Outline 4.8
Why Do People Help Others?
• Egoistic helping
o Wanting something in return for helping
Negative state relief theory
Help to reduce your own distress
• Altruistic helping
o Expecting nothing in return for helping
• Empathy-altruism hypothesis
o Motivated by empathy
Mirror Neurons
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/mirror-neurons.html
Example: Bateson et al. (1981)
Alternative hypotheses
• Empathy-specific reward hypothesis
o Empathy triggers the need for social reward
 Ex. Praise, honor, pride
• Empathy-specific punishment hypothesis
o Empathy triggers the fear of social punishment that can be avoided by
helping
 Ex. Guilt, shame, censure
Is Altruism possible?
• Is there such a thing as a “selfless good deed”?
• Or do we always gain some benefit from helping?
Altruism
• Helping others with focus on their benefit (cost to you).
• WHY?
• Feel good about yourself
• Innately selfish??
Who Helps Whom?
• Helpful Personality
• Similarity
• Appearance, social status, group membership
• Males are more helpful in broader public sphere, toward strangers and in
emergencies
• Females are more helpful in family sphere, toward close relations and in
repeated contact
• Females are more likely to receive help than males
•
•
People are more likely to help attractive individuals!!!
Evidence from field and lab experiments (Harrell, 1978)
Why Do People Help Others?
• Evolutionary benefits
• Kin selection
• More likely to help others who share our genes
• Life-and-death helping is affected more strongly by genetic relatedness
• Increase Help Behavior by Mimicking
Bystander effect
• People less likely to help when they are in the presence of others, and no one
else is helping
• Example:
• Kitty Genovese
• 38 witnesses
• Bystander Effect
Five Steps to Helping
1. Notice that something is happening
2. Interpret meaning of event
• Pluralistic ignorance:
• Looking to others for cues about how to behave, while they are
looking to you.
3. Taking responsibility for providing help
• Diffusion of responsibility
• The reduction in feeling responsible that occurs when others are
present.
4. Know how to help
5. Provide help
• Audience inhibition
• Failure to help in front of others for fear of feeling like a fool if one’s
offer of help is rejected