PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR:Types of Helping, Reciprocal helping, Norm of responsibility

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

Lesson 37

PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

Aims

To introduce psychological aspects of prosocial behaviour

Objectives

Describe different types of helping behavior

Discuss different explanations of helping behavior: Why do we help?

Evaluate the Bystander Intervention Model

Prosocial Behavior: Chapter Summary

This chapter discusses the basics of helping behavior. Altruism is distinguished from prosocial behavior.

Several theoretical perspectives on helping are considered. These include the evolutionary perspective; the

socio-cultural perspective (focusing on social norms of responsibility, reciprocity, social justice); the

learning perspective (modeling and reinforcement); Latané and Darley's decision-making perspective

(perceiving a need, taking personal responsibility, weighing the costs and benefits, deciding to help and

taking action); and attribution theory's perspective (focusing on our willingness to help those who deserve

help because we attribute their problems to causes out of their control). Factors that influence a potential

helper's likelihood of actually helping are considered, including mood, empathy and personal distress,

personality characteristics, and gender. More specific situational factors that influence the decision to help

are also discussed, including the bystander effect (and explanations for it), environmental conditions, and

time pressures.

Definitions

All of us have experience of helping and being helped by others. Sometime our prosocial behavior involves

little cost, while on other times it involves money, effort, or time. Two kinds of helping behavior exist with

different motives. Nineteenth century philosopher Auguste Comte maintained that egoistic help is based on

egoism; in which the person wants something in return. On the other hand altruistic help is for another

person's welfare. Prosocial, egoistic and altruistic behaviors are distinguished below from each other:

Prosocial Behavior: Voluntary behavior that is carried out to benefit another person

Egoistic helping: A form of helping in which the ultimate goal of the helper is to increase one's own

welfare

Altruistic helping means helping someone when there is no expectation of a reward

Types of Helping (McGuire, 1994)

· Casual help, e.g., giving directions

· Substantial help, e.g., lending money

· Emotional help, e.g., listening

· Emergency help, e.g., saving someone, helping in crisis

Explanations of helping behavior: Why do we help?

· An Evolutionary perspective

· A Sociocultural Perspective: Norms of reciprocity, social responsibility, social justice

· A Learning Perspective

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Helping is Consistent with Evolutionary Theory

Sometime we help for some personal gain, while on other times we help without any personal motive. Not

only human beings, but many examples of prosocial behavior have been observed among animal species,

e.g., dolphins, lions, chimpanzees, etc. One principle of evolutionary theory is that any social behavior that

enhances reproductive success (the conception, birth, and survival of offspring) will continue to be passed

on from one generation to the next. However, to reproduce, an animal must first survive. Taken together,

there may be mechanisms for the genetic transmission of helpful inclinations from generation to generation.

Evolutionary theorists contend that it is not only personal survival that is important. Rather it is a gene

survival that promotes reproductive fitness.

"Kin selection" provides an explanation for gene survival:

· There is a preference for helping blood relatives because this will increase the chances for the

helper's genes to pass on to successive generations. Because your blood relatives share many of

your same genes, by promoting their survival you can also preserve your genes even if you don't

survive the helpful act. This principle of kin selection states that you will exhibit preferences for

helping blood relatives because this will increase the odds that your genes will be transmitted to

subsequent generations.

· Animals help others more who are genetically related.

But People also help non-relatives. How this becomes possible? This is explained by Trivers (1983) in the

next perspective on prosocial behavior explanations.

A Socio-cultural Perspective: Social Norms

Reciprocal helping:

According to this principle, people are likely to help strangers if it is understood that the recipient is

expected to return the favor at some time in future. Trivers (1983) believes that reciprocal helping is most

likely to evolve in a species when certain conditions exist. Three of these conditions are:

· Social group living, so that individuals have ample opportunity to give and receive help.

· Mutual dependence, in which species survival depends on cooperation, and

· The lack of rigid dominance hierarchies, so that reciprocal helping will enhance each animal's

power.

Considerable research supports both kin selection and reciprocal helping among humans and other animals.

For example, when threatened by predators, squirrels are much more likely to warn genetically related

squirrels with which they live than unrelated squirrels or those from other areas. Similarly, across a wide

variety of human cultures, relatives receive more help than non-relatives, especially if the help involves

considerable costs, such as being a kidney donor (Borgida et al., 1992). Reciprocal helping is also common

in humans, and, consistent with evolutionary-based mechanisms to prevent cheating, when people are

unable to reciprocate, they tend to experience guilt and

Figure 1 illustrates the power of

reciprocity:

shame.

Three social norms that serve as guidelines for

prosocial

behavior

deal

with

reciprocity,

responsibility, and justice. The first of these prosocial

norms, the norm of reciprocity, is based on

maintaining fairness in social relationships. This norm

prescribes that people should be paid back for

whatever they give us. This norm also explains the

discomfort that people typically experience when they

receive help but cannot give something back in return.

Norm of responsibility:

In comparison to the reciprocity norm, the other two

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

prosocial norms dictate that people should help due to a greater awareness of what is right. For instance, the

norm of social responsibility states that we should help when others are in need and dependent on us.

Acting on this norm, adults feel responsible for the health and safety of children, teachers have a sense of

duty and obligation to their students, and police and fire-fighters believe they must help even at the risk of

their own lives. This social responsibility norm requires help-givers to render assistance regardless of the

recipient's worthiness and without an expectation of being rewarded.

Norm of social justice:

In contrast to the dependent-driven social responsibility norm, the norm of social justice stipulates that

people should help only when they believe that others deserve assistance. People become entitled to the

deserving label by either possessing socially desirable personality characteristics or by engaging in socially

desirable behaviors. Thus, according to the social justice norm, if "good" people encounter unfortunate

circumstances, they deserve our help and we have a duty to render assistance.

A Learning Perspective

Observational learning in children:

According to social learning theorists, observational learning or modeling can influence the development of

helping in at least two ways (Rosenkoetter, 1999; Rushton, 1980). First, it can initially teach children how

to engage in helpful actions. Second, it can show children what is likely to happen when they actually

engage in helpful (or selfish) behavior. In this learning process, what models say and what they do both

shape the observers' prosocial behaviors. For example, in one study, sixth-grade girls played a game to win

chips that could be traded for candy and toys (Midlarsky et al,, 1973). Prior to actually playing, each of the

girls watched a woman play the game. In the charitable condition, the adult put some of the chips she won

into a jar labeled "money for poor children" and then urged the girl to think about the poor children who

would "love to receive the prizes these chips can buy." In the selfish condition, the adult model also urged

the child to donate chips to the poor children, but she did so after putting all her chips into a jar labeled "my

money." Results indicated a clear effect of prosocial modeling. Girls who had observed the charitable

model donated more chips to the poor than those who had seen the selfish model.

Prosocial modeling in adults:

Modeling prosocial behavior is not confined to children. In one study conducted in a natural setting,

motorists who simply saw someone helping a woman change a flat tire were more likely to later stop and

assist a second woman who was in a similar predicament (Bryan & Test, 1967). In another experiment

(Rushton & Campbell, 1977), female college students interacted with a friendly woman as part of a study

on social interaction (this was not the true purpose, and the woman was a confederate of the researchers).

When the fabricated study was completed, the two women left the lab together and passed a table staffed by

people asking for blood donations. When participants were asked first, only 25% agreed, and none actually

followed through on their pledge six weeks later. However, when the confederate was asked first and

signed up to donate blood, 67% of the participants also agreed to give blood, and 33% actually fulfilled

their commitment.

Modelling helping behaviour

Figure 2 more clearly illustrates the findings of this

study:

Rewarding prosocial behavior:

Although observing the prosocial actions of others can

shape children's and adults' own helping, the

consequences of their actions will often determine

whether they continue to engage in prosocial behavior.

Social rewards, such as praise, are generally more

effective reinforcers than material rewards, such as

money (Grusec, 1991). In one such experiment

Participant asked

Confederate

conducted by Rushton and Goody Teachman (1978),

first

asked first

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children were first induced to behave generously by having generosity modeled to them as in the previously

described game-token studies. When the children donated some of their winnings to an orphan named

Bobby, the model either praised the child for his or her imitative generosity (reward condition) by saying

"Good for you, that's really nice of you," or scolded the child (punishment condition) by saying "That's

kind of silly for you to give to Bobby. Now you will have fewer tokens for yourself." There was also a no-

reinforcement condition in which the adult said nothing. As you can see in figure 3, children who were

praised gave more to Bobby on later trials than did children who were scolded. The effects of being either

rewarded or punished for prosocial behavior were so strong that they still influenced how much the

children gave to Bobby two weeks later. The results are demonstrated in Figure 3 as given below:

Another study demonstrates that verbal praise or

scolding by an adult model can either strengthen or

weaken children's level of generosity (Moss & Page,

1972). In the reward condition, the woman asking for

directions rewarded her helper by saying, "Thank you

very much, I really appreciate this." In contrast, in the

punishment condition the woman responded to help by

saying, "I can't understand what you're saying, never

mind, I'll ask someone else." Researchers found that

when people were rewarded by the first woman, 90%

of them helped the second woman. However, when

punished by the first woman, only 40% helped in the

later situation. As in the study with children, this adult

study suggests that people's future decisions to help

are often influenced by the degree to which current helpful efforts are met by praise or rebuke.

When do we help?

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was stabbed on

her way back to home. A man stabbed her with knife

near her apartment building in New York at 3.20 a.m.

Her cries rang out in the night but nobody came for

help while at least 38 of her neighbors were watching

from the windows. The apathy of her neighbors was

the topic of news stories, and people's dinner

conversations. Two people who discussed the murder

at length were social psychologists John Darley and

Bibb Latane.

Bystander intervention model eventually emerged as a

result of these dinner discussions.

Bystander intervention involves a series of

decisions

Although people often see people in need of help, they

sometimes don't go and offer it themselves. People decide whether or not to offer assistance based on a

variety of perceptions and evaluations. Help is offered only if a person answers "yes" at each step. The

bystander intervention model maintains that there are four stages which must be gone through before

helping occurs.

As it can be seen in Figure 4 given below that at each point in this five-step process, one decision results in

no help being given, while the other decision takes the bystander one step closer to intervention.

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

The first thing that you, as a potential helper, must do is notice that something unusual is happening.

Unfortunately, in many social settings, countless sights and sounds flood our senses. Because it is

impossible to attend to all this stimuli, and because we may be preoccupied with something else, a cry for

help could conceivably go completely unnoticed. This stimulus overload effect is more likely to occur in

densely populated urban environments than in rural settings (Milgram, 1970). Indeed, it is one of the likely

reasons why there is a negative correlation between population density and helping (Levine, 2003).

Another reason is that sometimes it is difficult to notice things out of the ordinary as what is unusual in one

setting may be a normal occurrence in another. As a bystander to an emergency, if you do indeed notice

that something unusual is happening you move to the second step in the decision-making process: deciding

whether something is wrong and help is needed. Returning to the previous example, if you pass by an

unconscious man on the sidewalk you may ask yourself, "Did he suffer a heart attack or is he merely

sleeping. When you define the situation as an emergency, the bystander intervention model states that the

third decision you must make is determining the extent to which you have responsibility to help. According

to Latane and Darley, one factor that may play a role in your decision to help or not is whether an

appropriate authority figure is nearby. Let's continue this hypothetical emergency situation, but now

imagine that there is no police car in sight. Faced with the reality of a clear emergency, you still may not

help if you convince yourself that all the other motorists watching this incident could help just as well as

you. The presence of these other potential helpers, like the presence of authority figures, may cause you to

feel less personally responsible for intervening.

If, however, you assume responsibility for helping, a fourth decision you must make is the appropriate form

of assistance to render. But in the heat of the moment, what if you are not sure what to do? You may

become paralyzed with uncertainty about exactly how to render assistance.

Finally, if you notice something unusual, interpret it as an emergency, assume responsibility, and decide

how to help, you still must decide whether to implement your course of prosocial action.

Reading

· Franzoi, S. (2003). Social Psychology. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Chapter 14.

Other Readings

· Lord, C.G. (1997). Social Psychology. Orlando: Harcourt Brace and Company. Chapter 8.

· David G. Myers, D. G. (2002). Social Psychology (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

· Taylor, S.E. (2006). Social Psychology (12th ed.). New York: Prentice Hall.

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