Altruism

Social rewards: Praise, rewards, humour, gratitude. Do prosocial things for positive attention. Greater power and status given to those acting altruistically. Helping someone to get something good out of it. Valuable to have these people in your groups.

Personal distress: Other people suffering can make you feel upset. Same neural circuits activate when you see others in pain. Causes anxiousness, worry and nausea. Can act prosocially to elimintae personal distress and make yourself feel better (motivation to help self not others). Altruistic = Empathic concern. Can be difficult to tell motives apart.

• Empathic concern: May genuinely identify with others and want to help (prosocial behaviour)
• Motives: 1. Social rewards   2. Personal distress    3. Empathic concern
• Experiment: Female ppt + confederate sat in separate cubicles. Told to form impression of confederate. Wrote 2 'true' notes about self, re[prted feeling lonely + needing a friend. Manipulations: 1. Empathy - ppt either read notes objectively or imagined how they felt.  2. Soial evaluation - notes sealed or open so ppt thinks experimenter saw them or not

Results: High empathy condition - volunteered more hours, even when envelope was sealed. Shows altruism motivated by real empathy even if they won't get any social rewards.

Like to participate in a long-term relationship study with the other person? How many hours? Participating = being a friend to a lonely participant. Results: Think experimenter saw note, offering to help gives social rewards. Think experimenter doesn't know about note, no social rewards.

Darley & Latane, 1968: Diffusion of responsibility. Ppts talk with 1, 2 or 5 people. confederate pretends to have a seizure. Results 1 on 1 - 85% help, 3 person - 62% help. 6 people - 31% help. More people who witness a person in trouble, lower probability someone will help.

• Volunteering: How often did they give/receive help? Helping others more associated with lower chance of eath, controlling for initial health. Receiving more help - not associated with longevity
• Presence of others: Bystander intervention e.g. Kitty Genovese stabbed infront of 38 people, died

Situational determinants: 1. Presence of others   2. Ambiguous situations   3. Being busy   4. Victim characteristics

Experiment 2: Ppts told watch students receive shocks after giving wrong answers in experiment. Watch receive first 2 shocks, researcher measured how much ppt's reported distress and empathy. Given option to take student's place if they want to stop suffering. Half told they could leave after 2 shocks (easy stress relief), leave after all shocks (no distress relief). More empathy felt - likely to trade places. Conclusion - motivation to relieve personal distress

Reasons for bystander effect: 1. Diffusion of responsibility - observing an emergency, people assume others will help. 2. Pluralistic influence - in emergency, if no one else will help, seems fine

Latane & Darley, 1968: Filled questionnaires alone, with 2 others or 2 confederates. Saw smoke as non-threatening due to informational influence and pluralistic influence.

Gender = Women more likely to get helped. More attractive = more help. More similar = more likely to get helped. Less cost to helper = more likely to help. Ask for help = more likely to get help 

• Cultural determinants: Rural areas = more empathic concern than urban. More likely to help in rural areas. Stronger effect in smaller community.
• Current context predicts helping: 1. Stimulus overload -> Cities are busy, can't pay attention  2. Diversity -> more likely to help similar others, more diversity   3. Diffusion of responsibility -> More people around, more likely to happen

Social class - Combination of wealth, education and job prestige. Lower class - tend to be empathic, better able to judge emotions. Give higher % to charity on average. Lower class = more helpful and altruistic due to having fewer resources and stronger relationships

• Donating: Donating money makes people feel happier than spending money on themselves.
• Religion can also cause people to be more altruistic.
• Situation construal = Construe situation as cooperative. May act more cooperatively. Construe situation as competitive, may act more competively.
• Evolution and altruism: Hard to understand why we help. Helping others is costly - uses resources we could use for ourselves. Goes against natural selection.

2 evolutionary theories: 1. Kin selection   2. Reciprocity

• Kin selection - Tendency for natural selection to favour behaviours which increase chances of survival of genetic relatives. More likely to help people who share same genes.
• Reciprocal altruism - tendency to help others with expectation that they are likely to help us back. Reduces likelihood of dangerous conflict, helps overcome problems, allows alliances and prevents too much domination.

Door-in-the-face: Cooperation: Rely on each other. Cooperation determinants: a. Situation construal  b. Partner construal   c. Culture. Partner construal = reputation, beliefs, evaluations and impressions people hold about others in social network.

Prisoner's dilemma game: Two men arrested for committing crime. Must decide whether to: 1. Stick to story and avoid admitting to crime. 2. Sell out friend for lighter personal sentence.    a. Stay quiet = short sentence.  b. Confess =  medium sentence   c. Only one confesses = confesses goes free, stays quiet gets long sentence. Decision making under uncertainty.