Prosocial Behaviour

What is Prosocial Behaviour?

Voluntary actions that are intended to help or benefit another individual or group of
individuals (Eisenburg & Mussen, 1989)
Have to voluntarily want to help someone
Includes:
o Helping others
o Obeying rules
o Conforming to social norms
o Cooperating with others
A related concept: Altruism
o A motive to increase anothers welfare without conscious regard for ones self-
interests
Being selfless in helping another
o Some argue that true altruism is not possible
Why do we help others?
Social-exchange theory:
o Helping someone is a Cost-benefit analysis
o Aim of human behaviour is to minimize costs and maximize rewards
o Rewards: materialistic goods, social rewards or self-reward (internal and external)
o Costs: time, money, discomfort, inconvenience
o If rewards outweigh costs, we help.
Kin selection theory:
o Evolutionary perspective
o People favour those who are genetically similar because they want their genes to be
passed on
o More likely to help those who are relatives
o Increases odds of gene transmission
o More closely people are related the more likely people are willing to help
Reciprocal altruism:
o The incentive for an individual to help in the present is based on the expectation of
being the potential receipt of helping behaviours in the future.
o Doing something for a person will make them obligated to help you sometime in the
future.
o Key feature here is the future aspect-reciprocity does not need to be immediate
Negative-state relief model:
o People help others to reduce personal distress
o People experience an empathetic reaction when we see someone else in distress;
uncomfortable
o To reduce our own discomfort, we help the person in distress
o Similar to cognitive dissonance
Your negative emotions are based on your own feelings about the person
rather than what weve done to the person.
We decide to help in order to reduce feelings of distress.
If we dont help its because we have found another way to diffuse such
feelings.
Empathy-Altruism hypothesis:
o When we see someone in distress, it produces an empathetic response
o This sympathy for another person creates an internal need to reduce that persons
distress
Different than negative-state relief model because the internal need to reduce
another persons distress does not stem from personal discomfort, but from
general concern for the another person.
o This results in altruistic behaviour
o This approach deals with the idea that you have CONCERN for the person youre
helping
o Not done so you feel better(unlike the negative state relief model)
o This is a new theory
When will we help?
If you have an altruistic model
o Someone who behaves in an altruistic fashion you are more likely to act altruistic
sometime in the future
o Vicarious learning.
If you are not in a rush (Darley & Batson, 1973)
o Those in a hurry are self-centred and so may not see someone in need.
o If they do see them they will rationalize the reason why they didnt help- its not my
problem and it has nothing to do with me therefore I dont have to help or I dont
have time to help but Im sure someone else will
o ** When doing the reading for this study watch the differences in response when
there is a time constraint.
If the victim is similar to ourselves
Small towns and rural areas
o Altruism and helpful behaviour is more prevalent in small towns
o You know everyone and so the kin theory plays here
Empathetic response is stronger
o Or if you dont help word may get around and this may ruin your reputation
o People tend to behave more neighbourly and helpful than those who live in bigger
cities
Few bystanders
o The more people present the less likely one will help.
Feeling guilty
o Any feelings of guilt whether it is linked to the situation or not will cause one to help
as It helps relieve those negative feelings
In a good/bad mood
o Good mood=we interpret events in a sympathetic way+ helping someone can
maintain the good mood
We become more self-aware so It makes us more likely to behave in a way
that represents out inner vales
o Bad mood-similar to negative relief model
Men
o More likely will help in a public setting
Women: Private settings
o More likely to make long-term commitments to helping others.
When will we NOT help?
The Bystander Effect:
o The more bystanders that are present, the less likely any one of them will act to help
(Darley & Latan, 1969).
o Results are consistent
Evidence for the Bystander Effect
Lady in distress experiment (Darley & Latane, 1969)
o Female experimenter escort participant to a room and asks them to wait.
o Participant is either in room alone, with a friend, with a passive confederate, or a
stranger.
o Hears the experimenter fall and hurt herself.
o ** Measures the % who took action and reaction time**
Results:
o 70 % of alone participants and participants waiting with a friend reacted
o 40% of participates paired with a stranger reacted
If they exchanged a few words before this falling occurred more likely to
help the experimenter.
o Only 7% of participants who were with a passive confederate reacted.
o No significant differences in reaction time.
What causes the Bystander Effect?
Diffusion of Responsibility
o Someone else will help
o Dont feel as much pressure to take action because the responsibility of action is
thought to be spread among all those present.
Someone will do something
Socially Acceptable Behaviour (Social Comparison/conformity)
o If theyre not going to help, then neither should I.
o Look at the reactions of others and take that as a signal that a response is not needed
from you.
Another influence that decreases helping
Violent Media
o Comfortably Numb Experiments (Bushman & Anderson, 2009)
o Study 1
320 participants ( male, female)
Participants either played a violent or non-violent video game
Later, they overheard a staged fight leading to one person being injured
Hypotheses:
The violent game would:
Decrease the likelihood of helping
Delay helping
Decrease the likelihood of noticing an emergency
Decrease the judged severity of the emergency
Results:
o 21% of people in the violent condition helped while 25% in the non-violent
condition helped.
o When people who played a violent game did decide to help, they took significantly
longer to help than those who played a nonviolent game
73 seconds-violent video gamer
17secs-non-violent game
o people who played a violent game were less likely to report that they heard the fight
than those who played a nonviolent game
o people who played a violent game thought the fight was less serious than did those
who played a nonviolent game
violent gamer saw the fight/injury as something less serious
The game causes desensitization of violence
Response time is slow
Awareness of situation is decreased
Study 2
o Adults going to see a movie (162)
o Confederate: a woman with crutches and bandaged ankle
o Confederate dropped crutch outside movie theatre
o Researcher measured how long it took people to pick it up for her
Hypothesis:
o Those who had just seen a violent movie would take longer to help the confederate
than those who had just seen a nonviolent movie, or had not seen a movie yet.
Results:
o (1)Helping delay increased as the number of bystanders increased
However this case was not significant
o (2)Women helped less often than men
The tendency was shown but this was not really significant
o (3)Participants who had just viewed a violent movie took over 26% longer to help
than participants in the other conditions
Those who viewed the violent movie took their time in helping
Studies accounted points 1 and 2 to the fact that the experiment happened in a natural
setting so they couldnt control the amount of bystanders or the amount of men and women
present.
How does violent media reduce helping?
Bushman & Anderson
o Desensitization hypothesis
media violence decreases helping behavior, perceptions, and cognitions
because:
o People exposed to media violence become comfortably numb to the pain and
suffering of others and are consequently less helpful
Having frequent exposure to violent media affects ones ability to:
o Notice or attend to the violent event
Desensitization will reduce the chances of a person noticing a violent event
Dont necessarily pay attention
o Recognize the event as an emergency
Desensitization will reduce the ability to perceive injury and emergencies
o Feel the need of personal responsibility
Desensitization results in decreased sympathy; decreased attitudes to the idea
that violence is negative; increased belief that violence is normative
All this decreases feelings of personal responsibility