PSY 321
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Why do We Help?
Gaining Rewards, Avoiding Punishment
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Evolutionary Factors in Helping:
The “Selfish Gene”
 What is important is survival of the individual’s genes
 Kinship selection is the tendency to help genetic relatives.
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Kinship Selection
 Help close relatives over distant relatives
 Especially in life/death situations
 Help youthful relatives over elderly
 Even true among kids!!!
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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.
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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; and

By protecting their group’s interests in relation to other groups.
 Helping based on social connections rather than genetic relationships.
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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?
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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.
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RECENT STUDY!!!
 Helping behavior among elderly decreases mortality risk!!!
 Mortality was significantly reduced for individuals who reported providing instrumental support to friends and neighbors
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Rewards of Helping: Helping to Be or Appear Good
 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 (people try to convince others that they are driven to help others when they really have selfish reasons)
Overhelping ( helping someone who doesn’t need help for personal gain)
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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.
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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.
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The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
(Batson et al.)
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Telling the Difference Between
Egoistic and Altruistic Motives
 Important factor: 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.
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When Empathy
Helps
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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.
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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?
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Why Does The Motivation to Help Matter?
 Helps us determine whether or not helping will even occur.
 Motivational factors play important roles in more long-term helping behaviors.
 Particularly, self-oriented motivations.
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Table 10.1: Motivations to
Volunteer to Help People With
AIDS
Adapted from Frank et al., 1993
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Situational Influences
When Do People Help?
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Bystander Effect
 The tragic story of Kitty
Genovese, 1964
 Attacked 3 separate times by same killer
 38 people saw or heard her cries for help
 By the time someone called police, Kitty was dead
 Why did no one help?
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Bystander Effect
 The tragic story of Kitty Genovese.

Latané & Darley: Were social psychological processes at work?
 Bystander Effect: The presence of others inhibits helping.
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Bystander Effect
 Films\helping\bystander_effect.mov
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The 5 Steps to Helping in an
Emergency
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Figure 10.4: Even in our imagination:Bystander Effect
S.M.Garcia, K. eaver, G.B. Moskowitz, and J.M. Darley (2002) Crowded Minds: The Implicit
Bystander Effect." Copyright © 2002. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 843-853. 25

Bystander Helping in a Chat Room
From P.M. Markey, Computers in Human Behavior, 16 (2002) 183-188.
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Time Pressure
 Time pressure can conflict with one’s good intentions of helping those in need.
 Darley & Batson’s (1973) Good Samaritan study
 Princeton Theological Seminary students told the must deliver an impromptu sermon on Good Samaritan
 Time pressure manipulation:

You have plenty of time


You must go now
You’re late
 On the way there, they see man doubled over in pain
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Darley & Batson’s (1973) Results
Percentage who helped
40
30
20
10
70
60
50
0
Ahead of
Schedule
On Time Late
Note: Many participants actually stepped over the man needing help.
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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.
 Greater cost of living is associated with less helping.
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Helping in the U.S.A.
From "Helpfulness Index: How U.S. Cities Rank," The Boston Globe, July 7, 1994.
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Good Moods Lead to Helping:
Reasons
 Why does feeling good lead to doing good?

Desire to maintain one’s good mood.
 Positive expectations about helping.
 Positive thoughts.
 Positive thoughts and expectations about social activities.
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Good Moods Lead to Helping:
Limitations
 Why feeling good might not always lead to doing good?
 Costs of helping are high.
 Positive thoughts about other social activities that conflict with helping.
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Cunningham et al. (1980)
Percentage who helped next person
50
40
30
20
10
0
80
70
60
Believed Broke Camera No Broken Camera
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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.
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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.
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Helping and Role Models
 Social learning revisited: 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.
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Helping and Social Norms
 Norm of reciprocity
 Norm of equity
 Norm of social responsibility
 Concerns about justice or fairness
 Norm of self-interest
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Personal Influences
Who Is Likely to Give Help?
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An Altruistic Personality
 Empathy
 Internalized and advanced moral reasoning
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Interpersonal Influences
Whom do we help?
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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.
 Magic Johnson Effect
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When do we help stigmatized groups?
Attributions of Responsibility
 Beliefs about the needy person’s responsibility influences helping.
 AIDS as a result of blood transfusion vs. sexual behavior
 Effect particularly strong among those who believe in a just world.
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The Fit Between Giver and
Receiver: Similarity
 More likely to help those who are similar .
 May be a form of kinship selection.
 More likely to help ingroup members
 Intergroup biases in helping can be reduced if perceive selves as members of a common group.
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Emotions and Helping
 Pity and admiration increase helping
 Envy and contempt decrease helping
 Competence/Warmth
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Reactions to Help
 How do you think people react to receiving help?
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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.
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When Is Receiving Help Perceived as Threatening?
 Those with high self-esteem tend to react more negatively than those with low selfesteem.
 Being helped by a similar other may imply that recipient is inferior.
 Help from a significant other on an egorelevant task can threaten one’s self-esteem.
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Key Concepts on Exam 3
 Predictions of kinship selection
 Environmental Factors related to helping (e.g. population density, # of people present, ambiguity of need for helping)
 Individual Factors (e.g. mood, time pressure)
 Egoistic v. Altruistic
 Empathy/Altruistic Hypothesis
 Obstacles in Helping Behavior
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