Prosocial behaviour

Question 1

What is meant by prosocial behaviour?

Answer 1

Broad category of acts that are valued positively by society, with positive social consequences, voluntary and intentionally being helpful and altruistic
What is thought to be prosocial is defined by social norms

Question 2

What is helping behaviour?

Answer 2

A subcategory of prosocial behaviour - acts that intentionally benefit someone else
Helping can be antisocial, however - overhelping in order to make others look inferior
Overtly public helping behaviour may also have an ulterior motive to make yourself/a company look good

Question 3

What is altruism?

Answer 3

A special form of helping behaviour which can sometimes be costly but shows concern for fellow humans, performed without any expectation of personal gain
But is true altruism selfless? What about long-term ulterior motives such as ingratiation, or “private rewards” such as feeling good about yourself

Question 4

Why is prosocial behaviour quite a challenging area?

Answer 4

Difficult to explain using traditional theories of human behaviour which are inherently egoistic i.e. suggest everything we do is motivated by desire to help ourselves in some way
Prosocial behaviour is unusual because it seems independent of the usual reinforcement - how, why and when can such effort for the benefit of others be reinforcing for us?

Question 5

What is a biological explanation for helping behaviours?

Answer 5

They may be driven by an evolutionary drive to keep our genes alive - likelihood of helping depends on degree of relatedness, as well as health status/situation e.g. in a normal, everyday situation, help is more likely to be given to a sick person rather than someone healthy, but in life/death situations health status makes minimal difference (slightly more likely if person is well)

Question 6

What do evolutionary social psychologists suggest and what are two explanations of cooperative behaviour?

Answer 6

Complex social behaviour such as altruism was adaptive for ancestors, helping the individual and their species as a whole to survive
MUTUALISM - cooperation benefits the co-operator as well as others (defectors generally do worse)
KIN SELECTION - those who cooperate are biased towards blood relatives because it helps propagation of own genes (stronger theory from evolution perspective )

Question 7

What are some potential explanations for why we help strangers as well as kin?

Answer 7

Suggestion of a “communicative gene” according to which both humans and animals are predisposed to communicate with each other
Communication involves emotional signalling, formation of social bonds, and possibility of prosocial behaviour

Question 8

What is a more biosocial explanation for prosocial helping behaviours?

Answer 8

Empathy - while biology can predispose you to act e.g. helping members of same species evolved through natural selection, when and how you act depends on contextual factors such as your history and immediate circumstances
We experience arousal prior to helping and it is essential that we label this as empathy - it can be unpleasant to feel someone else’s distress and many people who avoid prosocial behaviour do so because actively avoiding empathy

Question 9

What does the Bystander Calculus Model suggest?

Answer 9

In the event of an emergency a bystander will calculate perceived costs and benefits of providing help compared with not providing help, accounting for both cognitive and physiological processes

Question 10

What are the 3 stages of the bystander calculus model?

Answer 10

Physiological arousal - higher this is, more likely we will offer help; speed of response relates to level of physiological response e.g. quicker heartbeat=quicker response; physiological arousal increases as situation becomes clearer and more severe

Labelling the arousal - labelling as empathy makes helping behaviour more likely, while negative associations such as distress make it less likely; empathy more likely when feel similar to victim

Evaluating consequences - time and effort required, action will be chosen that reduces personal distress at lowest possible cost

Question 11

What did Piliavin suggest as the costs of NOT helping?

Answer 11

Empathy costs - not helping when you felt the motivation to help someone in distress can result in anxiety; costs are heightened by clarity of emergency, severity, and perceived closeness to victim

Personal costs - blame from public or yourself, heightened when victim’s need for help/risk of situation are higher e.g. risk of death if help not given

Question 12

How does the bystander calculus model explain the case of the Kitty Genovese murder?

Answer 12

Onlookers would have experienced arousal, personal distress and empathetic concern but empathy and personal costs were not sufficient to warrant help
Personal costs of helping may actually have been a deterrant - what if helping got them killed?
Costs would have been variable depending on individual interpretations of the situation e.g. view of it as a simple heated marriage affair

Question 13

What does the bystander calculus model suggest about altruism?

Answer 13

People will only intervene in an emergency to relieve THEMSELVES of the unpleasant arousal - so altruism just motivated by egoism and thus is not truly altruistic

Question 14

What did Batson and colleagues suggest regarding altruistic behaviour?

Answer 14

Something can only be truly altruistic if people seek to help even when they will no longer have to be troubled by OBSERVING the suffering of another e.g. if someone turns back to help someone stranded on the motorway

Question 15

What is the bystander effect?

Answer 15

Most influential factor affecting prosocial behaviour - idea that a lone bystander is more likely to help than any of several bystanders

Question 16

What is Latane and Darley’s model of helping behaviour?

Answer 16

Unlike Piliavin’s account of helping based on empathy, this features a more cognitive decision-based process dependent on responses of others around us
Emergency –> notice event –> interpret as emergency –> assume responsibility –> know appropriate form of assistance –> intervene
If any of this steps are missing no help will be given

Question 17

What is the effect of multiple bystanders?

Answer 17

Rather than providing a correspondingly greater probability of at least one person helping, number of passive bystanders actually inversely affects likelihood of offering help
Emergencies are uncertain and unstable times, lacking structure; we want a proper and stable base for making judgements/action, so we look to others to help interpret the ambiguity; the way others behave influences how we respond so if no one else is helping it makes it less likely that we will help (but if even one person offers help it increases chances that others will too)

Question 18

What happened in Latane and Darley’s “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” experiment?

Answer 18

3 conditions:
Participants alone, with 2 other naïve participants, or with 2 confederates who deliberately didn’t act when smoke started to fill the room

Participants alone - 75% reported the smoke, trusting own judgement
Participants plus naïve - only 38% reported it
Participant with confederate - only 10% sought help

So the presence of others can inhibit people from responding to an emergency, and the more people there are the slower the response. Even occurs when bystanders not physically present, but the knowledge that others know of a situation

Question 19

What 3 social processes have been suggested as being responsible for reluctance to help (bystander apathy)?

Answer 19

DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY - similar to social loafing, responsibility offloaded to others; when alone, feel have entire responsibility so more likely to help; this process is always present
AUDIENCE INHIBITION - other onlookers can make people feel self-conscious about an intended action (fear of social blunders)
SOCIAL INFLUENCE - Other onlookers provide model for action, so if they are passive and unworried the situation seems less serious

Question 20

What are some limits to the bystander effect?

Answer 20

Bystanders who are strangers inhibit more as communication is slower but inhibition is less when people are known to each other - may be linked to group membership so if a group-level category can be identified group behaviours can come into play
Among strangers, inhibition will be less if anticipate future interaction - having to explain actions

Question 21

How can mood affect prosocial behaviour?

Answer 21

People in good moods are more likely to help - more sensitive to needs of others and less preoccupied with themselves

Question 22

What 4 relatively permanent attributes can influence prosocial behaviour?

Answer 22

Living in big cities - crowded/rushed/overwhelmed with a background of diffusion responsibility as more bystanders
Individual differences - e.g. in capacity to feel embarrassed, strength and security of attachments influence tendency to be altruistic and compassionate
Competence - may be situation-specific, but could endure over time and could generalise; related concept is leadership, which entails not experiencing the same diffusion of responsibility
Gender - women are more empathetic but less likely to initiate interactions (social role theory); sex differences are arguably determined by society rather than biology

Question 23

How can helping be increased?

Answer 23

Raising awareness of barriers to helping and reinforcing fact that if you don’t help, no one else will either
At least one person needs to assume that responsibility in an emergency