(2) Prosocial Behaviour Flashcards

1
Q

What is the Kitty Genovese Case Study?

A
  • On 13th March 1964 Catherine Genovese came home from work in the early hours
  • On the walk from her car to her apartment building a man followed her
  • “As she got out of the car she saw me and ran…I ran after her and I had a knife in my hand”
  • When attacked Kitty screamed for help
  • A neighbour, Robert Mozer, called out from his window, “”Hey, let that girl alone!”
  • The attacker ran off
  • The attack happened two more times, no one helped and Kitty died
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2
Q

What is the The Bystander Effect?

A

-The more people present in an emergency, the less likely someone will help

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3
Q

What is Diffusion of responsibility?

A

somebody else will take care of it

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4
Q

What is Audience inhibition?

A

what if I look foolish? What if I get it wrong?

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5
Q

What is Social influence?

A

look to others as a model for how to behave

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6
Q

What can effect whether you help a person or not?

A
  • gender
  • status
  • behaviour
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7
Q

What is Perception of the victim?

A

more likely to help if, we have a relationship with them, similar to us, attractive

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8
Q

What is Nature of the need?

A

likely to help if perceive need is, clear not ambiguous, legitimate, uncontrollable

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9
Q

How can mood effect helping?

A

Mood we are in: we are in a good mood, helping makes us feel good

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10
Q

How can competence effect helping?

A

Competence: we feel the need to help, skills, perceived

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11
Q

What was wrong with the Kitty Genovese case study?

A

Kitty Genovese case has arguably become a sort of parable of social psychology

  • Local historian Joseph De May Jr. re-examined the case, and found not quite how widely reported
  • Assistant DA noted only found half a dozen useable eyewitnesses and only 3 eye-witnesses gave evidence at trial
  • Took time to call police, wasn’t as straight forward as picking up the phone
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12
Q

What did Fischer et al (2006) find about intervening?

A

note a case in Munich where Nazi skinheads attacked a young Greek man, and a man in a group of bystanders intervened at risk of themselves

  • Decided to test out a role of perceived danger
  • Participants saw a man of small or large stature verbally attack and grab a woman
  • Found that if you were on your own you would help regardless of level of dangers, whereas with others the bystander effect would occur in low danger situations
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13
Q

What is strong altruism?

A

‘Strong altruism’: help at no benefit to ourselves, benefit is survival of their genes

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14
Q

Who are we likely to help?

A
  • Related to us: especially if it is over life or death
  • Favour over sick than healthy: life or death
  • Poor over wealthy
  • Favour very young or old people: life of death favour 10 or 18 year olds over infants or older people
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15
Q

What is kin selection?

A

Kin selection: selection of characteristics/traits that contribute to survival of kinship group’s traits

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16
Q

What is Reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971)?

A

In long-run helpful acts may be reciprocated

17
Q

What are criticisms of the evolutionary approach and aggression?

A
  • Many social psychologists disagree with evolutionary explanations: hard to account for bystander effect from a sociobiological perspective
  • -Can argue that we are socialised into helping others
  • Prosocial behaviour is more than just helping others - any behaviour seen as positive by the society you live in
  • A behaviour usually seen as antisocial could in fact be prosocial if valued by your culture…
18
Q

What helps children to be helpful?

A
  • Instructing children to be helpful increases their helpfulness, but ‘do as I say, not as I do’ doesn’t work
  • Rewarding children for offering help, makes them more likely to do the same again
  • Modelling: can learn to be helpful by observing others being helpful, and generalising this behaviour
  • Adults also influenced by other (linked to social learning theory)
19
Q

What did Hornstein 1970 find about helpful behaviour?

A

if see someone return a lost wallet and have pleasant consequences, more likely to return a wallet themselves

20
Q

What are self-attributions?

A
  • Self-attributions e.g. ‘I am a helpful person’ internalises our helpful behaviour and guide us in future situations
  • Encouraging children to develop self-attributions of being helpful more powerful than praise or rewards
21
Q

What is the just world hypothesis?

A

Also make attributions about the person in need: judge whether a victim deserved their fate, need to believe that the world is a just place – ‘just-world hypothesis’ Lerner & Miller 1978

22
Q

What is the Reciprocity norm?

A

arguably universal norm that we should help those who help us,

23
Q

What is the Social responsibility norm?

A

help should be given to those in need regardless of future exchanges

24
Q

What is Latane & Darley’s Cognitive Model?

A
  • Emergency
  • Notice the event
  • Interpret the event as an emergency
  • Assume responsibility
  • Know appropriate form of assistance
  • Provide help
25
Q

What was Piliavin et al’s Bystander-Calculus Model?

A
  1. Physiological arousal
  2. Labelling the arousal
  3. Evaluating the consequences
26
Q

What is physiological arousal?

A
  • Have an empathic physiological response to someone in distress
  • Orienting reaction – heart rate decreases etc
  • Defence reaction – dramatic increase in arousal -> greater the physiological response, greater likelihood of helping
27
Q

How do we label arousal?

A
  • Situational cues: 2 responses – personal distress and empathic concern
  • Personal distress – situation makes you feel upset, could make you try to escape it
  • Empathic concern – when identify with the victim/feel similar to them, feel desire to help them
28
Q

How do we evaluate helping behaviour?

A
  • Weigh up the consequences of helping
  • Cost of Direct vs Indirect helping
  • Main costs are time and effort
  • Decision based on what will reduce personal distress at lowest cost
  • Empathy costs of not helping – continued unpleasant feelings of empathic response
  • Personal costs of not helping – examples include feeling of shame, public censure
29
Q

-High cost of not helping, low cost of helping:

A

directly help

30
Q

-Low cost of not heling, high cost of helping:

A

ignore – deny problem

31
Q

-High cost of not helping, high cost of helping:

A

indirect intervention OR reinterpret and don’t help

32
Q

-Low cost of not helping, low cost of helping:

A

depends on personal norms

33
Q

What did Batson et al 1981 find about empathy?

A
  • Participants watched an undergraduate get electric shocks
  • Could help by taking the remaining shocks themselves
  • Undergraduate either similar (high empathy) or dissimilar (low empathy)
  • Easy escape (could leave) vs difficult escape (had to watch)
  • Supported idea that empathy -> altruism, as empathy made people want to help when escape was easy or hard
34
Q

What is proportional reasoning?

A
  • Identifiable victims elicit greater emotional distress and greater donations
  • Small et al (2007) partly explains this through proportional reasoning
  • We value lives less the greater the denominator is
  • Perhaps because the perceived impact decreases
35
Q

How can helping be negative?

A
  • Threatens our self-esteem
  • Mean admitting to being dependent instead of self-reliant
  • Feelings of inferiority
  • Gratitude expected
  • Pressure to reciprocate
36
Q

What is the aid relationship?

A
  • Relationship between helper and person receiving help is active, 2-way
  • Conditions linked to help affects the extent the recipient feels that their self-esteem is threatened or supported
  • If self-esteem threatened, amount of control the recipient feels is important
  • Can be long-term consequences of being helped