Prosocial Behavior: Helping

Others
Prosocial behavior: voluntary behavior
that is carried out to benefit other
person.
WHY DO WE HELP?
 Basic forms of helping
1. Egoistic helping: the ultimate goal of the
helper is to increase his or her own welfare.
2. Altruistic helping: the ultimate goal of the
helper is to increase another’s welfare
without expecting anything in return.
Batson et al., 2002a
 Helping is consistent with
evolutionary theory
• Kin Selection: people will exhibit preferences
for helping blood relatives because this will
increase the odds that their genes will be
transmitted to subsequent generations
(Madsen et al., 2007; Stewart-Williams, 2007).
• Reciprocal Helping: people expect that anyone
helping another will have that favor returned
at some future time(reciprocal altruism)
Social norms that promote helping
• Reciprocity norm: help those who help you
• Social responsibility norm: help those in need
or those dependent on you
• Social justice norm: help only we believe that
others deserve our assistance
 Gender differences in helping
• Men are more likely to help strangers, when
there is an audience, in dangerous situation
and when the person in need is female.
• Women are more likely to provide long-term
help, social and emotional support to others
especially friend or caring for children.
• These gender differences increase from
childhood to adulthood
 Personality differences in helping
• Empathy: the feeling of compassion and
tenderness you feel when viewing a victim’s
plight.
• Personal distress: an unpleasant state of arousal
in which you become preoccupied with your own
anxiety when seeing others in distress.
Individual distress in empathy and personal distress
have opposite effects on helping responses.
 Learning to be a helper
• Observational learning in children
• Prosocial modeling in adults
• The lasting consequences of modeling
• Rewarding prosocial behavior
WHEN DO WE HELP?
 Bystander intervention model
• A theory that whether bystanders intervene in
an emergency is a function of a five step
decision making process.
A five step decision process
(Latané and Darley, 1970)
 Audience inhibition effect
(Latanѐ and Darley, 1968)
People are inhibited from helping for fear that
other bystanders will evaluate them negatively if
they intervene and the situation is not an
emergency.
 Diffusion of responsibility
(Latanѐ and Darley, 1968)
• Diffusion of responsibility: the belief that the
presence of other people in a situation makes
one less personally responsible for events that
occur in that situation.
• Diffusion of responsibility increases with the
number of bystander.
 Bystander intervention is also shaped by
arousal: cost – reward model
(Gaertner & Dovidio, 1977)
• Arousal: cost reward model
A theory that helping or not helping is a function
of emotional arousal and analysis of the costs
and rewards of helping.
 Positive and negative moods can either increase or decrease
helping
(p. 493)

• Good moods and generosity: good moods lead to more

prosocial behavior. When we are in positive mood, we
perceived other people as nice, honest, and decent and
thus deserving our help.
• Bad moods and seeking relief: helping others often
makes us feel good about ourselves, when feeling bad we
may help as a way of escaping our mood.
Negative state relief model: a theory suggesting that for
those in a bad mood, helping others may be a way to lift
their own spirits if they perceived benefits for helping are
high and the costs are low.
 Empathy altruism hypothesis
(Batson et al., 1981)
A theory proposing that experiencing empathy for
someone in need produces an altruistic motive for
helping.
- Bystanders who experience empathy will help to
provide comfort for victims
- Bystanders who experience personal distress will help
victims only to reduce their own negative arousal state.
Because empathy motivates helping, people sometimes
actively avoid experiencing empathy when the cost of
helping is high.
WHOM DO WE HELP?
• We tend to help similar others
• We also are most likely to help deserving
others
One unfortunate consequence of believing in a
just world is that we tend to blame people for
their misfortunes.
Just world belief: a belief that the world is a fair
and equitable place, with people getting what
they deserve in life
 Hidden costs for help recipients
• Being unable to reciprocate help can create
stress
• Receiving help can threaten self esteem