Transcript Prosocial Behavior

Prosocial Behavior
& Emergency Response
Psychology
Ch. 11
The Case that Started it All
 Kitty Genovese
 In the early 1960’s, in Queens, she was
attacked and killed in the alley of an apartment
complex

She was raped and murdered, all the while
screaming for help
 The attack lasted for 45min and was
witnessed by 38 residents

NOT ONE EVEN CALLED 911
 What happened in the minds of the 38
bystanders that stopped ALL of them from
helping her? What makes others give their
lives for strangers?
Prosocial Behavior
 Any act performed with the goal of
benefiting another person
 Jumping
in a lake to save a drowning child,
calling in a domestic, and less heroic acts
like teaching, donating $$, etc.
 Particularly interested in prosocial
behavior motivated by altruism: the
desire to help another person even if it
involves a cost to the helper
 Acting
with no thought as to what you will
get in return: even willing to sacrifice (incur
a cost)
Back to Evolutionary Genetics
 Darwin’s Theory of Evolution: natural
selection favors genes that promote the
survival of the individual
 Ultimate
Goal: Get as many of our genes as
possible into the next generation

Translation: Protect your relatives!!!! Evolutionary
Psychology: attempt to explain social behavior in
terms of genetic factors that evolved over time
according to natural selection
 But
how does it explain helping strangers?
Animal Models
 Alloparenting
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Behavior (e.g.
dolphins)
Hive protection (e.g.
bees)
Protection/aide
when ill (e.g.
cetaceans)
Letting elderly eat
first (e.g. wild dogs)
Alarm calls (e.g.
vervet monkeys)
Blood is thicker than water
 Kin Selection: behaviors that help a
genetic relative are favored by natural
selection
 Burnstein,
Crandall, & Kitayama (1994)
Choice of who to help is influenced by the
“biological importance” of the outcome
 People report a higher likelihood of helping a
relative over a non-relative in a life-threatening
situation (would help equally if not lifethreatening)

 Sime
(1983)
Interviewed fire survivors
 When they became aware of the fire, they were
more likely to search for family members than
even close friends

What else plays a role?
 Reciprocity Norm: expectation that helping
others increases the likelihood that they help
us in the future
You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours
 Social cooperation increases survival

 Learning of Social Norms: adaptive for us to
learn social norms from other members of the
society


Best learners of the norms have survival advantage
We’re programmed to learn norms: one of those
norms is altruism
All ties back to Empathy
 Ability to put oneself “in the shoes” of
another person and to experience
events and emotions the way that
person experiences them
 Altruism-Empathy Hypothesis: when we
feel empathy for another, we attempt to
help that person purely for altruistic
reasons, regardless of what we stand to
gain
 But motives are tricky: selfishness
raises its head in subtle ways
Social Exchange Theory
 Recall, it argues that much of what we do
stems from the desire to maximize rewards
and minimize costs

At the implicit level, we keep track of the rewards
& costs in relationships
 Helping also relieves distress in the bystander
 By helping, we gain rewards like social approval
and increased feelings of self-worth
 Flip the coin: helping decreases when the
costs are high


In situations of physical danger, pain,
embarrassment or taking too much time
Perhaps true altruism really does not exist
Individual Differences
 Not everyone is
selfless…not
everyone is selfish!
 Altruistic Personality:
aspects of a person’s
design that leads
them to help others in
a wide variety of
situations


Clearly A component
in helping but not the
ONLY component
Several other factors
Hollywood Hero or Shoulder to
Cry On?
 Research points to gender differences in
prosocial helping behavior
 Eagly
& Crowley (1986)
Men help in more chivalrous, heroic and shortterm ways
 Women help in more nurturing, long-term roles

– Women’s roles generally involved less danger but
more commitment (e.g. volunteering)

REMEMBER! Individual differences still exist
 McGuire
(1994)
Men reported helping strangers more than
women did
 Women reported helping friend more than men
did
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Situational Factors
 Where are others more
likely to help you, in a
small town or a big city?

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Small town…but why?
Amato (1983)
 Small towns, 50%
helped: big cities, 15%
 Urban Overload
Hypothesis: people living
in cities are constantly
bombarded with stimuli
and tune much of it out to
avoid over-stimulation

Density more correlated
with helping than
population size is
Other Individual Components
 Cultural differences: more likely to help
someone in your “in-group” than in an “outgroup”
 Mood

Feel Good? Do Good.

Isen & Levin (1972)
– 84% of those who found dime helped: only 4% of those
who did not find dime helped

Good moods increase helping for 3 reasons
– Makes us “look on the bright side”
– Helping prolongs our good mood
– Increases self attention

Feel Bad? Do good.
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Especially if you feel guilty (good deeds cancel out bad)
Harris, Benson & Hall (1975)
Negative State Hypothesis: help people to alleviate our
own sadness & distress
The Bystander Effect
 The greater the number of people who
witness an emergency, the less likely
anyone is to help
 Kitty
Genovese: 38 witnesses, NO HELP
 Latané & Darley (1970)
Staged a seizure (with calls for help and choking
sounds) in earshot of subject and a varying
number of confederates
 If subject thought they were the only person to
hear call for help, 85% helped w/in 60sec (100%
by 2.5min)
 If they thought one other person also heard, only
62% helped within 60sec: 4 other bystanders?
31% within 60sec and only 62% within 6min!!
 Helping never reached 100% if there were 2+

“When there is a fire, 99% of
people run out. Stop and think
for a moment about that 1% that
runs in!”
 At one time or another, all of us will face
an emergency in our lives
 What is KEY is how we handle it
 No
one knows how they will respond in an
emergency until they are faced with one
 Normally rational people can lose it in a
crisis and vice versa
Why did no one help???
1.
Failure to Notice the Emergency

May be in too much of a hurry or inattentive

2.
Failure to Diagnose the Emergency

Sometimes difficult to differentiate between an
emergency and a non-emergency
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3.
Darley & Batson (1973)
Pluralistic Ignorance: phenomenon where bystanders
assume nothing is wrong in an emergency because no
one else looks concerned
Latané & Darley (1970) smoke study
Schemas return yet once again!
Failure to Assume Responsibility for Aid

We have to decide if it is our responsibility to act
or someone else’s

Diffusion of Responsibility: phenomenon whereby each
bystander’s sense of responsibility to help decreases as
the number of witnesses increases
Why did no one help???
4. Did not know HOW to help

Lack the knowledge or the ability to
render aid (e.g. CPR, etc.)
 WHEN IN DOUBT, CALL 911!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5. Failed to implement a decision

Even if you know precisely what to do,
may be reasons for you NOT to do so
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Fear of embarrassment, lawsuits, “getting
involved”, or physical danger
Bottom line? If you need help, you
want JUST ONE other person with you
How can we increase helping?
 Increase level of personal responsibility
 If you need help in a crowd, don’t yell “help
me!”…POINT ONE PERSON OUT and say “YOU!
Go call 911 now and then COME BACK.” or
“YOU!! Come put pressure on this wound.” Give
clear, forceful commands, not requests
 If you’re being attacked or raped, yell “FIRE!” not
“RAPE!” to increase odds of being helped
 Education works!
 Savitsky, 1998: Coats, 1998
 Beaman, Barnes, Klentz & McQuirk (1978)
 Return to intrinsic motivation: don’t “pay” people
to help, get them to help from within themselves
 Stand up for our heroes and helpers: make them
the icons and role models