BS Psychology (Semester-5th)

Mahnoor Nazier (-009)

Faiza Akhter (-012)
External and internal influences on
Helping behavior
 Many factors contribute to whether or not a person
decides to help a stranger in need.
 Some of these factors may be situational, like they
didn't notice the incident because they were in a hurry
or they believe the victim is responsible for their
current state.
 Other factors include the mood a person is in and their
personality traits.
 A lot of these factors coincide with each other and
therefore more than one may be present while
deciding whether an individual helps another.
 Internal Factors
In prosocial behavior when referring to internal
factors, we are looking into personality traits
that either enhance or inhibit helping.
While looking into why or why not people help
based on inner attributes, altruism and ego
centrism often come up.
People either help for the benefit of themselves,
egocentrism or solely for the benefit of others,
known as altruism.
External Factors
External factors are based off of situations
therefore behavior depends on the
environment around the individual.
In terms of helping behaviors, the situation
one is in could definitely influence whether
they engage in helpful behaviors or not.
 Helping People We Like
It is obvious that most people are likely to help
family members and friends. But the situation is less
clear-cut when strangers are involved.
We are more likely to help people who are similar to
ourselves than people who are dissimilar.
In fact, any characteristic that affects attraction also
increases the probability of a prosocial response
Physically attractive victims often receive more help
than unattractive ones.
 Helping Those Who Are Not Responsible for
Their Problem

We can have example of a man lying down on the

road unconsciously, would you help him? There is an
additional consideration that why the man lying there?
If his clothing is stained and torn and an empty
alcohol bottle is by his side. You might well decide
that he is a hopeless drunk who passed out on road.
In contrast, if he is wearing an expensive suit and has
a nasty cut on his forehead? These cues might lead
you to decide that this was a man who had been
brutally mugged on his way to work.
 Based on your attributions about the reasons for a man
lying unconscious, you would be less likely to help
victim with the alcohol bottle than the one with the cut
on his head .
• In general, we are less likely to act if we believe that the
victim is to blame.
 The man in the business suit did not choose to be
attacked, so we are more inclined to help him.
 Exposure to Prosocial Models Increases
Prosocial Behavior

You encounter representatives of a charity collecting

money for their cause. Do you decide to help by making
a contribution? An important factor in this decision is
whether you observe someone else make a donation.
Even the presence of bills and coins encourage you to
respond.
Emotions and Prosocial Behavior
 Emotional states of determined by both
internal and external factors.
 Emotions are often divided into two major
categories positive and negative.
 Positive and negative emotional states can
either enhance or inhibit prosocial
behaviour,depending on specific factors in
the situation and on the nature of the
required assisstance.
Positive emotions and prosocial
behavior
 Humans are exceptionally prosocial, commonly
incurring personal costs to give their time, money,
and skill for the benefit of others – even those
they do not know and are not related to. This
willingness to engage in costly prosocial behavior
emerges early in life.
 Affect and emotion are valuable sources of
information that allow humans to rapidly evaluate
the environment and adaptively guide their
subsequent action.
 Positive emotions and negative mood can lead
people to stay away from helping others.
 Negative emotions and prosocial
behavior
• A negative mood or emotion is most likely to
increase prosocial behavior if negative feelings
are not too intense.
• People in a bad mood may actually like to help
others, it can help them to relief their stress as
well as can be helpful to accomplish their goals.
Empathy
 Empathy is an important foundation for helping
 Empathy involves the ability to emotionally
understand what another person is experiencing.
 Empathy leads to helping behavior, which benefits
social relationships. We are naturally social
creatures. Things that aid in our relationships with
other people benefits us as well.
 When people experience empathy, they are more
likely to engage in prosocial behaviors that benefit
other people. Things such as altruism and heroism
are also connected to feeling empathy for others.
How does Empathy Develop?
 Empathy develops from self awareness.
As five- and six-year-olds become more
aware of their own emotions, they begin
to recognize them in others, and their
emotional vocabulary expands.
 In his book “The Moral Intelligence of
Children” Robert Coles (1997)
emphasizes the importance of mothers and
fathers in shaping such behavior.
 Empathy is most likely to develop if the
child’s mother is a warm person, and if the
family is able to discuss emotions in a
supportive atmosphere.
 Either because of genetic differences or
because of different socialization
experiences, women express higher levels
of empathy than do men.
Social Exclusion
 Social exclusion refers to keeping an individual or
group out of social situations. It typically occurs in the
context that the individual or group is believed to
possess undesirable characteristics.
 Social exclusion is a powerful and universal social tool.
Those who employ it receive some immediate benefits.
For those on which it is used, it can sometimes lead
them to correct their behaviors so that they can be re-
included, but often, it is painful and can lead to
depression and, in some cases, aggression. Researchers
are actively investigating under what conditions each of
these paths are taken, and when social exclusion
becomes harmful to the larger group, as well.
 We began with the assumptions that exclusion
would motivate people to seek new friends and
that increasing prosocial behavior would be one
way to make those new friends. Other work has
confirmed that excluded people do want new
friends.
 The present work shows, however, that prosocial
behavior is not a strategy that rejected people use
to find friends. The reduced ability to empathize
with others undercuts the inclination to provide
help, and reduced trust may also hamper any
willingness to make the first move.
Personality and Helping
 In addition to empathy, several other aspects of
personality are related to prosocial behavior and
this fact has led some investigators to propose that
a combination of relevant factors constitutes what
has been designated as the altruistic personality.
 Altruistic Personality- A cluster of traits that
predisposes individuals to behave in a prosocial
manner.
 An altruistic person is high on five dimensions
that are characteristics of people who engage in
prosocial behavior in an emergency situation and
in many other contexts, too:
1. Empathy
 I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining
how things look from their perspective
2. Belief in a just world
 Helping those in need is a right thing to do and to the
expectation that the person who helps will actually benefit
from doing a good deed.
3. Social responsibility
 No matter what a person has done to us, there is no excuse for
taking advantage of them
4. Internal locus of control
 I have helped carry a stranger’s belongings (e.g., books,
parcels,etc)
5. Low egocentrism
 People do not tend to be self-absorbed and competitive.
Long-Term Commitment to Prosocial
Acts
 Volunteering—commit time and effort over
weeks, months, or longer. 87% of people 45 and
up volunteered time/money in 2003.
 Five steps in responding to emergency apply
 Motivated by importance of a given need. Whites
give most to help animals, environment and
emergency personnel. African Americans assist
the homeless, minority rights groups and religious
institutions.
Motivation and Morality
• Three motives involved when a person is
faced with a moral dilemma to help/not
help someone
– Self-interest: motivated to engage in whatever
behavior provides greatest satisfaction
– Moral Integrity: motivated to be moral and engage
in moral behavior
– Moral Hypocrisy: motivated to appear moral while
doing one’s best to avoid the costs of actually being
moral