Altruism
Chapter 9
Reading on Reserve
Questions to be Addressed
• What is Altruism?
• What motivates people to help others?
• Are differences in the tendency to help others
learned?
• What kind of prosocial moral reasoning is
involved in altruism?
Discussion Question:
What is Altruism?
• Rooted in the Latin word alter – meaning other
• Altruism – means “living for others”
• Key component – selflessness – an unselfish
regard for the welfare of others
• Altruism was ignored as an area of study in
social psychology until the mid-20th century
even though Auguste Comte coined the term 100
years prior
Discussion Question:
Discussion Question:
Altruism vs. Prosocial Behavior
• Need to consider the role of selflessness and an
individual’s motivation for helping
• Altruism – p. 245 – “refers to acts that are
carried out voluntarily by individuals who have
no concern for themselves and who have no
expectation of any kind of reward.”
• Prosocial behavior – p. 245 – “is a broader
category of helping behavior that does not stress
personal motives, whereas altruism must involve
some kind of clear self-sacrifice.”
Discussion Question:
Discussion Question:
Motivation to Help:
Social Exchange Theory
• The decision to help others involves a costbenefit analysis
• We enter into relationships because we derives
some personal benefit from doing so which
suggests that no act is truly altruistic
• From this perspective, helping is done out of
self-interest (egoistic motivations).
• What do you think of this perspective?
Motivation to Help:
Batson’s Model – Empathy-Altruism
• Batson argues that true altruism does exist and
that empathy is what sets it apart as altruism
• He argues that a person’s motivation for helping
may involve urges that are either egoistic or
altruistic.
▫ Egoistic – people help others hoping to reduce their own
personal distress (feelings of guilt, worry, shame, fear, etc.)
▫ Altruistic – people help others because they feel empathy
toward them and their situation (feelings like compassion,
warmth, softheartedness, etc.)
• What do you think of these ideas?
Motivation to Help:
Evolutionary Theories
• Perhaps helping behavior is a matter of natural
selection.
• Darwin suggested that “altruistic animals risk the
survival of their genes by engaging in self-sacrificing
behaviors that threaten their long-term reproductive
potential.”
• There are three ways that altruistic genes might be
passed on:
▫ Kin Selection
▫ Reciprocity
▫ Group Selection
Motivation to Help:
Evolutionary Theories
• Kin Selection
▫ Proposes that we are more likely to act
altruistically when it comes to saving our relatives
• Reciprocal Altruism
▫ Suggests that helping in the short run increases
the probability that our genes will be protected in
the future.
▫ What goes around, comes around
▫ Helps explain non-kin helping behavior
Motivation to Help:
Evolutionary Theories
• Group Selection
▫ This perspective argues that groups consisting of
cooperative members are more likely to survive
and pass on their genes than groups composed of
selfish members
Process of Helping
Has something happened?
Is it an emergency?
Is this something for which I should take personal responsibility?
What form of assistance should I give?
I’ll help.
Process of Helping:
Assuming Personal Responsibility
• We often times ask ourselves a number of
questions in this stage:
▫ Does the victim “deserve” help?
▫ Do we have the expertise or competence necessary
to help?
▫ Do other bystanders share responsibility for
helping?
 Diffusion of responsibility – refers to the tendency
for bystanders to diffuse the responsibility for
helping among themselves
Process of Helping:
Situational Factors
• Time
▫ Do we have the time to help?
• Presence of others
▫ The bystander effect
• Size of place
▫ Larger the city size, the less likely people are to help a
stranger
• Moods and Emotions
▫ Good moods = more helpful behavior
▫ Bad moods = sometimes more helpful behavior,
sometimes less helpful behavior (in children)
▫ Guilt = more helpful behavior
Discussion Question:
• What does the research on situational factors
influencing helping behavior teach you about
how you have been approaching your servicelearning experience thus far? (pp. 254-261)
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Time
Presence of others
Size of place
Moods and emotions
Discussion Question:
• Can you manipulate any of these factors to
produce more helping behavior from the MOJH
students than what they are already
contributing?
• If so, how?
• Why?
Motivation to Help:
Social Norms
• Social norms – socially constructed expectations
for how we ought to act
• Two classes of social norms around helping
behavior:
▫ Norms that invoke rules of fairness
 Norm of reciprocity – “tit for tat”
 The principle of equity – what’s fair?
 Beliefs about justice – you reap what you sow
▫ Norms that address questions of social
responsibility
 we should help people who are dependent upon us
Discussion Question
• Have any of these rules regarding social norms
influenced your helping behavior in your
service-learning project this semester?
• Why or why not?
• How?
Unwelcome Help
• What explains why people would not want help?
• Threat-to-self-esteem model – proposes that a
person’s reaction to assistance depends on how
help is offered.
▫ “providing help in a way that allows for some kind
of fair exchange also produces a positive effect
that contains elements of self-support.”
Learning to Help
• The culture into which one is born will shape our
prosocial and altruistic tendencies.
• We learn norms from our group through the
process of socialization.
• How do we learn helping behavior?
Theories Explaining How We Learning
Helping Behavior
• Rewarding Altruism and Prosocial Behavior
▫ Results of one study showed “subjects who
received a polite thank-you for giving directions
were more likely than subjects who were treated
rudely to later offer help to a confederate.”
• Modeling Altruism and Prosocial Behavior
▫ Adults and children learn prosocial behavior
through modeling
 Adults are more likely to help if they see someone
model prosocial behavior
Development of Prosocial Behavior
• The tendency to help others increases as
children mature. Children are able to do more of
the following as they mature:
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Understand and accept social norms
Take the perspective of others
Empathize
Feel greater social responsibility and competence
Greater moral reasoning – the reasons they give
for helping
Theories Explaining the Moral
Development in Children
• Cialdini’s Socialization Model of Charitable
Behavior
▫ First step: children view altruistic behavior either
in a neutral manner or even as punishing because
they associate it with a loss of rewards
▫ Second step: children become aware of social
norms that prescribe prosocial or altruistic
behavior. Motivations for helping at this point are
linked to external rewards.
▫ Third step: charitable behavior is intrinsically
rewarding.
Theories Explaining the Moral
Development in Children
• Bar-Tal and Raviv’s Cognitive-Learning Model
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Phase 1: Compliance – concrete
Phase 2: Compliance
Phase 3: Internal initiative – concrete
Phase 4: Normative behavior
Phase 5: Generalized reciprocity
Phase 6: Altruistic behavior
▫ P. 271, Table 9.6
Theories Explaining the Moral
Development in Children
• Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
▫ Pp. 272-273, Table 9.7
▫ Proposed that children pass through a series of
stages of moral reasoning as they mature
▫ Suggests an individual’s level of moral
development is not determined by whether s/he
decides an action is right or wrong but rather by
the specific reasoning s/he uses.
▫ Reasoning abilities become more sophisticated as
the child matures
Theories Explaining the Moral
Development in Children
• Eisenberg’s Model of Prosocial Reasoning
▫ “At the lowest level of development, children’s
decisions to help are based on hedonistic concerns
– how helping will satisfy their own needs or
wants.”
▫ “As they mature, children begin to consider other
people’s needs.”
▫ P. 275, Table 9.8