Chapter 10
Helping Others
Evolutionary and
Motivational Factors
Why Do People Help?
Evolutionary and Motivational Factors:
Why Do People Help?
• Prosocial behaviors – Actions intended to
benefit others.
Evolutionary Factors
in Helping: The “Selfish Gene”
• What is important is survival of the
individual’s genes, not survival of the fittest
individual.
• Kin selection is the tendency to help genetic
relatives.
– Strongest when biological stakes are
particularly high
Helping Kin When Risks Are High
Evolutionary Factors in
Helping: Reciprocal Altruism
• What is the reproductive advantage of helping
someone who isn’t related to you?
• Through reciprocal altruism, helping someone
else can be in your best interests.
– Increases the likelihood that you will be helped in
return.
Evolution of Morality, Empathy
• More study into “human” attributes such as
morality, gratitude, and empathy
• Empathy: understanding or vicariously
experiencing another’s individual perspective
and feeling sympathy and compassion for that
individual
– Perspective taking
– Empathic concern
• Only a human trait?
Rewards of Helping:
Helping Others to Help Oneself
• More likely to help when the potential
rewards of helping seem high relative to the
potential costs.
• Arousal: Cost-Reward Model
– What are the costs and rewards associated with
helping?
Rewards of Helping:
Helping to Feel Good
• More likely to help if:
– self-esteem has been threatened by failure
– feeling guilty about something
• A relationship exists between helping and
feeling better.
• Helping others to feel good is often not a
conscious decision, but it can be.
• Negative state relief model: proposes that
people help to counter their own feelings of
sadness
Rewards of Helping:
Helping to Be Good
• May help because we are motivated to behave
in ways that are consistent with moral
principles – e.g., “right thing to do”
Costs of Helping or of Not Helping
• Helping has its costs as well as its rewards.
• Helping can also be more sustained and
deliberate.
– Courageous resistance
• Helping can have negative health effects if it
involves constant and exhausting demands.
• Good Samaritan laws to reduce potential costs
Altruism or Egoism: The Great Debate
• Is helping motivated by altruistic or egoistic
concerns?
– Altruistic: Motivated by the desire to increase
another’s welfare.
– Egoistic: Motivated by the desire to increase one’s
own welfare.
• Batson: The motivation behind some helpful
actions is truly altruistic.
The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
Empathy and Helping
Telling the Difference Between Egoistic
and Altruistic Motives
• How easy is it to escape from a helping
situation?
• If egoistic motive, helping should decline
when escape from the situation is easy.
• If altruistic motive, help is given regardless of
ease of escape.
Egoistic Alternatives
• Empathy encourages helping because of
concern about the costs to the self of not
helping.
• Empathy highlights the potential rewards for
helping others.
– Negative state relief model
• Helper experiences empathic joy by helping
another person.
Altruism vs. Egoism: Limits
• Strong evidence for the empathy-altruism
hypothesis.
• Limitations to empathy-altruism hypothesis:
– Not all helping is altruistically motivated.
– Motives do not guarantee behavior.
– Is the assumption that there is a clear divide
between the self and the other a valid one?
Convergence of Motives: Volunteering
• People tend to volunteer due to multiple
motives
– Altruistic and egoistic
• Egoistic Motives can be put to good use
Situational Influences
When Do People Help?
Bystander Effect
• Tragic stories of assault, violence, and murder
– Why does no one help?
• Latané & Darley: Are social psychological
processes at work?
• Bystander Effect: The presence of others
inhibits helping.
The Five Steps to Helping
• Noticing
• Interpreting
– Overcome pluralistic ignorance
• Taking Responsibility
– Overcome diffusion of responsibility
• Deciding how to help
• Providing Help
– Overcome audience inhibition
The Five Steps to Helping
Bystander Effect Online
• Virtual presence of others reduces likelihood
that any one individual will intervene
– “Ripper” case
The Legacy of the Bystander Effect
Research
• The legacy of the bystander intervention
research lives on today as it is being applied to
programs designed to encourage witnesses to
destructive behaviors such as bullying and
sexual assault to take action.
Getting Help in a Crowd
• Make sure that you make your need for help
very clear by singling out individuals in a
crowd via
– Eye contact
– Pointing
– Direct requests
• This type of advice has been shown to work in
cyberspace as well
Time Pressure
• Time pressure can conflict with one’s good
intentions of helping those in need.
• Darley & Batson’s (1973) Good Samaritan
study
Location and Helping
• Do individuals have a worse chance of being
helped in an emergency in a big city than in a
small town?
• Greater population density is associated with
less helping.
• Economic well-being of city was also positively
correlated with helping
Helping in the USA
Culture and Helping
• Around the world, two factors correlate with
helping
– Economic well-being: the more well off, the less
help provided
– Notion of simpatico – a concern for well-being of
others, which is an important element in Spanish
and Latin American cultures
• Research has also found that individualistic
cultures tend to exhibit more charitable and
volunteering behavior than collectivistic
Helping Around the World
Scents and Sensibilities
Good Moods Lead to Helping: Reasons
• Why feeling good leads to doing good:
– Desire to maintain one’s good mood
– Positive expectations about helping
– Positive thoughts
– Positive thoughts and expectations about social
activities
Good Moods Lead to Helping:
Limitations
• Why feeling good might not lead to doing
good:
– Costs of helping are high.
– Positive thoughts about other social activities that
conflict with helping.
May I Help You?
Good Moods Lead to Helping: Reasons
and Limitations
Bad Moods and Helping
• When negative moods make us more likely to
help others:
– If we take responsibility for what caused our bad
mood (i.e., feel guilty)
– If we focus on other people
– If we are made to think about our personal values
that promote helping
• Not as strong and consistent as good moods in
relation to helping
Bad Moods and Helping (cont.)
• When negative moods make us less likely to
help others:
– If we blame others for our bad mood
– If we become very self-focused
– If we are made to think about our personal values
that do not promote helping
Bad Moods and Helping
Prosocial Media Effects
• Politicians, educators, researchers, and
parents have voiced strong concerns about
the negative effects TV, movies, music lyrics
videos, and video games, on the attitudes and
behaviors of adolescents and young adults
Effects of Prosocial Video Games
Helping: Role Models and Social Norms
• Role models are important in teaching
children about helping.
• How do role models inspire helping?
– Provides an example of behavior to imitate
directly.
– Teaches that helping is valued and rewarding.
– Increases awareness of societal standards of
conduct.
Modeling Helping of Distant Others
Helping and Social Norms
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Norm of reciprocity
Norm of equity
Norm of social responsibility
Concerns about justice or fairness
Culture and Social Norms for Helping
• Social norms vary dramatically across cultures
• Thai students appear more altruistic and
helpful than American students – role of
religion a factor?
Personal Influences
Who is Likely to Help?
Are Some More Helpful Than Others?
• Some evidence of individual differences in
helping tendencies.
– Tendency may be relatively stable over time.
– Differences are in part genetically based.
• Is there an altruistic personality?
What Is the Altruistic Personality?
• Empathy
• Internalized and advanced moral reasoning
• Combination of two – “cold” reasoning and
“hot” empathy – required?
Interpersonal Influences
Whom Do People Help?
Attractiveness of Person in Need
• More likely to help physically attractive
people.
• More likely to help friendly individuals.
• Charisma of one person can determine how
much help other people receive.
Attributions of Responsibility
• Beliefs about the needy person’s responsibility
influences helping.
The Fit Between Giver and Receiver:
Similarity
• More likely to help those who are similar.
• May be a form of kinship selection.
• Effects of racial similarity are highly
inconsistent.
• Intergroup biases in helping can be reduced if
they perceive selves as members of a common
group.
Helping Ingroup Members
Gender and Helping
• Classic male-helper scenario:
“Knight in shining armor”
• Classic female-helper scenario:
“Social support”
• Gender differences in willingness to seek help.
– Men ask for help less frequently than women
Culture and Who Receives Help
• Compared to individualists, collectivists may
be more likely to help ingroup members but
less likely to help outgroup members.
Who Should Receive Help? A CrossCultural Difference
The Helping Connection
• A consistent theme appears repeatedly: a
sense of connection. This connection has
taken various forms—genetic relatedness,
empathic concern, sense of responsibility for
someone, perceived similarity, or shared
group membership.