Chapter 10

Helping Others

Evolutionary andMotivational Factors

Why Do People Help?

Evolutionary and Motivational Factors: Why Do People Help?

• Prosocial behaviors – Actions intended to benefit others.

Evolutionary Factorsin Helping: The “Selfish Gene”

• What is important is survival of the individual’s genes, not survival of the fittest individual.

• Kin selection is the tendency to help genetic relatives. – Strongest when biological stakes are

particularly high

Helping Kin When Risks Are High

Evolutionary Factors inHelping: Reciprocal Altruism

• What is the reproductive advantage of helping someone who isn’t related to you?

• Through reciprocal altruism, helping someone else can be in your best interests.– Increases the likelihood that you will be helped in

return.

Evolution of Morality, Empathy

• More study into “human” attributes such as morality, gratitude, and empathy

• Empathy: understanding or vicariously experiencing another’s individual perspective and feeling sympathy and compassion for that individual– Perspective taking– Empathic concern

• Only a human trait?

Rewards of Helping:Helping Others to Help Oneself

• More likely to help when the potential rewards of helping seem high relative to the potential costs.

• Arousal: Cost-Reward Model– What are the costs and rewards associated with

helping?

Rewards of Helping: Helping to Feel Good

• More likely to help if:– self-esteem has been threatened by failure– feeling guilty about something

• A relationship exists between helping and feeling better.

• Helping others to feel good is often not a conscious decision, but it can be.

• Negative state relief model: proposes that people help to counter their own feelings of sadness

Rewards of Helping: Helping to Be Good

• May help because we are motivated to behave in ways that are consistent with moral principles – e.g., “right thing to do”

Costs of Helping or of Not Helping

• Helping has its costs as well as its rewards.• Helping can also be more sustained and

deliberate.– Courageous resistance

• Helping can have negative health effects if it involves constant and exhausting demands.

• Good Samaritan laws to reduce potential costs

Altruism or Egoism: The Great Debate

• Is helping motivated by altruistic or egoistic concerns?– Altruistic: Motivated by the desire to increase

another’s welfare.– Egoistic: Motivated by the desire to increase one’s

own welfare.• Batson: The motivation behind some helpful

actions is truly altruistic.

The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis

Empathy and Helping

Telling the Difference Between Egoistic and Altruistic Motives

• How easy is it to escape from a helping situation?

• If egoistic motive, helping should decline when escape from the situation is easy.

• If altruistic motive, help is given regardless of ease of escape.

Egoistic Alternatives

• Empathy encourages helping because of concern about the costs to the self of not helping.

• Empathy highlights the potential rewards for helping others.– Negative state relief model

• Helper experiences empathic joy by helping another person.

Altruism vs. Egoism: Limits

• Strong evidence for the empathy-altruism hypothesis.

• Limitations to empathy-altruism hypothesis:– Not all helping is altruistically motivated.– Motives do not guarantee behavior.– Is the assumption that there is a clear divide

between the self and the other a valid one?

Convergence of Motives: Volunteering

• People tend to volunteer due to multiple motives– Altruistic and egoistic

• Egoistic Motives can be put to good use

Situational Influences

When Do People Help?

Bystander Effect

• Tragic stories of assault, violence, and murder– Why does no one help?

• Latané & Darley: Are social psychological processes at work?

• Bystander Effect: The presence of othersinhibits helping.

The Five Steps to Helping

• Noticing• Interpreting– Overcome pluralistic ignorance

• Taking Responsibility– Overcome diffusion of responsibility

• Deciding how to help• Providing Help– Overcome audience inhibition

The Five Steps to Helping

Bystander Effect Online

• Virtual presence of others reduces likelihood that any one individual will intervene– “Ripper” case

The Legacy of the Bystander Effect Research

• The legacy of the bystander intervention research lives on today as it is being applied to programs designed to encourage witnesses to destructive behaviors such as bullying and sexual assault to take action.

Getting Help in a Crowd

• Make sure that you make your need for help very clear by singling out individuals in a crowd via– Eye contact– Pointing – Direct requests

• This type of advice has been shown to work in cyberspace as well

Time Pressure

• Time pressure can conflict with one’s good intentions of helping those in need.

• Darley & Batson’s (1973) Good Samaritan study

Location and Helping

• Do individuals have a worse chance of being helped in an emergency in a big city than in a small town?

• Greater population density is associated with less helping.

• Economic well-being of city was also positively correlated with helping

Helping in the USA

Culture and Helping

• Around the world, two factors correlate with helping– Economic well-being: the more well off, the less

help provided– Notion of simpatico – a concern for well-being of

others, which is an important element in Spanish and Latin American cultures

• Research has also found that individualistic cultures tend to exhibit more charitable and volunteering behavior than collectivistic

Helping Around the World

Scents and Sensibilities

Good Moods Lead to Helping: Reasons

• Why feeling good leads to doing good:– Desire to maintain one’s good mood– Positive expectations about helping– Positive thoughts– Positive thoughts and expectations about social

activities

Good Moods Lead to Helping: Limitations

• Why feeling good might not lead to doing good:– Costs of helping are high.– Positive thoughts about other social activities that

conflict with helping.

May I Help You?

Good Moods Lead to Helping: Reasons and Limitations

Bad Moods and Helping

• When negative moods make us more likely to help others:– If we take responsibility for what caused our bad

mood (i.e., feel guilty)– If we focus on other people– If we are made to think about our personal values

that promote helping• Not as strong and consistent as good moods in

relation to helping

Bad Moods and Helping (cont.)

• When negative moods make us less likely to help others:– If we blame others for our bad mood– If we become very self-focused– If we are made to think about our personal values

that do not promote helping

Bad Moods and Helping

Prosocial Media Effects

• Politicians, educators, researchers, and parents have voiced strong concerns about the negative effects TV, movies, music lyrics videos, and video games, on the attitudes and behaviors of adolescents and young adults

Effects of Prosocial Video Games

Helping: Role Models and Social Norms

• Role models are important in teaching children about helping.

• How do role models inspire helping?– Provides an example of behavior to imitate

directly.– Teaches that helping is valued and rewarding.– Increases awareness of societal standards of

conduct.

Modeling Helping of Distant Others

Helping and Social Norms

• Norm of reciprocity• Norm of equity• Norm of social responsibility• Concerns about justice or fairness

Culture and Social Norms for Helping

• Social norms vary dramatically across cultures• Thai students appear more altruistic and

helpful than American students – role of religion a factor?

Personal Influences

Who is Likely to Help?

Are Some More Helpful Than Others?

• Some evidence of individual differences in helping tendencies.– Tendency may be relatively stable over time.– Differences are in part genetically based.

• Is there an altruistic personality?

What Is the Altruistic Personality?

• Empathy• Internalized and advanced moral reasoning• Combination of two – “cold” reasoning and

“hot” empathy – required?

Interpersonal Influences

Whom Do People Help?

Attractiveness of Person in Need

• More likely to help physically attractive people.

• More likely to help friendly individuals.• Charisma of one person can determine how

much help other people receive.

Attributions of Responsibility

• Beliefs about the needy person’s responsibility influences helping.

The Fit Between Giver and Receiver: Similarity

• More likely to help those who are similar.• May be a form of kinship selection.• Effects of racial similarity are highly

inconsistent.• Intergroup biases in helping can be reduced if

they perceive selves as members of a common group.

Helping Ingroup Members

Gender and Helping

• Classic male-helper scenario: “Knight in shining armor”

• Classic female-helper scenario: “Social support”

• Gender differences in willingness to seek help.– Men ask for help less frequently than women

Culture and Who Receives Help

• Compared to individualists, collectivists may be more likely to help ingroup members but less likely to help outgroup members.

Who Should Receive Help? A Cross-Cultural Difference

The Helping Connection

• A consistent theme appears repeatedly: a sense of connection. This connection has taken various forms—genetic relatedness, empathic concern, sense of responsibility for someone, perceived similarity, or shared group membership.