Prosocial Behavior
Social Psychology
Chapter 10
November 12, 2004
Class #11
Types of Prosocial Behavior
• Prosocial behavior (broadest term)
– Action intended to benefit another
– Can be done to gain either external or internal reward
• Benevolence (slightly narrower term)
– Action intended to benefit another, but not to gain external
reward)
• Pure altruism
– Action intended to solely benefit another
– No external reward to the helper
– No internal reward to the helper
• Some argue there is no such thing as pure altruism
Defining Prosocial Behavior
Type of
Behavior
Prosocial
Behavior
Benevolence
Pure
Altruism
Definition
Example
Any action
intended to
benefit
another
(regardless
of motive)
Giving a
large tip to a
waiter to
impress
your boss
with your
generosity
Type of
Behavior
Prosocial
Behavior
Benevolence
Pure
Altruism
Definition
Example
Benefits
another
intentionally
for no
external
reward
Sending $20
to a charity
to make
yourself feel
good inside
Defining Prosocial Behavior
Type of
Behavior
Prosocial
Behavior
Benevolence
Pure
Altruism
Definition
Benefits
another
intentionally
for no
external or
internal
reward
Example
Jumping on
a railroad
track to help
a stranger
who has
fallen
Helping requires investment of time, energy,
attention, funds…so why do we do it?
• Goals of Prosocial Behavior
– Gaining Genetic and Material Benefits
• Inclusive Fitness
• Reciprocal Aid
– Gaining Social Status and Approval
– Managing Self-Image
– Managing Our Moods and Emotions
Evolutionary Factors in Helping:
The “Selfish Gene”
• What is important is survival of the individual’s
genes, not survival of the fittest individual
• Kinship selection is the tendency to help genetic
relatives
– Strongest when biological stakes are particularly high
Insights into the Evolution of Help
• Inclusive Fitness – The ability of one’s genes to survive in one’s
own offspring AND in any relatives one
helps
– Helping a close relative promotes the
survival of those genes
Cunningham et al. (1995)
80
60
Percentage
Volunteering
to Help
40
20
0
High
Mod.
Low
None
(parents,
siblings,
children)
(grandparents)
(first
cousins)
(attractive
strangers)
Degree of Relatedness
Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama (1994)
• There are three people who need you to run a small
errand to the store:
– A cousin
– A sister
– An acquaintance
• You have time to help only one…
– Whose errand do you run?
I made this one up…
• If your house is burning down and there are several
people asleep
• You only have time to save one person – who of the
following would you save?
– Your Uncle Charlie who owes you $200
– Your step-mother who has raised you since you were two
and you love very much
– Your adopted son who you have raised since he was 6
months old and you love very much
– Your biological son who you haven’t spoken to since you
kicked out of the house for smoking pot
Who do you help?
• Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama (1994)
– Participants in this study were asked to imagine
scenarios like the following:
• There are three people asleep in different rooms
of a burning house:
– Your 7 year-old female cousin
– Your 75 year-old grandfather
– A 21 year-old acquaintance
• You have time to rescue only one…
– Who do you save?
Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama (1994)
3.0
For everyday help,
people tended to help
close relatives more
than non-relatives
2.5
Tendency
to Help
2.0
1.5
1.0
High
Mod.
Low
(parents,
siblings,
children)
(grandparents)
(first
cousins)
None
(acquaintances)
Degree of Relatedness
Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama (1994)
3.0
The difference became
even more pronounced
in life-or-death
situations
2.5
Tendency
to Help
2.0
1.5
1.0
High
Mod.
Low
(parents,
siblings,
children)
(grandparents)
(first
cousins)
None
(acquaintances)
Degree of Relatedness
Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama (1994):
Findings
• Kin are helped more than non-kin, especially in life-ordeath situations
• Females are helped more than males, except elderly
females (post- menopausal)
• Young are helped more than old
• Healthy relatives helped more than non-healthy in lifeor-death situations
• In life-or-death helping, relatedness matters (this
assures that our genes will continue)
• In everyday helping, we may be guided more by social
norms and moral rules (e.g., "help the sick")
•
Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours…
• Reciprocal Aid
– Trivers (1971)
• The theory of reciprocal altruism predicts that
altruistic behaviors will also be a function of
beliefs about the recipient's likelihood of
reciprocating…
• Help that occurs in return for prior help
• Animals will help non-relatives if they live in
close proximity and can better survive by
sharing
Evolutionary Factors in Helping:
The Cooperative Group
• Humans can sometimes increase their
reproductive success in two ways:
– By protecting their own self-interest in relation to
other individuals
– By protecting their group’s interests in relation to
other groups
• Helping based on social connections rather than
genetic relationships
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
• Relationship between helping and feeling better.
• Helping others to feel good is often not a
conscious decision, but it can be
Rewards of Helping: Helping to
Be or Appear Good
• Social Responsibility Norm
– Societal rule that people should help those who
need their assistance
– May help because motivated to behave in ways that
are consistent with moral principles.
– Sometimes help for the appearance of morality but
really have selfish motives.
• Moral hypocrisy
• Overhelping
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 involves
constant and exhausting demands.
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
From C.D. Batson, The Altruism Question, 1991. Reprinted with permission of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
C. D. Batson, The Altruism Question. Copyright © 1991 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
Telling the Difference Between
Egoistic and Altruistic Motives
• How easy 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
Batson et al. (1981)
• Students in one experiment were given
the opportunity to help a suffering student
(Elaine) by taking her place in an electric
shock experiment
– Half could easily escape the whole situation
by leaving immediately
– The other half would have to stay and watch
as she received the remaining shocks
Batson et al. (1981)
• Students given the easy
opportunity to escape
usually took it…
• But if they felt high
empathy for Elaine they
were more likely to help her
out
• Dan Batson and colleagues
argue that empathy engages
pure altruism, and overrides
selfish motivations
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 and Convergence
• 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?
An egoistic alternative?
• Cialdini and his colleagues argue that there is
an egoistic explanation of these findings:
– Empathy causes an observer to feel kinship with
the victim, thus tapping into a basic selfish
motivation – to serve myself by serving those who
share my genes
“I didn’t want to get involved…”
• Kitty Genovese Tragedy
(March 13, 1964)
– We watched video clips on
this last week…
– Kew Gardens apartment in
Queens, NYC where Kitty
lived 
Winston Moseley , mugshot
She might still be alive today…
Bystander Effect
• The tragic story of Kitty Genovese.
– Why did no one help?
– Latané & Darley:
• Were social psychological processes at work?
Diffusion of Responsibility
• “Bystander Effect”
– Tendency for each group member to dilute
personal responsibility for acting by spreading it
among all other group members
Taking Responsibility
• Moriarty (1975)
– Jones Beach study - confederate steals a radio
• DV: % who intervene to stop theft
• IV1: question asked
– “Would you watch my things?” or “ Do you have a light?”
• IV2: sex
– Results:
• A percentage of subjects who intervened to stop a thief at Jones
Beach, New York, varied according to whether the subjects felt they
had a responsibility to stop the thief
• Asking subjects to ''watch my things" proved very effective, although
certainly not by reducing fear of the thief
Latané & Darley (1970)
• Helping is the last step of a process involving multiple
decisions:
– Helping Decision Tree
• 1. Notice the incident
• 2. Interpret incident as emergency
• 3. Assume responsibility
• 4. Know the appropriate response
• 5. Implement decision to help
Bystander Helping on Computer
From P.M. Markey, Computers in Human Behavior, 16 (2002) 183-188.
Time Costs…
• Darley and Batson (1973)
– 40 students from Princeton Theological Seminary
• Researchers asked half of the subjects to prepare
themselves for a brief talk on the parable of the
Good Samaritan and half were told that they
would be asked questions concerning
employment prospects for seminary students
IV’s
• Some subjects were put in the “early” condition…
– “It will be a few minutes before they are ready for
you but why don’t you head over there anyway…”
• Some subjects were put in the “on time”
condition…
– “They’re just about ready for you…if you leave now
you’ll be right on time”
• Some subjects were put in the “late” condition…
– “They were expecting you a few minutes ago, better
hurry…”
Personality Measure was also included…
• Before all this was done, subjects were given a
questionnaire intended to measure their basis for
interest in religion…
• They were asked: Did their religious interest
primarily have to do with:
– assuring their personal salvation
or
– their concern for helping others
Is there time enough to be a Good Samaritan?
• On their way to the next building they passed a
poorly dressed man slumped in a doorway, head
down, eyes closed, not moving…
• As the subject moved past him, the man
coughed twice and began groaning
Pitting Dispositions Against Situations
• Darley and Batson (1973) compared the strength
of a seemingly important dispositional factor
(primarily altruistic or not) with a relatively small
situational variable (early or late)…
Darley & Batson’s (1973) Results
70
60
50
Percentage 40
who helped 30
20
10
0
Ahead of
Schedule
On Time
Late
Pluralistic Ignorance
• Phenomenon that occurs when bystanders to
an emergency, trying to look poised, give
misleading cues to others that no help is
needed
Bystanders as sources of
information about helping
• Results suggest that people look to others to
provide information…
– If no one else seems upset, that suggests this isn’t
an emergency
Latane & Darley (1968):
Smoke study
• In this study, researchers pumped smoke into a
lab while students filled out a questionnaire…
– Some students were left alone
– Some with 2 other real participants
– Some with 2 other confederates who
pretended nothing was wrong
Latane & Darley (1968)
80
60
Percentage
Reporting
Smoke
40
20
0
Alone
With 2
other
real
subjects
With 2 calm
confederates
Informational influence?
• Being around others made people less likely to
interpret smoke as an emergency
Location and Culture
• 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.
Evans & Lepore, 1993
Milgram, 1970
• Helping is less likely in densely packed
cities…
• Part of the problem is that people living in
dense urban environments pay less attention to
those around them
Helping in the U.S.A.
From "Helpfulness Index: How U.S. Cities Rank," The Boston Globe, July 7, 1994.
Managing Our Moods and Emotions
Dovidio, Piliavin, Gaertner, Schroeder, & Clark (1991)
• Arousal/Cost-reward model
– View that observers of suffering help to relieve
their own personal distress
– We will help in emergency if:
• We feel negative arousal, and other conditions
suggest that helping will alleviate the unpleasant
feeling
Cialdini et al. (1982)
Schaller & Cialdini (1990)
• Mood management hypothesis
– Idea that people use helping tactically to
manage their moods
– Throughout life, we learn that helping others
can lead to rewards
– This reward makes us feel good, and we
learn to use helping to manage our mood
Scents and Sensibilities
From R.A. Baron, "The Sweet Smell of ...Helping: Effects of Pleasant Ambient Fragrance on Prosocial Behavior in Shopping Malls," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 23, pp. 498503. Copyright (c) 1997 by Sage Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Inc.
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
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
Cunningham et al. (1980)
80
70
60
50
Percentage
who helped 40
next person 30
20
10
0
Believed Broke Camera
No Broken Camera
Best to wait until after confession…
• Harris, Benson, & Hall (1975)
– Higher percentage of Catholic subjects donated
money to a charity after confession
– Guilt seems to lead to altruism
Bad Moods and Helping
• 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
Effects of Those Around Us
• Observing another giving help can teach young
children about the helping norm
• For adults, a model can remind them of the
helping norm
Awareness of the Helping Norm
• Froming, Allen, & Jensen (1985)
– Very young children are not aware of the norm
requiring people to help those in need
– Between 6 and 9 years of age, they become aware
of the norm
– At this age, they will help if an adult is present
Essential Qualities for an
Altruistic Personality
• Empathy
• Internalized and advanced moral reasoning
• Attractiveness
– Physical Appearance
• I think we’ve talked enough about that effect
already
– Charisma
• Penner and Fritzsche (1993)
– Example: Earvin Johnson
Magic’s Influence on Helping Others
Penner & Fritzsche, 1993.
Attributions of Responsibility
• Beliefs about the needy person’s responsibility
influences helping
• Effect particularly strong among those who
believe in a just world
Does it matter if he’s drunk?
• Piliavin (1981): The New York Subway
Experiment
– Teams of 4 traveling on NY subways (Victim/model/2
observers)
– Recorded number of people in car, gender, race, etc.
– Victim: always male, either white or AfricanAmerican/sometimes with a cane, sometimes drunk
– Victim collapses/model instructed to help after exactly
70 seconds
• Results???
Similarity and Familiarity
• Dovidio (1984)
– In 34 studies, 29 found significantly higher
helping for similar over dissimilar others
• Gaertner & Dovidio (1986)
– However, people will often help people of
other races but only if not helping might
make them appear prejudiced
Similarity and Familiarity
• Familiarity may also be a cue to genetic relatedness
– Our ancestors encountered their relatives on a
daily basis
– In animal and human societies, familiarity
increases helping
• Schroeder, Penner, Dovidio, & Piliavin, 1995
– If familiarity is associated with shared genes,
helping familiar others would have generally
helped relatives
Gender and Helping
• Classic male-helper scenario:
“Knight in shining armor”
• Classic female-helper scenario:
“Social support”
• Gender differences in willingness to seek help
Gender and Help
• Williams & Best (1990)
– Women are universally perceived as kinder, more
soft-hearted, and more helpful
– But over 90% of Carnegie Hero awards go to men
(for saving, or attempting to save, the life of
another)
• Why?
Threat-to-Self-Esteem Model
• Help is experienced as self-supportive when
recipient feels appreciated and cared for
• Help is experienced as self-threatening when
recipient feels inferior and overly dependent
When Is Receiving Help
Perceived as Threatening?
• Those with high self-esteem tend to react more
negatively than those with low self-esteem
• Being helped by a similar other may imply that
recipient is inferior
• Help from a significant other on an ego-relevant
task can threaten one’s self-esteem
Shotland & Straw (1976)
• Sometimes people assume help would be seen
as an unwelcome intrusion…
– When a woman fighting with a man shouted: “I
don’t even know you!” - help was more likely than
if she shouted: “I don’t know why I married you!”