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Social Psychology and Work & Organizational Psychology > SP ch. 14 - Helping > Flashcards

SP ch. 14 - Helping Flashcards

1
Q

Prosocial Behavior

A
  • voluntary behavior that is beneficial to other people
  • e.g. helping, cooperating, empathy (+ sympathy and compassion), altruism (vs egoism)
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2
Q

What are the two main philosophical arguments as to the nature of people?

A
  1. Hobbes
    - end of 16th century
    - Humans are intrinsically egoistic and have no regard for others
  2. Rousseau
    - 18th century
    - Humans are good by nature and only corrupted by civilization
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3
Q

What are some counterarguments to Hobbes’ view of humans?

A
  • humans are capable to cooperate, empathize and engage in prosocial behavior
  • killing others is not easy (training and psychological suffering from war)
  • closest relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos (…)
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4
Q

How are primates evidence against Hobbes’ view?

A
  • Reconciliation (common in primates and non-primates)
  • Cooperation (among primates + among strangers)
  • Empathy (common in apes and similar expressions to humans)
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5
Q

Prosocial behavior increases fitness for survival - why? (theories)

A
  • Helping kin
  • Group selection
  • Reciprocal helping
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6
Q

Helping kin (“kin selection”) - evolutionary explanation

A
  • evolutionary explanation for prosocial behavior
  • promotes the survival of one’s genes present in relatives even at cost to self
  • “inclusive fitness”: successful transmission of one’s genes from all the sources (relatives) to the next generation
  • adaptation at level of genes, not at level of individual (inclusive fitness»individual fitness)
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7
Q

Group selection - evolutionary explanation

A
  • altruism is beneficial at the group level
  • group with altruists has advantage over group with selfish individuals
    > altruistic group dominates selfish group and has reproductive advantage
    > this would result in more altruists compared to selfish (at population level)
    > this theory is controversial and evidence is mixed
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8
Q

Reciprocal helping (“reciprocal altruism”) - evolutionary explanation

A
  • people also help genetically unrelated others
  • reciprocal altruism explains evolutionary advantage
  • evolutionary benefit from helping others if favour is repaid
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9
Q

Empathy

A
  • ability and tendency to share and understand others’ internal states
  • it leads to prosocial behavior
  • innate response (observed in babies and in other animals)
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10
Q

empathy and prosocial tendencies - nature or nurture?

A
  • 30-60% hereditability (from twin study)
  • empathy and prosocial tendencies are relatively stable across a person’s life (increase slightly)
  • small effects and interactions (genes x environment)
  • related to personality (agreeableness; “prosocial personality”)
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11
Q

what two dimensions are associated with pro-social behavior?

A
  1. “other-oriented empathy”
    > prosocial thoughts and feelings
    > e.g. sense of responsability and tendency to experience cognitive and affective empathy
  2. Helpfulness
    > self-perception that one is a helpful and competent individual
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12
Q

Bystander effect

A
  • “the presence of others inhibits helping”
    > presence of more bystanders decreases likelihood of anyone present giving help
  • smoke-filled room study
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13
Q

Smoke-filled room study

A
  • participants alone in room with smoke coming in: 75% report smoke
  • participants in groups in room: 38% reported smoke
  • participants in room with confederates: 10% reported smoke
    > percentage: report smoke within 6 minutes
    > “diffused responsability effect”
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14
Q

When do we help?
Theory of Emergency response

A
  • path from emergency to providing help
    1. notice something is wrong
    2. interpret situation as emergency (something needs to be done now)
    3. degree of responsability felt (I should help)
    4. form of assistance (what kind of help is needed)
    5. implement the action of choice (decision and action to provide help)
    ! often not in sequential order or thought-through rationally
    -> random and simultaneously at different stages
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15
Q

What factors influence the path of emergency response?

A
  • Pluralistic ignorance (no one else seems worried; between 1&2)
  • Diffusion of responsability (someone else must have called 112; between 2&3)
  • Evaluation apprehension (I might appear foolish; between 4&5)
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16
Q

What circumstances weaken the bystander effect?

A
  • situation is perceived as dangerous
  • perpetrators are still present
  • costs of intervention are physical (vs eg financial)
    > arousal: cost-reward model
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17
Q

when do we help?
Arousal: cost-reward model

A
  • decision to help based on cost-reward weight-off
    > rewards: mood, social appraisal, reputation
    > costs: time, effort, mood, money, physical safety, social evaluation
    -> costs are influenced by perceived ability (self-efficacy)
    = if perception of consequences of helping outweigh rewards, giving help is unlikely
    ! exception: high emotional arousal
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18
Q

Why do we help?
Mood/emotional states

A
  • Negative-state relief model
    1. witness people suffer
    2. negative state
    3. desire to get rid of negative state
  • can be achieved by:
    > ending the suffering (helping)
    > removing the sight of suffering (e.g. walk away)
    ! not all negative states elict desire to get rid of suffering
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19
Q

how does mood influence the degree of helping?

A
  • good mood
    > increases attention to social environment and raises likelihood of noticing needs (= more helping)
    > desire to remain in good mood (= more helping to maintain good mood and less helping if mood would get worse)
  • bad mood
    > self-focused attention reduces likelihood of noticing needs ( = less helping)
    > desire to improve mood ( = more helping)
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20
Q

Why do we help?
Egoistic helping

A
  • egoistic (self-focused) helping is motivated by preserving, maintaining, enhancing own welfare
  • reward seeking
  • punishment avoidance
  • reduce bad feelings (aversive arousal)
    ! philosophically a cost-reward analysis of helping
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21
Q

Why do we help?

A
  • Mood/emotional state
    > depending on mood we are in
    > negative-state relief model
  • Egoistic helping
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22
Q

Altruism

A

preserving, maintaining or enhancing others’ welfare

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23
Q

Empathy-altruism hypothesis

A

when witnessing need for help, two types of emotions are elicited:
- Personal distress
> feelings of anxiety, fear, alarm
> egoistic helping or escape
- Empathic concern
> feelings of compassion, sympathy, connectendness
> increased by perceived self-other similarities

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24
Q

Normative behavior

A
  • social norms guide our behavior -> to help or not to help
    > pluralistic ignorance
    > diffusion of responsability
    > norm of social responsability (those able to help have duty and obligation to do so)
    ! perceived deservingness (influences normative behavior)
25
Q

what are types of stigmatized groups?

A
  • “Abominations of the body”
    > e.g. obese, HIV/AIDS, handicapped, mental disorder, …
  • “Moral character stigma”
    > eg homeless, drug addicts, criminals, …
  • “Tribal stigmas”
    > eg people from devalued cultural or social groups
26
Q

Stigmatised person

A
  • person whose social identity or membership in some social category calls into question their full humanity
  • person is devalued, spoiled or flawed in the eyes of others
27
Q

Attribution of responsability

A
  • belief in a just world (people get what they deserve)
  • good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people
    ! there are individual differences in attributing responsability to stigmatised persons
28
Q

why are some types of people helped more than others?

A
  • people sometimes attribute responsability to people with stigma, as if it the fault was theirs and therefore less deserving of help
29
Q

What are some predictors of helping?

A
  • characteristics of helper
    > e.g. similarity between helper and helped
  • characteristics of the help
    > e.g. alignment with values and goals
  • characteristics of the recipient
    > self-esteem
30
Q

do people help members of in-group more often than members of out-group?

A
  • depends on context and relative power between groups
  • mixed foundings:
    1. less help to out-group than in-group members
    2. no relationship
    3. more help to out-group than in-group members (reverse discrimination)
31
Q

what are three strategic motives of out-group helping?

A
  • power and autonomy
  • meaning and existance
  • impression formation
32
Q

Power and autonomy - strategic motives for outgroup helping

A
  • expert power over other group through helping
  • stay autonomous by rejecting help
    = helping implies unequal status relations: one individual or group is dependent on another
33
Q

Why can help be perceived negatively by helped?

A
  • it can elicit feeling of owning a favour in return
    > difficult when nothing to give
  • it can send mixed messages
    > positive message of caring
    > negative message of power imbalance (helper is more in control, more powerful)
    ! receiving help is experienced as positive when helped one has sense of control of own outcomes
34
Q

What are two types of helping?

A
  • Dependency-oriented help
  • Autonomy-oriented help
35
Q

Dependency-oriented help

A
  • provides full solution
  • does not rely on skills of helped
  • will be given again when need arises
    ! chronic dependency
36
Q

Autonomy-oriented help

A
  • limited in degree and duration to the transfer of specific tools or instructions from helper to helped
  • helped will then reuse these to regain self-reliance
    ! transient dependency
37
Q

Meaning and existence - strategic motives for outgroup helping

A
  • help is used to restore meaningfulness and purpose of the in-group after threat to group identity
  • “scrooge effect” in interpersonal context:
    > mortality salience increaseds contributions to charity
    > e.g. Dutch people helped more tsunami victims because they (the Dutch) were also in a threath condition in the EU
38
Q

Impression formation - strategic motives for outgroup helping
+ study

A
  • use helping to create or maintain positive impression of the group as:
    > kind and generous (warmth)
    > capable (competence)
  • groups can demonstrate their qualities
  • when stereotypes of Scots as mean was salient -> Scots donated more to out-group, but not in in-group
39
Q

Volunteering

A
  • prosocial action in an organizational context
  • is planned and continues for and extended period of time
40
Q

How does volunteering differ from interpersonal helping?

A
  • less likely to result from personal obligation to particular person
  • “nonobligated helping”
41
Q

Why do people volunteer?

A
  • family and religious organizations drive initial decision to volunteer
    > identification with religion is positively related to different types of volunteering (not only in that group)
  • more education and income predict more volunteering
  • attitudes, identity, ideals
    > good feeling about the self
    > “volunteer role identity”
  • social networks
  • other motives (e.g. resume building)
42
Q

What are the positive outcomes of volunteering?

A
  • self-esteem
  • mental and physical health
    > improved life satisfaction
    > lower mortality rate
43
Q

How does having diverse activities/roles impact our life?

A
  • more diverse kind of activities in midlife-> less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease in 70s
  • more diverse social roles and multiple group memberships-> positive for health and well-being
44
Q

How does volunteering have such positive results?

A
  • improves self-evaluations ans sense of value
  • stimulates sense of control and efficacy
  • increases positive moods
  • refocusing attention
  • stimulates social integration
  • improves health and reduces mortality
    > stronger health effects for socially isolated individuals (lonely people)
45
Q

Eudaimonic wellbeing

A
  • wellbeing reached through feeling that we matter in the world
  • volunteering leads to eudaimonic wellbeing because we feel we matter in the world
46
Q

Cooperation

A

Two or more people coming together as partners to work interdependently toward a common goal that will benefit all involved

47
Q

How does cooperation differ from helping and volunteering?

A

All status relations are equal

48
Q

What are the two fundamental characteristics of all social dilemmas?

A

a. each individual receives a higher payoff for not doing the group’s best interest
b. all individuals are better off if they cooperate

49
Q

Collective action problem

A
  1. everyone ignores = bad outcome for all
  2. everyone cooperates = good outcome for all
  3. A cooperates and B ignores = advantage for B and disadvantage for A
  4. A ignores and B cooperates = advantage for A and disadvantage for B
50
Q

How does the collective action model apply to climate mitigation?

A
  • Eu ignores and China ignores = earth destroyed
  • Eu ignores and China cooperates = earth distroyed
  • EU cooperates and China ignores = earth destroyed
  • EU and China cooperate = earth saved
51
Q

United nations vs global bystanding

A
  • United Nations were established in 1945 as a global institute to promote prosocial behavior and prevent conflicts and bystanding
  • there are still many cases of global bystanding
52
Q

How can pro-social behavior be stimulated?

A
  • perspective taking
  • social identity
  • recategorisation
53
Q

Perspective taking - stimulating prosocial behavior

A
  • cognitive process
  • ability to entertain the perspective of another
  • predicts social competence and self-esteem
  • promotes empathic concern
54
Q

what does the effect of perspective taking depend on?

A
  • manipulation
    > empathic concern: “imagine how the target feels”
    > distress: “imagine how you would feel”
55
Q

Social identity - stimulating prosocial behavior
What dimensions of group processes impact helping?

A
  • Social Identity Theory and Social Categorization Theory
    1. SALIENCE of social identities
    > e.g. student, Ukranian, European, world citizen, …
    2. BOUNDARIES of social identities
    > who is seen as in-group and who as out-group?
    3. CONTENT of social identities
    > group norms and values
56
Q

how can emergency event lead to formation of common identities?

A
  • emergency events themselves can lead to formation of common identities
  • this only happens if there is a perception of a common threat !!!
57
Q

When is less negative attitudes and more help offered towards minority members?

A
  • when they express common identity instead of dual identity
  • e.g. “I see myself primarely as a UvA student” vs “I see myself primarely as a Muslim UvA student”
58
Q

Recategorisation - stimulating prosocial behavior
How can bias in prosocial behavior toward out-group members be reduced?

A

Common in-group identity model:
in-group members recategorise themselves within a superordinate group

Social Psychology and Work & Organizational Psychology (14 decks)

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