Are we self-less or selfish when we help others?

•  Is True Altruism Possible?

–  Give benefit to another for its own sake

Social Psychology

•  Or are we Egoistical helpers?

–  Give benefit for some kind of self-benefit

Prosocial Behaviour
–  “Scratch an “altruist” and watch a ‘hypocrite’
bleed” (Gheslin,1974)

•  Does this question matter?

Forms of Prosocial Behaviour

• Helping behaviour … All forms of

•  Volunteering / Giving directions

interpersonal support Prosocial
•  Helping-episode schemata have 4 dimensions behaviour … action intended to


(Bierfhoff, 2002)
•  Help unconscious person / posting improve the situation of a person and
Helping
Prosocial
Altruism

•  Planned___Spontaneous
a letter for a stranger
the actor is not fulfilling a professional
Behaviour
Behaviour


role obligation

•  Serious____Non-Serious
•  Give money to charity / give
• Altruism…helper’s motivation is
•  Giving (indirect)____Doing (direct)
money to homeless person


empathic through taking the
•  Personal___Anonymous

•  Visit a friend in hospital / alerting a perspective of other in need of help.

stranger who your saw drop her
credit card

Bierhoff, 2001

Micro Prosocial Behaviour (Meso / intermediate Level)

Macro
Meso
Micro

•  When do we help?

•  Cost-reward analysis

•  Bystander intervention

Level Description Examples
Micro (a) Genetically based
predispositions to act
Evolutionary
Perspectives
•  Why do we help?

prosocially, (Kin, Non-kin, •  Learning

group selection)
(b) the evolutionary success of •  Role of physiological arousal and cognitive labeling

people who displayed such
predispositions •  Empathy

Meso Cost-reward
Helping at the interpersonal analysis; Emotion, •  Who helps?

level physiological
arousal; empathy.
Macro Individual prosocial behaviours Ingroup / outgroup
within or between a group or biases;
organizations Volunteering.
!
Penner, et al (2005). Prosocial Behaviour: Multilevel Perspectives.Annual Review of Psychology, 56(1), 365-392.

5. Provide help Obstacles to helping

When do we help? Bystander intervention
Five Steps to helping &

Obstacles Encountered
Audience inhibition

“I’ll look like a fool”

(Latene & Darley 1968)


Costs exceed rewards

“what if I do something wrong? They

•  Latene & Darley’s (1970) Cognitive Model of 4. Decide how to help

will sue me!”

Bystander Intervention describes bystander Lack of competence

“I’m not trained to handle
this, and who would I call?”

responses during emergencies.

3. Take responsibility
for providing help
Diffusion of responsibility
“Someone else must have called
•  help depends on the outcomes of a series of 5 2. Interpret event as
999”

an emergency
decisions - a negative response at any step
Ambiguity

“Is she sick or just drunk?”



Attacker~Victim relationship

“They will have to resolve their own
family quarrels”

means that the victim will not be helped.

1. Notice something


Pluralistic Ignorance

“No one else seems worried”

is happening

•  The Kitty Genovese case

Distraction

“Stop messing around, kids, we
are here to eat”



Self-concerns

Emergency “I’m late for a very important
appointment!”

7
8

 Bystander Apathy & Contributory factors on the decision to take responsibility
Hypothetical profile of helpfulness (Bierhoff, 2002)

(Latane & Darley, 1976)

Social influence: other Being with friends &

onlookers provide a
model for action - if they
are passive the situation
may seem less serious and
a state of pluralistic
ignorance arises
strangers inhibits helping:
(Latene & Rodin ,1969).
•  Helping behaviour decreases:
individual alone > with a friend
> with a stranger > with an
unresponsive stranger.

Pluralistic ignorance:
The assumption in the
Fear of
minds of witnesses that
Embarrassment and
others will take
Ridicule for interveneing

responsibility - with the
result that no one does

Diffusion of •  Higher intervention rates in emergencies as long as cost of helping is low

Responsibility

•  Passers-by (who do not witness the incident itself) help much less

•  Intervention more likely when alone than with a group

Social Exchange and self-benefits


Mini-max principal of social exchange (Homans,1961). 
Economic theory of social behaviour.

Maximizing / Minimizing /
gaining
avoiding

Rewards Punishments :
received:payment, shame, guilt,
praise, mood censure, empathy
enhancement etc
costs

Figure 13.3 The effects of reward and punishment on children’s willingness to behave generously

Source: based on Rushton & Teachman (1978)

 Arousal Cost-reward model 
(Dovidio,1991, Piliavin, 1981)
Cost-reward model or Bystander-Calculus model 
(Pliavin, 1981)

•  ACR: Example of a social-exchange theory

Cost of Helping

•  3 stages:
Low High

–  physiological arousal (witnessing another’s distress). ‘What Indirect

Intervention
am I feeling?’

Directly
High lower cost
–  Attribution of own physiological arousal to other’s distress Cost
Help
for not
helping
‘why am I feeling this way?’
of
Ignore
not
–  evaluation of cost of helping and chooses lowest cost action helping
Depends
Deny
on
which will relieve own distress ‘what can I do about it?’
Low
personal
Problem

norms
Leave

Bystanders video
Negative-state relief model [NSR] (Cialdini et al, 1987)

•  Bystander alone or with others?

•  What did they do?

–  Help directly

–  Help indirectly

–  Reinterpret the situation (deny or ignore problem)
•  The negative state comes from a variety of sources

–  Leave the scene/ escape?
–  Witnessing a person in distress->sadness or guilt.

•  Costs of not helping mentioned

–  Personal blame



–  Guilt
•  Witness wants to relieve sadness by seeking mood-enhancing
–  Disapproval of others
experiences.

•  Costs of helping mentioned

–  Time


–  Effort
•  Will not help when there are less costly ways to restore good
–  Danger



mood but …



•  Will help if it is the only way to escape the negative state.

 Comparisons & contrasts between NSR & ACR models
The role of empathy & Guilt

•  Similarities: Both stress Egoistic •  Examples of theories

–  Empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson)

Motivations in the helper



•  According to Batson (1995)

•  Selfish or selfless helping depends on how much
•  Differences between theories
empathy we feel

–  Attribution of arousal is necessary (ACR)
•  According to social-evolutionary theory this “selfish”
–  Source of negative state unimportant (NSR)
helping reflects evolved adaptation of emotion (van
–  Goal
Vugt & Lange, 2008)

•  (of helping) Tension reduction in self / benefactor (ACR)

•  (doing something) to improve mood of own self (NSR)

The emotional experience of

potential helper

•  Situational distress

–  Adjectives: alarmed, upset, distressed etc

•  Situational empathy

–  Based on adopting the perspective of the person(s) in need

–  Adjectives: sympathetic, moved, compassionate

•  usually experienced together (confounded)

•  Feeling empathy can also evoke specific thoughts of

–  social or self- disapproval: “what will others think if I don’t help when I
feel like this?”

–  Rewards and costs (social exchange theory, again)

•  Feelings of guilt for non-helping

•  Feelings of anger and contempt towards free-riders

Figure 13.2 Difference between women and men in empathising with a distressed teenager

Source: based on Batson et al. (1996)

 Batson’s empathy-altruism hypothesis

Macro
Meso
Micro

When we feel strong empathy

for another in need...

•  altruism is the motive evoked
Level Description Examples
•  action is motivated with the ultimate
goal of benefiting the other
Micro (a) Genetically based Evolutionary
predispositions to act Perspectives
prosocially, (Kin, Non-kin,
group selection)
(b) the evolutionary success of
people who displayed such
predispositions
When empathy for another is Meso Cost-reward
Helping at the interpersonal analysis; Emotion,
weak..
level physiological
•  action is motivated with the instrumental arousal; empathy.
goal of benefiting the self
Macro Individual prosocial behaviours Ingroup / outgroup
within or between a group or biases;
organizations Volunteering.
!
Penner, et al (2005). Prosocial Behaviour: Multilevel Perspectives.Annual Review of Psychology, 56(1), 365-392.

Prosocial Behaviour (Micro / smallest Level)

•  While on a cruise, the order is given to abandon ship but there are
•  Why do we help?
very few spaces left on the lifeboat…there is room for two: yourself
and one other.

•  Co-operation
•  With you are:

•  Kin
–  Your only child

–  Your cousin

•  Non-kin
–  Your great-aunt

–  A friend

•  Group Selection

–  A recent acquaintance

•  Who helps?
•  Whom do you select to help get into the lifeboat?

•  Would you select yourself if there is room only for one other in the
lifeboat?

 Co-operation: Prisoner’s Dilemma Game (PGD)

Prisoner’s dilemma game…who cleans the students’ house?

•  [1] Each individual is better off acting in

their immediate self-interest; yet,

•  [2] If all individuals act according to their
self-interest, then everyone will be worse
off.

•  PDG is a “Two-person, mixed-motive, no-
zero sum game”

•  A zero-sum game is one in which one Both Anne & John really hate cleaning.

The co-operative choice is to clean. The defecting choice is to not clean.

Mutual non-cleaning bring the least personal satisfaction and the worst joint outcome (on a
party’s gain is always the other’s loss.
scale of 0 to 10).

But can each trust the other not to defect?

Social Dilemmas

“Tragedy of the •  100 farmers grazed one cow
Commons” Hardin
(1969)

on the common land

•  If one farmer decides to graze
Commons Dilemma
Public Goods Dilemma

2 cows:

•  Replenishable resource •  Public goods are available to
–  His output doubles
dilemma.
all; they are provided for
–  Small cost of overgrazing borne •  Harvesting: food, fish, timber everyone and no one.

equally by all 100 farmers
etc.
•  Problem: Free Rider Effect

–  Exploiting a resource or gaining
Commons Dilemma: A •  If all farmers behave this way the benefit of it by avoiding
social dilemma in which •  Non-replenishable resources:
cooperation by all benefits
they would destroy the Oil, water, coal etc.

obligation of costs to maintain it
and by allowing others to incur
all, but competition by all common
those costs.

harms all.

•  Examples: Public Health, Road


Network, National Parks,
Schools.

 Socio-biological accounts of helping Inclusive Fitness 
(Hamilton,1964;1971)

behaviour

•  Helping behaviour and acts “Altruism” can be

•  Individual’s own fitness to place his/her
observed across species of animals dependent on co- genes in next generation + effects of his/ .5

her behaviour on fitness of kin members

operation for survival
P1
P1
P2
P2

•  Cost < Benefit x r

•  Genetic survival through Natural Selection
r = heritability coefficient
.5
.5
.5
.5

(siblings =.5; nephews & nieces=.25, cousin = .125)
Ch1
Ch2

•  Concepts:
Cost or Benefit to Fitness i.e. “reproductive r= .125

capacity”

–  Inclusive Fitness (Helping kin)

P= parent

–  Reciprocal Altruism / Reciprocal Exchange (Helping non-kin)
Ch=child

rCousin= .125

•  Whom do you select to help get into the lifeboat?

•  Heritability coefficients:

–  Your only child: r = 0.5

–  Your cousin: r = 0.125

–  Your great-aunt: r = 0.125

–  A friend: r = 0

–  A recent acquaintance: r = 0

Genetic relatedness declines very quickly beyond the
nuclear family

Figure 13.1 Helping kin who are either healthy or sick: life-or-death versus everyday situations

Source: Burnstein, Crandall & Kitayama (1994)

 Van Vugt & Lange (2008)

Reciprocal Altruism (Trivers, 1971)


Reciprocal Exchange (van Vugt)

•  Human prosocial tendencies have
•  95% of ancestral human history (approx. 2m years) is living in small
evolved to obtain benefits from
(sometimes) nomadic, hunter-gather tribes, which not only included kin but
reciprocal social exchanges in order
also genetic strangers

•  Adapted mechanism for prosocial behaviour towards genetic strangers;

to adapt to social dilemmas of
•  Theory: individuals sometimes act prosocially / altruistically in the
resource distribution.

expectation of a reciprocal act of kindness in the future.

Reciprocal Altrusim / Exchange…

Reciprocal Altrusim / Exchange…
•  But... Problems in getting repaid

–  Time delay before reciprocation

•  You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’; being repaid in kind

–  And…Cheating…(non-reciprocation), Free-riders

•  Greater payoffs using ‘tit-for-tat’ strategies in zero-sum games
–  Altruistic punishment = punishing non-coperators


(prisoner’s dilemma: respond in kind to their partner’s
•  However…there are status gains for helping non-kin


choice on the previous trial)

–  Been seen to offer help increases social status and reputation (in males could

signal greater desirability as a mating partner, Buss 2003)

–  you are more likely to be helped by others for being helpful

–  conspicuous displays of unreciprocated generosity enhances status

 Penner et al (1995): Two distinct factors of the prosocial
Group Selection Theory of Prosocial Behaviour (Sober & Wilson, 1999)

personality

Reflexive Self-
Prosocial thoughts and perception and self-
feelings
definition that as an
individual

Group B
Group A

More Altruists

Fewer Altruists
‘Other
one is Helpful

oriented’

Group B Fewer Quick to

Group A Dominates B experience & competent

people willing to empathy

over time; More people sacrifice themselves
willing to sacrifice
themselves for the group; for the group; decline
reproductive advantage.
and extinction
Correlates with
‘Agreeableness’
factor of Big5

Macro
Meso
Micro

Level Description Examples

Micro (a) Genetically based Evolutionary
predispositions to act Perspectives
prosocially, (Kin, Non-kin,
group selection) Empathy & Guilt

(b) the evolutionary success of
people who displayed such
predispositions Greater empathy ‘causes’ greater ‘self-other overlap’ Cialdini et al (1997)

Meso Cost-reward

Helping at the interpersonal analysis; Emotion, Greater self-other overlap in our ‘ingroup’ identities than with outgroups (Tajfel and Turner, 1986)

level physiological

arousal; empathy. More prosocial bias to members of our ingroups.

Macro Individual prosocial behaviours Ingroup / outgroup Sharing a ‘common group identity’ channels the effects empathy

within or between a group or biases;


organizations Volunteering.
! More prosocial behaviour to ingroup and outgroup members when it can enhance a

Penner, et al (2005). Prosocial Behaviour: Multilevel Perspectives.Annual Review of Psychology, 56(1), 365-392.
Core stereotype associated with the social identity

 Helping and gender roles 
(Eagly & Crowley, 1986)

•  Female gender role
•  Male gender role

–  “Communion”
–  “Agency”

•  Caring & nurturing

•  Independent

•  Emotionally expressive

•  Assertive

•  Responsive to others

•  Alters the costs of helping and not •  Heroic helping:

helping of nurturant forms of –  Taking risks with well-being to
behaviour:
help others

–  Personal favours
•  Chivalrous helping

–  Emotional support
–  Protect others less able and
–  Informal counseling
powerful

•  “visiting a friend who needs

Effect of population level on willingness to help a stranger

Figure 13.6
Source: based on data from Amato (1983)
psychological support” (Otten et
al, 1988)

Long-term sustained pro-social behaviour  Long-term sustained pro-social behaviour 

•  Volunteering…psychological vs. sociological

More likely in perspectives

persons who identify
with an organized

More likely in religion

higher income •  Omoto & Snyder (1995): long-term volunteering
and more serves self-oriented functions

educated
people;
Volunteering

•  personal development,
understanding, status + self-esteem
rather than value-expressive functions
(altruistic & humanitarian concerns).

 Long-term sustained pro-social behaviour 


Summary…

•  Service learning University (e.g. placements)…

•  Mixed evidence that it has any effect on personal •  Major explanations for helping behaviour

efficacy, self-esteem and confidence.
–  Social-evolutionary theories – sociality and genetics;

–  Standard social psychology: Self-interest;

–  Theories stress different levels of explanation for the same thing;


–  (Misunderstanding) evolution: Selfish genes does not automatically
•  More consistent evidence that adolescent mean selfish behaviour.

volunteering reduces anti-social behaviour and

deliquency.

•  Volunteering improves mental health and well-being in

retired adults and the elderly.

Conceptual relationships 

(Dovidio & Penner, 2001)
Macro
Meso
Micro

Form of

helping
Level Description Examples
(direct, indirect)

Micro (a) Genetically based Evolutionary
predispositions to act Perspectives
Goal / Motives
prosocially, (Kin, Non-kin,
group selection)
(egoistic, altruistic)
(b) the evolutionary success of
people who displayed such
Situational/Social/Person factors

predispositions
(costs, norms etc)

Meso Cost-reward
Helping at the interpersonal analysis; Emotion,
Cognitive /Affective processes
level physiological
arousal; empathy.
(Socialization, moral reasoning etc)

Macro Individual prosocial behaviours Ingroup / outgroup
within or between a group or biases;
Evolutionary Processes
organizations Volunteering.
(inclusive fitness/reciprocal behaviour
!
Penner, et al (2005). Prosocial Behaviour: Multilevel Perspectives.Annual Review of Psychology, 56(1), 365-392.