Ch 12 Helping

Why Do We Help?

• Without asking anything in return, people offer directions, donate money, give blood, volunteer time.
• Altruism
• a motive to increase another’s welfare without conscious regard for one’s own self-interests.

Social Exchange

• Social-exchange theory
• the theory that human interactions are transactions that aim to maximize one’s rewards and minimize one’s costs.
• It does not contend that we consciously monitor costs and rewards, only that such considerations predict our behavior.
• Rewards that motivate helping may be external.
• Rewards may also be internal—often focused on increasing positive emotions.
• Do-good/feel-good effect—helping boosts self-worth.
• Benefits of helping also include reducing or avoiding negative emotions.

• Emotions like anger and grief tend not to produce compassion.
• Happy people are also helpful.In a good mood, people are more likely to have positive thoughts and commit themselves to positive actions.

Alice Isen, Margaret Clark, and Mark Schwartz (1976) had an accomplice call people who had received a free sample of stationery 0 to 20 minutes earlier. The accomplice said she had used her last dime to dial this (supposedly wrong) number and asked each person to relay a message by phone. As the figure shows, the individuals’ willingness to relay the phone message rose during the 5 minutes afterward. Then, as the good mood wore off, helpfulness dropped. Of control subjects who did not receive a gift, only 10% helped.

Percentage of Those Willing to Relay a Phone Message 0 to 20 Minutes After Receiving a Free Sample

Source: Data from Isen et al., 1976.

Social Norms

• Researchers have identified two social norms that motivate altruism.
• Reciprocity norm
• an expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them.

• This helps define the social capital—the mutual support and cooperation enabled by a social network—that keeps a community healthy.
• Social-responsibility norm
• an expectation that people will help those needing help.

https://www.summitkids.com/blog/encouraging-helping-behaviors-in-young-children/

People were more willing to pledge to an experimental accomplice’s charity if the accomplice had done a small favor for them earlier, especially when their reciprocation was made known to the accomplice.

Private and Public Reciprocation of a Favor

Evolutionary Psychology

• Humans exhibit multiple mechanisms for overcoming selfishness.
• Kin selection
• the idea that evolution has selected altruism toward one’s close relatives to enhance the survival of mutually shared genes.
• Reciprocity, which works best in small, isolated groups.
• Group selection, operating at both individual and group levels: sacrificing to support “us,” sometimes against “them.”

Comparing Theories of Altruism

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Genuine Altruism and Empathy

• Our willingness to help is influenced by both self-serving and selfless considerations
• When we feel empathy, we focus not so much on our own distress as on the sufferer.
• Empathy
• the vicarious experience of another’s feelings—putting oneself in another’s shoes.
• When empathy is aroused, people may help even when they believe no one will know about their helping.

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Viewing another’s distress can evoke a mixture of self-focused distress and other-focused empathy. Researchers agree that distress triggers egoistic motives. But they debate whether empathy can trigger a pure altruistic motive.

Egoistic and Altruistic Routes to Helping

Source: Adapted from Batson et al., 1987.

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When Will We Help?

• Sometimes someone has been in dire need, and bystanders have failed to act.
• Social psychologists curious and concerned about bystanders’ inaction have undertaken numerous experiments.

• When will people help in an emergency?
• Who is likely to help in non-emergences—by such deeds as giving money, donating blood, or contributing time?

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Number of Bystanders

• As the number of bystanders increases, any given bystander is less likely to:
• Notice an incident.
• Interpret the incident as a problem or an emergency.
• Assume responsibility for taking action.
• Bystander effect
• the finding that a person is less likely to provide help when there are other bystanders.
• However we do tend to help with someone else does so.
• Time pressures affect whether people help.
• When hurried, preoccupied, and rushing, people often do not take time to help.
• We are more empathetic and helpful toward those who are similar to us.
• Where racial similarity is concerned, reactions may be affected by the desire to not appear prejudiced.

https://sites.google.com/site/hookappsychology1b/group-behaviors/bystander-effect

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Lisa DeBruine (2002) morphed participants’ faces (left) with strangers’ faces (right) to make composite center faces—toward whom the participants were more generous than toward the stranger.

Similarity Breeds Cooperation

Courtesy of Lisa DeBruine

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Only one path up the tree leads to helping. At each fork of the path, the presence of other bystanders may divert a person down a branch toward not helping.

Latané and Darley’s Decision Tree

Source: Adapted from Darley & Latané, 1968

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Smoke pouring into the testing room was much more likely to be reported by individuals working alone than by three-person groups.

The Smoke-Filled Room Experiment

Source: Data from Darley & Latané, 1968.

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Revisiting Research Ethics

• Bystander experiments raise an ethical issue.
• Note it is not possible to get “informed consent,” because doing so would destroy the experiment’s cover.
• Researchers were always careful to debrief participants.
• Social psychologists have a twofold ethical obligation:
• Protect the participants.
• Enhance human welfare by discovering influences upon human behavior—alerting us to unwanted influences and showing us how we might exert positive influences.

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Gender

• Women offer to help males and females equally, whereas men provide more help to females.
• Perhaps not surprisingly, men more frequently help attractive than unattractive women.
• Women receive more offers of help in certain situations and also seek more help.
• They more often welcome help from friends.
• When faced with potentially dangerous situations, men help more often.

• In safer situations, women are slightly more likely to help.
• Women are more likely to describe themselves as helpful.
• Faced with a friend’s problem, women respond with greater empathy and spend more time helping.
• Women tend to be more generous.

http://chintanjain.com/journey/how-helping-others-gives-me-back.php

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Religious Faith

• Although often associated with opposition to government assistance, such as support for the poor, religiosity promotes prosocial values.
• Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all teach compassion and charity.
• Highly religious people report markedly higher than average rates of charitable giving, volunteerism, and helping a stranger.
• The prosocial effects of religiosity appear to be strongest in countries where religious behavior is a matter of personal choice.

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Worldwide, reported Gallup researchers Brett Pelham and Steve Crabtree (2008), highly religious people are—despite averaging lower incomes—more likely to report having given away money in the last month and also to report having volunteered and helped a stranger. Highly religious people said religion is important in their daily life and attended a service in the last week. Less religious are all others.

Helping and Religious Engagement

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How Can We Increase Helping?

• One way to promote altruism is to reverse those factors that inhibit it.
• Awaken people’s guilt and concern for their self-image.
• Socialize altruism.

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Increase Helping: Reduce Ambiguity, and Increase Responsibility

• Helping should increase if we prompt people to interpret an incident correctly and assume responsibility.
• Personal appeals are much more effective.
• Verbal and nonverbal appeals.

• Reducing anonymity.
• Anticipation of interaction.

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Increasing Helping: Guilt and Concern for Self-Image

People who feel guilty will act to reduce guilt and restore their self-worth.

• Guilt-inducing messages on signs.
• Asking for contributions so small that people can’t say no.

Labeling people as helpful can also strengthen a helpful self-image and influence their willingness to contribute.

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Increasing Helping: Socializing Altruism

• Morally inclusive people are more likely to help others.
• Moral exclusion
• regarding others as outside of one’s circle of moral concern.
• Moral inclusion
• regarding others as within one’s circle of moral concern.
• The first step in socializing altruism is to counter people’s natural ingroup bias.
• When helping is modeled by others, we become more likely to offer assistance ourselves
• .Real-life modeling.
• Media modeling.
• Altruism is learned by doing.
• Helpful actions promote the self-perception that one is caring and helpful, promoting further helping.
• Finally, learning about altruism can prepare people to perceive and respond to others’ needs.

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What are other ways you can think of to increase helping?

Practical Ways to Increase Helping

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