Week 11 Exam Notes: Prosocial Behaviour PDF

**Week 11 Exam Notes: Prosocial Behaviour** **Definition of Prosocial Behaviour** - **Prosocial behaviour**: Actions intended to benefit another person. - **Key Characteristics**: - *Act*: It's a behaviour, not a thought or feeling. - *Intentional*: Must be intention...

**Week 11 Exam Notes: Prosocial Behaviour** **Definition of Prosocial Behaviour** - **Prosocial behaviour**: Actions intended to benefit another person. - **Key Characteristics**: - *Act*: It's a behaviour, not a thought or feeling. - *Intentional*: Must be intentional, even if the outcome is negative. - *Intended to benefit someone else*: Even if the person doesn\'t want the help, it still counts as prosocial. **Examples of Prosocial Behaviours** - **Simple Examples**: - Picking up something someone dropped. - Giving money to a homeless person. - Charity work. - Helping family move house. - **Extreme Examples**: - Running into a burning building to save a family. - Jumping onto train tracks to save someone. - Donating organs. **Motivations for Prosocial Behaviour** **Egoism (Self-Interest)** - **Egoistic helping**: Helping to benefit oneself, either immediately or in the future. - Motivations can include: - *Reciprocity*: Helping others to receive help in return. - *Social approval*: Acting prosocially to gain approval from others. - *Relieving personal distress*: Helping to feel better about oneself or reduce negative emotions. - *Self-esteem boost*: Helping to improve one\'s self-image. - **Social Exchange Theory**: - People engage in prosocial behaviour if the benefits outweigh the costs. - **Rewards**: Help in return, improving reputation, feeling good, reducing guilt. - **Costs**: Time, effort, discomfort, physical danger. - **Example**: Karen volunteers for a sports club to eventually become the captain. **Altruism** - **Altruism**: Helping others even at a cost to oneself, with no expectation of personal gain. - **Pure Altruism**: Helping purely to benefit others, without ulterior motives. - **Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis**: Feeling empathy for someone motivates helping behaviour without concern for self-gain. - **Example**: Peter donates blood regularly out of compassion for those in need, without expecting anything in return. **Empathy and Helping** - **Empathy**: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. - If you feel empathy, you will help even when there is no benefit to yourself. - **Empathic Emotions**: Compassion, sympathy, tenderness, and empathic anger. - **Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis**: - Empathy motivates altruistic helping, while lack of empathy triggers egoistic helping (focused on personal gain). - **High Empathy**: More likely to help, even if escape from the situation is possible. - **Low Empathy**: Likely to avoid helping unless they cannot escape the situation. - **Studies**: - **Piferi et al. (2006)**: Motivation to help after 9/11 was influenced by emotional distress (egoistic), with a smaller percentage of people helping out of genuine altruism (e.g., seeing others suffering). - **Stocks et al. (2009)**: Priming empathy increased prosocial behaviour, particularly in situations where escape was difficult. **Factors Influencing Prosocial Behaviour** **Operant Conditioning** - Prosocial behaviour can be learned through rewards and punishments (e.g., parents rewarding helpfulness, laws like Good Samaritan laws). - **Angel of Mercy Laws**: Protection for those helping others in emergencies. **Cognitive Dissonance** - People may feel discomfort if they don\'t help when witnessing harm. This discomfort can drive prosocial behaviour as a way to resolve the dissonance. **Social Learning Theory** - We learn prosocial behaviours through observation, modelling, and media (e.g., video games, TV shows). **Culture** - Cultural norms can promote prosocial behaviour. - **Simpatia** (Latin America/Spain): A cultural value emphasizing friendly, helpful behaviour toward others. **The Norm of Reciprocity** - **Norm of Reciprocity**: People are likely to help others because they expect help in return or because others have helped them in the past. - Examples: Returning favours, gifts, and concessions. - **Reciprocity**: If someone helps you, you\'re more likely to help them back. **Mood and Prosocial Behaviour** - **Isen & Levin (1972)**: People who found coins in a payphone were more likely to help others. - **Feel-Good, Do-Good Effect**: Good mood increases prosocial behaviour. - **Bad Mood**: Guilt or sadness can also increase helping, especially to alleviate negative feelings (e.g., Harris et al., 1975). - **Slattery et al. (2012)**: Positive emotions from websites increase the likelihood of prosocial behaviour, such as donations. **Evolution and Prosocial Behaviour** - **Charles Darwin**: Evolution favours prosocial behaviours that enhance survival. - **Kin Selection**: People are more likely to help close relatives to ensure their genes are passed on (e.g., helping siblings more than distant relatives). - **Kinship Selection** (Burnstein et al., 1994): People prioritize helping closer family members in life-or-death situations and younger family members for survival. - **Example**: Birds alert others of predators, dolphins help sick members, bats share food. **The Bystander Effect** - **Darley & Latane (1968)**: The more bystanders present, the less likely people are to help, due to diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance. - **Bystander Effect**: People are less likely to help if others are around because they assume someone else will take action. - **Key Factors**: Number of bystanders, emergency nature of the situation, relationship to the victim. - **Fischer et al. (2011)**: More bystanders decrease the likelihood of help. When bystanders know each other, helping increases. - **5 Steps to Helping** (Latane & Darley, 1970): - - - - - **Important Studies** - **Regan (1971)**: Participants bought more raffle tickets from a confederate who had previously bought them a Coke---illustrating the norm of reciprocity. - **Levine et al. (2001)**: Studied prosocial behaviour in 23 cities worldwide, showing cultural differences in helpfulness, especially in \"simpatia\" cultures (Latin America, Spain). - **Darley & Latane (1968)**: Found that participants were more likely to help in an emergency when they were alone versus in a group, demonstrating the bystander effect. **Exam Tips** - **Key distinctions**: Know the difference between egoism and altruism (e.g., egoism helps for personal gain, altruism helps with no expectation of return). - **Real-life examples**: Be familiar with practical examples (e.g., donating blood as altruism, volunteering for self-interest). - **Bystander Effect**: Understand how group size influences helping behaviour and the stages of intervention (e.g., noticing, interpreting as emergency). - **Cultural differences**: Recognize the role of culture in shaping prosocial behaviour (e.g., simpatia vs. individualistic cultures). - **Empathy**: Empathy drives altruistic helping, while lack of empathy might lead to egoistic motivations.