Pro-social Behavior
Chapter 11
Altruism
• Pro-social Behavior
-benefits other people
• “Altruism”
• “True” altruism???
TYPES OF HELPING
1)
2)
3)
LONG VERSUS SHORT-TERM
HELPING
DIRECT VERSUS INDIRECT (COSTS)
BEHAVIORAL, EMOTIONAL, OR
INFORMATIONAL
EXAMPLES:
A) SHORT-TERM, DIRECT, BEHAVIORAL,
DANGER PRESENT
•
Prevent other’s drowning
•
Stopping a shoplifter
B) SHORT-TERM, INDIRECT, BEHAVIORAL
•
Call 911
C) DIRECT RESPONSE WITHOUT DANGER
•
Giving up seats on a bus
•
Picking up dropped goods
Examples cont…
D) RESPONSE TO A DIRECT REQUEST
• Give some spare change
• Let someone use your phone
• Give directions
E) RETURNING LOST ARTICLES
• Letters
• Wallet
• Money
F) LONG-TERM HELPING
• Listen to a friend in need
• Letting an elderly parent live with you
• Reading to a child
• Working on a help/hot line
•
Care for someone with a terminal disease
•
DONATIONS
• Money, clothes, food, blood, organs, time
Evolutionary Theories
• “Evolutionary Psychology”
• “ The Selfish Gene” – Dawkins,
1976
• Kin Selection – helping genetic
relatives
- Burnstein, Crandall &
Kitayama (1994)
-more likely to help genetic
relatives in life-threatening
situation
- Sime (1983) more likely to
search for familty than friends
in a building fire
Evolutionary Theories
• “Reciprocity Norm”
- “I’ll scratch your back, if…”
-cooperation increases
survival
- Gratitude evolved as an
emotion to regulate
reciprocity
- used frequently in fund
campaigns
Group Selection
• Controversial theory
• Selection at group level
• Imagine two villages at war…..
- Group A (all selfish)
- Group B (selfless warriors)
-which group wins the war?
Social Exchange Theory
• Social Psychology theory
• Based on proximal self-interests
• Maximizing gains/minimizing
loss
• Treats a relationship like an
economy
• Helping is socially rewarded
• Example: helping a bystander
relieves distress
• People help when benefits
outweigh the costs
• Too cynical?
True Altruism?
• Daniel Batson (1991):
-Empathy Altruism
Hypothesis
• True altruism exists under
certain circumstances
• Key to true altruism is empathy
• More likely to feel empathy to
more similar others
• See illustration on page 306
Individual Differences in
Altruism
• “Altruistic Personality?”
- alone does not predict
behavior
- those with high scored not
much more likely to help
• Gender differences (western)
- men…short term, heroic
- women….long term help,
volunteer work
Cultural Differences in
Altruism
• Simpatia…prominent in
Spanish-speaking countries
• Range of good-natured traits
• Helping tends to be higher in
many countries that value
simpatia. (table, page 310)
• Religious people not more
likely to help in private
situations.
Moods and Helping
• “Feel good, do good.”
- Isen and Levin (1972)
- boosted shoppers moods with
money
- much more likely to help
confederate after finding
money:
- 84% that found money helped
- 4 % that did not find money
helped
Moods and Helping
• Good moods increase helping in
3 ways:
- Looking on the bright side
helps you give other the benefit
of the doubt.
- Helping prolongs a good
mood.
- Good moods make us pay
more attention to ourselves.
Feel Bad, Do Good
• Guilt leads to increases in
helping behaviors.
- idea of cancelling out bad
deeds
• Harris, Benson & Hall (1975)
- parishioners more likely to
donate to a charity before
going to confession than
after
Kitty Genovese Story
(From New York Times, March 27th, 1964)
37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police
Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman Shocks
Inspector By Martin Gansberg
For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in
Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three
separate attacks in Kew Gardens.
Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their
bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off, Each time
he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one
person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness
called after the woman was dead.
That was two weeks ago today. But Assistant Chief Inspector
Frederick M. Lussen, in charge of the borough’s detectives and a
veteran of 25 years of homicide investigations, is still shocked.
He can give a matter-of-fact recitation of many murders. But the
Kew Gardens slaying baffles him — not because it is a murder,
but because the ‘good people’ failed to call the police.
‘As we have reconstructed the crime,’ he said, ‘the assailant had
three chances to kill this woman during a 35-minute period. He
returned twice to complete the job. If we had been called when he
first attacked, the woman might not be dead now.’
‘He Stabbed Me!’
She got as far as a street light in front of a bookstore
before the man grabbed her. She screamed. Lights went
on in the 10-storey apartment house at 82—67 Austin
Street, which faces the bookstore. Windows slid open and
voices punctured the early-morning stillness.
Miss Genovese screamed: ‘Oh, my God, he stabbed me!
Please help me! Please help me!’
From one of the upper windows in the apartment house, a
man called down: ‘Let that girl alone!’
The assailant looked up at him, shrugged and walked
down Austin Street toward a white sedan parked a short
distance away. Miss Genovese struggled to her feet.
Lights went out. The killer returned to Miss Genovese, now
trying to make her way around the side of the building by
the parking lot to get to her apartment. The assailant
grabbed her again.
‘I’m dying!’ she shrieked.
A City Bus Passed
Windows were opened again, and lights went on in many
apartments. The assailant got into his car and drove
away. Miss Genovese staggered to her feet. A city bus, Q10, the Lefferts Boulevard line to Kennedy International
Airport, passed. It was 3.35 am.
The assailant returned. By then, Miss Genovese had
crawled to the back of the building where the freshly
painted brown doors to the apartment house held out
hope of safety. The killer tried the first door; she wasn’t
there. At the second door, 82—62 Austin Street, he saw
her slumped on the floor at the foot of the stairs. He
stabbed her a third time — fatally.
It was 3.50 by the time the police received their first call,
from a man who was a neighbor of Miss Genovese. In
two minutes they were at the scene. The neighbor, a 70year-old woman and another woman were the only
persons on the street. Nobody else came forward.
The man explained that he had called the police after
much deliberation. He had phoned a friend in Nassau
County for advice and then he had crossed the roof of the
elderly woman to get her to make the call.
‘I didn’t want to get involved,’ he sheepishly told the
police.
Suspect is Arrested
Six days later, the police arrested Winston Moseley, a 29year-old business-machine operator, and charged him
with the homicide. Mosely had no previous record. He is
married, has two children and owns a home at 133—19
Sutter Avenue, South Ozone Park, Queens. On
Wednesday, a court committed him to Kings County
Hospital for psychiatric observation.
The police stressed how simple it would have been to get
in touch with them. ‘A phone call,’ said one of the
detectives, ‘would have done it.’
Today witnesses from the neighborhood, which is made
up of one-family homes in the $35,000 to $60,000 range
with the exception of the two apartment houses near the
railroad station, find it difficult to explain why they didn’t
call the police.
Lieut. Bernard Jacobs, who handled the investigation by
the detectives, said:
‘It is one of the better neighborhoods. There are few
reports of crimes. You only get the usual complaints
about boys playing or garbage cans being turned over.’
The police said most persons had told them they had
been afraid to call, but had given meaningless answers
when asked what they had feared.
‘We can understand the reticence of people to become
involved in an area of violence,’ Lieutenant Jacobs said,
‘but where they are in their homes, near phones, why
should they be afraid to call the police?’
He said that his men were able to piece together what
happened — and capture the suspect — because the
residents furnished all the information when detectives
rang doorbells during the days following the slaying.
‘But why didn’t someone call us that night?’ he asked
unbelievingly.
Witnesses — some of them unable to believe what they
had allowed to happen — told a reporter why.
A housewife, knowingly if quite casual, said, ‘We thought
it was a lovers’ quarrel’. A husband and wife both said,
‘Frankly, we were afraid’. They seemed aware of the fact
that events might have been different. A distraught
woman, wiping her hands in her apron, said, ‘I didn’t want
my husband to get involved’.
One couple, now willing to talk about that night, said they
heard the first screams. The husband looked thoughtfully
at the bookstore where the killer first grabbed Miss
Genovese.
‘We went to the window to see what was happening,’ he
said, ‘but the light from our bedroom made it difficult to
see the street’. The wife, still apprehensive, added: ‘I put
out the light and we were able to see better’.
Asked why they hadn’t called the police, she shrugged
and replied, ‘I don’t know’.
Latane and Darley’s model of
Emergency Intervention (1970)
What are the cognitive steps an individual must progress
through before offering help in and emergency?
No
1. Notice the
emergency
Don’t
Help
Yes
No
2. Define the
emergency
Don’t
Help
Yes
3. Take
responsibility
No
Don’t
Help
Yes
No
4. Decide on a
way to help
Don’t
Help
Yes
5. Implement a
chosen way to
help
Yes
HELP
No
Don’t
Help
Cumulative Percentages of Subjects Responding
to an Epileptic Fit Under Different Conditions
Does the bystander effect occur in an
unambiguous emergency involving a suffering
human victim?
Latane and Daley (1970) had subjects communicate via
a microphone with another student in a nearby room.
Subjects believed there were no, one, or four other
people listening in on the conversation. Partway
through the experiment, the other student seemed to
experience an epileptic seizure. The researchers
observed how quickly subjects helped the victim
***As the next graph shows, subjects were
more likely to help the victim of the seizure
when they were the only person participating
in the conversation. All subjects who believed
that they were alone when they heard the
seizure aided the victim within three minutes;
however, not all subjects in the other two
situations aided the victims.
“Diffusion of Responsibility” – Others Can Help
100
Cumulative Proportion Helping (%)
90
80
70
60
50
40
Subject & Victim
30
Subject, Victim & Stranger
20
Subject, Victim & 4 Strangers
10
60
120
180
240
Time from Beginning of Fit (Seconds)
Cumulative Percentages of Subjects Responding
in Different Conditions to Smoke Pouring into
the Room
What effect does the presence of other people
have on our response to a possible emergency???
In this study by Latane and Darley (1970) subjects
sat in a room either alone with two other subjects,
or with two passive confederates. As they
completed questionnaires, smoke began pouring
into the room through an air vent. The researchers
measured how quickly subjects sought help or
reported the emergency.
*** As the next graph shows, single
subjects were much more likely to seek
help, and they responded to the possible
emergency more quickly.
“Pluralistic Ignorance” – Social Comparison
Alone
100
Three Naïve Subjects
90
Two Passive Subjects
Cumulative Proportion Reporting Smoke (%)
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
Time from Start of Smoke Infusion (minutes)
Types of Relationships
• Communal Relationships
- based on concern for welfare
- Clark & Mills (2007)
- tend to help those in com. rel.
• Exchange Relationships
- based on equity
- Tesser ( 1988)
- more likely to help in this
rel. under certain
conditions (page 321)
Media and Helping
• Greitmeyer Studies (page 320)
- “Lemmings” vs “Tetris”
- Lemmings players (prosocial)
more likely to help
- Prosocial song lyrics: more
likely to help
- increases feelings of empathy
- increases thoughts about
helping
Prosocial Lyrics &
Romance?
• Gueguen, Jacob & Lamy (2010)
- French female college stud.
- Waiting room: romantic or
neutral song playing
- later performed consumer
taste test with male student
rated as “average”
- male asked for digits
- 52 % yes (romantic cond.)
- 30% yes (neutral cond. )
Increasing Helping
• Increased awareness of factors
that inhibit altruism
• 1998 – Cornell university
student prevent a suicide after
remembering a class on the
bystander effect.
• Vasser college – student who
witnessed a mugging and called
police. Lots of other witnesses
did nothing. Student had just
taken Social Psychology.
Beaman (1978)
• Social psych students
encountered person on floor 2
weeks after receiving
“bystander effect” lecture
• Heard lecture : 43 % helped
• No lecture: 25% helped
Positive Psychology
• Martin Seligman
• Shift of focus from pathology to
health
• Study of “Strength and Virtue”
• Improving lives of humans
• Mix of Clinical, Social Psych
http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_
seligman_on_the_state_of_psyc
hology