Helping Others Flashcards
(14 cards)
Definitely helping behaviour
Prosocial behaviour:
- acts that are positively valued by society
- voluntary and has positive social consequences
Helping behaviour:
- subcategory of prosocial behaviour
- intentional and aimed at he;ping others
Altruism:
- sub Catford of prosocial behaviour
- without expectation of personal gain
Why do people help? Biology and Evolution
Kin selection:
- preferential helping of genetic relatives
- results in greater liklihood that common genes will survive
- also found in capuchin monkeys
Reciprocal autism:
- involves helium another despite some immediate risk/ cost
- becomes more likely to receive help in return
- found in chimps
Bernstein (1994): used hypothetical situation to see how likely ppl were to to help others in different situations:
- more he for close than distant kin
- tendency to help sick more than healthy reversed in life/ death situations
Bio and evolution: Nyoni et al., (2019)
Looked at percieved socia supprirt and links to psychological wellbeing in orphaned kids
Family cohesion + percieved social support from parents/ caregivers/ teachers associated with better children’s psychological outcomes
Bio and evolution: critical thoughts around evolutionary theories for helping behaviour
Difficult to demonstrate in casual relationships
Although we are more likely to help kin, we help others too
Difficulty explaining helping a complete stranger
Why do ppl help? Empathy + altruism
Empathy = understanding another individuals perspective + feeling sympathy and compassion for them
- has been found in animals and kids
- seeing someone else experience emotion activates the same part of the brain associated with that emotion in percieved
- high empathy related to more everyday helping behaviour
Reward for helping: Negative state relief model
Helping makes us feel good
Ppl feeling bad will help others to feel better
We help to reduce negative feelings
Altruism
(Batson 1991)
Whetehr or not ppl help depends on how they respond emotionally to victims plight
Empathy = critical
If you dont feel empathy towards victim:
- only help if its in your interest to do so
If you do feel empathy towards victim:
- help regardless of whetehr its in your interest
According to Batson, true altruism happened only if ppl help when they’re no longer troubled by seeing victim
Altruistic acts happen when people can easily not help
Egoism
Suggested altruism doesn’t exists
Ppl help others to reduce feelings of distress, sadness to guilt
When we emphasise we get sense of oneness with victim
Ciandini argues: we help for selfish reason
- agued we need to look at all egotistic motivators together
- empathy is due to oneness
- look at relationship between empathy and helping
- argues Batson not rigorous enough in measures
- proposed empathy leas to superficial belong
Batson: not convinced and wanted to test the empathy = oneness hypothesis
- found empathy-helping relationship not limited to shared group membership
Ciandini and Batson disagree on what the empathy-altruism hypothesis is:
- Batson: empathy evoked altruistic motivation
- Ciandini: altruistic motivation = belong behaviour
Most recent findings:
- empathetic ppl help more as avoiding does not provide psychological escape
- Stocks 2009: empathetic ppl helped more even when psychological escape was easy— rather than egocentric motive
- relationship betwen empathy and helping- but disappeared when non-altruistic motivators taking into account
When do ppl help?
Batson 1973:
- sent ppl to soedicif building to give short talk
- either believed they were ahead of time or running late
-wither prepared talk about being a minister or story of Good Samaritan
- encountered man in door way on way to talk
- Good Samaritan Lethe and low need for hurry = helped more
- helped less when higher need for hurry
- Good Samaritan talker had higher heave of helping i each confit on that perons talking about job role
Situational factors—- bystander effect
Murder of Kitty Genovese — interest in this
Bystander effect: people = more likely to help in emergency when they’re with others than when alone
Greater the number, less likely that anyone will help
Darley (1970)
- asked ppl to fill in paper work in room
- gradually room filled with smoke
- particpants alerted experimenter
- 75% of time when alone
- 38% of time when with strangers
- 10% of time where with passive confederate
Bartender effect: processes repsonce for reluctance to help
Diffusion of responsibility:
- its not just my responsibility
- tended of individual to assume others will take responsibility (as result, no one does)
Audience inhibition:
- what if i make fool of myself
- dread of acting inappropriately or making foolish mistake witnessed by others
- desire to avoid ridicule
Social influence:
- no one else seems worried
- other onlookers provide model for action
When do people help?
Mood states: Help more when…
- its sunny— lead to feeling hamper and more helping
- there’s pleasant smell
Good moods:
- increases helping
- less preoccupies with self
- more sensitive to need of others
Bad moods:
- Decreasing helping
- negative star relief model= ,more helping
- more focused on own issues
- less concern for welfare of others — less helping
Personal relative deprivation (PDR) = dissatisfaction + resentment stemming from belief that one is deprived of desired and deserved outcomes compared to some referent
Who do people help?
Make judgements regarding responsibly and controllability
- is perons repsonce for their situation?
- do they have control over their predicament?
Who delivered hep?
Weiner (1988) asked ppl to imagine that a classmate asked to borrow lecture notes
- as they had bad eyesight
- or had gone to beach instead
- perception of perons Lea control/ responsibility for situation
Who is more likely to help
Individual differences:
Forgiveness: people more willing to forgive can be more prosocial
Attachment styles: cruelly attached people more likely to be compassionate
Living in bib city: less likely to help than people from small towns
Competence:
- having skills to increase helping
- eg knowing first aid
Leadership:
- being leader comes with more responsibility
