Prosocial Behaviour

Question 1

What is prosocial behaviour?

Answer 1

Behaviour that is valued by society - friendship, sharing, charity, sacrifice, cooperation etc.
Two types:
Helping behaviour - Intentional acts to benefit others
Altruism - intentional acts to benefit others but not oneself

Question 2

Cognitive model (Latane & Darley, 1968)

Answer 2

Process that leads to giving help:

1 Attend to incident
2 Define incident as an emergency
3 Accept personal responsibility
4 Decide what to do

Smoke-filled room experiment
- on own 75% reacted
- 2 other participants 40% reacter
- 2 confederates who didn’t react 15% reacted
—> similar finding for lady in distress
- only extra finding when participant was with a friend 70% tried to help

WHY? Diffusion of responsibility, normative social influence (fear of social blunders) and informational social influence (Pluralistic ignorance)
(both audience inhibition)

Question 3

Bystander-calculus model (Piliavin et al., 1981)

Answer 3

3 stages:
Physiological arousal: orientating reaction or defense reaction

Labelling the arousal: personal distress or empathetic distress (motivates helping behaviour)

Evaluating the arousal: Weigh up costs of helping and not helping, choose action that reduced personal distress to the lowest cost
(SEE TABLE)

Question 4

Person-centred determinants

Answer 4

These are characteristics which are personal determinants of prosocial behaviour:
- Helper
- Attraction
- Similarity
- Group membership
- Mood

Question 5

Person-centred determinant
(MOOD)

Answer 5

Mood = transitory states that influence how likely you are to perform helping behaviour (generally good mood promotes helping behaviour)

Eg. Isen (1970) Participants told they had done well on a task (good mood), poorly or no feedback, those with positive feedback were more likely to help someone who had dropped their books

Summary - good mood = less preoccupied with self and more sensitive to others needs +problems
- bad mood = internally focused

EXCEPTION = Guilt
(Regan, Williams & Sparling., 1972)
Those who believed they had broken an expensive camera were >2 times likely to help
—> image-reparation hypothesis
—> Negative relief state model

Question 6

Person-centred determinants
(PERSONALITY)

Answer 6

Latane & Darley (1970)
- Authoritarianism, trustworthiness, need for approval, alienation, machiavellianism (manipulative to gain power)

Berkowitz & Daniels (1964)
- Social responsibility

Bierhoff, Klien & Kramp (1991)
- Social responsibilty
- Locus of control
- Dispositional empathy

Question 7

Person centred Determinants
(COMPETENCE)

Answer 7

More competent = more likely to help
Trained nurses study vs non-medical students

Question 8

Person-centred determinants
(LEADERSHIP)

Answer 8

Baumeister, Chesner, Senders & Tice (1988)
- Randomly allocated role of leader and follower, when someone was hurt leaders were more likely to help

Question 9

Person-centred determinants
(GENDER DIFFERENCES)

Answer 9

Eagly & Crowley (1986)
- Men more prosocial in abnormal/dangerous situations vs women more prosocial in everyday interactions

Pomazal & Clore (1973)
- Men more likely to help women than men in a car accident

Question 10

Person-centred determinants
(SIMILARITY)

Answer 10

Also known as group membership

Eswiller, Deaux & Willits (1971)
- Conventionally dressed more likely to help conventionally dressed people and hippy-dressed people more likely to help hippy-dressed people

If group membership is threatened less likely to help (Eg. Race study by Gaertner & Dovidio (1977)