altruistic behaviour ◦ People who hold strong, conservative religious beliefs are more likely to help those they think deserve help but not those they think are undeserving ◦ Prosociality is with the ingroup rather than the outgroup How do Situational Factors Influence Helping? • Two models that describe how situational factors influence whether help is given: ◦ Decision-making process model ◦ Arousal/cost-reward model ◦ Situational factors that influence helping behaviour: ◦ Mood ◦ Modelling ◦ The environment Decision-Making Process Model • Emergencies are rare and unusual events ◦ We do not have a lot of experience in handling emergencies, and may not know how to cope with one ◦ Emergencies differ widely ◦ You may have experience handling one type of emergency but not others which require different types of help ◦ Emergencies are unforeseen ◦ Helping behaviour is a function of 5 distinct steps Arousal/Cost Reward Model • Helping behaviour is caused in part by the physiological arousal we can experience when we see someone in need of help and in part by the calculation of the costs and rewards of providing such help ◦ We are motivated to behave altruistically to help decrease our own arousal • People who give the most help are those whose physiological responses show them to be particularly distressed when seeing someone in trouble • Even when people experience unpleasant arousal in response to seeing others in pain, they still compute the relative costs and benefits of helping before deciding to take action • Impact of costs: There can be personal costs to helping • Teaching someone about the personal costs of prosocial behaviour can lead to a decrease in helping • Impact of benefits: The costs of prosocial behaviour decrease the likelihood of helping; the benefits or rewards of prosocial behaviour work to increase helping ◦ Receiving certain types of rewards for prosocial behaviour can lead to a decrease in helping because it undermines spontaneous helping Mood • Both good and bad moods can lead to helping • Good mood effect: Helping behaviour increases when we are in a good mood ◦ Helping prolongs our good mood ◦ When in a good mood, we tend to focus on the benefits of helping (rather than the costs) ◦ When in a good mood, we experience more self-awareness and therefore act more in accordance with our internal values • Bad moods can also increase prosocial behaviour ◦ Desire to make up for whatever we did that caused this negative feeling ◦ Simply want to improve mood • Bad moods can sometimes decrease helping: ◦ When we have been socially excluded Modelling • Can increase altruistic behaviour when such behaviour is modeled for us (by parents, peers, media) ◦ Gives us role models to follow ◦ Shows us the rewards of helping ◦ Reminds us of the positive societal value of helping • Exposure to highly altruistic people can decrease helping Environmental Factors • Environmental factors (e.g., location of emergency) influence prosocial behaviour ◦ People in small towns are more likely than those in urban areas to help others • Urban overload hypothesis: People who live in urban areas are constantly exposed to stimulation which leads them to decrease their awareness of their environment ◦ Also, people in cities are less similar to each other, more anonymous, and greater in number Does Pure Altruism Exist? • There are two distinct hypotheses about this: ◦ The empathy-altruism hypothesis ◦ The negative-state relief hypothesis Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis ◦ We may feel empathy with a person based on our own personality ◦ We may also feel empathy due to something about the other person • Participants scoring high on empathic concern placed higher emphasis on behaving prosocially for altruistic reasons. ◦ People who score low on empathy still engage in prosocial behaviours, but for more personally beneficial reasons such as receiving praise and gaining attention • Can create empathic motives by imagining yourself in another person’s place • Research also reveals that empathy is a particularly strong predictor of helping behaviour when the helper and the target belong to the same cultural group Negative-State Relief Hypothesis • We are motivated to help others in order to relieve our own negative feelings ◦ Helping is egoistic ◦ Helping occurs under two conditions: ◦ If you are in a bad mood ◦ If helping can lead to improvement in mood Negative-State Relief Hypothesis • Helping occurs to relieve your own bad mood ◦ May ironically lead to providing more help ◦ The egoistic-model of helping suggests that helping others makes us happy, and that helping is therefore motivated our desire to make ourselves feel better Comparing the Models • Main difference between these models: Empathy-altruism model describes the self-benefits of helping as unintended consequences Negative-state relief hypothesis describes these benefits as the primary motivation for helping • Benefits to the self: ◦ Reduction of aversive arousal ◦ Fear of punishment for not helping ◦ Desire for reward • Reduction of aversive arousal: We want to reduce the unpleasant arousal we experience when hearing or seeing someone who is in distress • But, people who feel empathy may help even though they could avoid the distressed person by leaving • Fear of punishment for not helping: We know that helping is “the right thing to do,” and hence are worried about feeling guilty or ashamed if we do not help • But, when told that most people in this type of situation do not help, those who felt empathy helped anyway • Desire for reward: We learn early in life that we can receive rewards for helping ◦ We may behave altruistically only when we believe that others will notice--and think less of us if we do not help--and therefore helping is again motivated by a self-focused concern Predicting Long-Term Helping • Helping motivated by empathy is more likely to lead to long-term helping Positive Psychology of Helping • Helping is beneficial to the receiver and also to the helper Mental health benefits of volunteering: Reduced depression, increased happiness and well-being, increased lifespan If the helper is overwhelmed by the help he/she is giving, these benefits are not experienced those who volunteer showed more positive affect and that this was also related to more positive social exchanges and greater social support from friends and family Who Gets Help When They Are in Need? • Factors that influence getting help: ◦ Person factors ◦ Social norms ◦ Relationship factors Person Factors • Gender: Women are more likely than men to receive help ◦ Men may be less interested or willing to receive help ◦ Seeking help is more threatening for men (admission of weakness) • Age: Children are very willing to seek help • Attractiveness: Attractive people get more help ◦ Even when there is no possibility of future interaction • Personality: Factors, such as shyness, anxiety, and self-esteem influence the likelihood of receiving help Social Norms • Norm of reciprocity: We should help those in need of assistance because they will then help us in the future ◦ We tend to give back to those who have given to us ◦ Norm of Social Responsibility: We have an obligation to help those in need of assistance even if we have no expectation of later receiving help from them ◦ We are especially likely to help others if we see their need for help as caused by something beyond their control • Belief in a just world: We tend to assume that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people • The attributions that we make even for people’s minor requests can influence whether, and how much, we help. Relationship Factors • Similarity: We are most likely to help those who are similar to us (in dress, gender, nationality, and attitudes) ◦ Even similarity based on superficial characteristics (e.g., cheering for the same sports team) can lead to greater helping • Friends: We are more likely to help those we know and care about than strangers ◦ We are also more likely to help those with whom we are in a communal relationship (expect mutual responsiveness to one's needs) ◦ We are much less likely to help those with whom we are in an exchange relationship (desire and expect strict reciprocity) • But not always: Although we tend to behave more altruistically to people we are close to, in some cases closeness can backfire ◦ Self-evaluation maintenance model: Our self-concept can be threatened if someone performs better than us on a task that is relevant to our self-esteem • Overhelping can make you seem altruistic but it also makes the recipient react negatively to receiving help when it makes us feel inferior to and dependent on the helper The Downside of Receiving Help • We react negatively to receiving help when: ◦ It makes us feel inferior to and dependent on the helper ◦ If the help comes from people who are similar to ourselves (especially if they are helping us with a task that we really care about) ◦ We do not believe we will have a way of repaying the help How Does Culture Influence Helping? • In all cultures, help is more likely to be given to an in-group member than an out-group member • In collectivistic cultures, however, members of in-groups are even more likely to be helped than outgroup members • Cultural differences in helping include ◦ Frequency of helping ◦ Norms for helping ◦ Motivations for helping ◦ Factors increasing helping Frequency of Helping • Economic productivity: Countries in which people earn more actually help less ◦ The most helpful countries (Brazil, Costa Rica, Malawi, and India) are all third-world environments ◦ In all cultures, in larger cities, people are less helpful ◦ People from collectivistic cultures may be less likely to seek help and therefore less likely to receive it Norms of Helping • Differences in rates of helping are partly a result of the different cultural norms for helping • Cultures differ in how they view the norm of reciprocity ◦ How much concerns about reciprocity of helping influence prosocial behaviour ◦ Individualistic cultures see reciprocity as a matter of personal choice ◦ Collectivistic cultures see reciprocity as a moral imperative Motivations for Helping • People in different cultures vary in their motivations for helping • Toddlers may learn helping behaviours in culturally specific ways, as long as empathy and the social norm of social responsibility were emphasized by parents, toddlers learned to help others