Prosocial behaviour

Prosocial behaviour: actions that help others with no immediate benefit to the helper

Helping: acting on behalf of others in need or emergency

Altruism: helping someone when there's no expectation of a reward, selfless helping. It is not predicated upon social relationships

Empathy: emotional reactions oriented towards other people - understanding emotions of others; co-experiencing the same emotions

Compassion: sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. Compassion motivates people to go out of their way to help the physical, mental, or emotional pains of another and themselves

Bystander effect: social psychological phenomenon in which people are less likely to offer help to a victim when there are other people present. The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. Research on the bystander effect was kickstarted by John M Darley and Bibb Latané after the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964.

Kitty Genovese was slowly murdered outside her apartment building. She screamed for help many times, and although neighbours heard her and one claimed to have actually caught a glimpse of the unfolding murder, they did nothing and she was killed.

Reasons for the bystander effect include: onlookers seeing others are not helping, onlookers believe somebody else will know better how to help, and that onlookers feel uncertain about helping while others are watching

People decide whether or not to offer assistance based on a variety of perceptions and evaluations

5 crucial steps:

• noticing, or failing to notice, that something unusual is happening. Distracted or in a hurry results in no intervention
• correctly interpreting an event as an emergency
• deciding that it's your responsibility to help. Diffusion of responsibility results in no intervention
• deciding that you have the knowledge or skills to help. Lack of knowledge or lack of competence results in no intervention
• making the final decision to help. If there is a danger to self, legal concerns, or embarrassment (costs of helping are too high) it is likely no help will be given

Noticing an event (stimuli overload): consistent research finding - people more likely to help in rural setting than urban. When a man fell, revealing serious injury, half the passerbys in small towns (vs 15% in large cities) stopped to help. Milgram (1970) explains this through the urban overload hypothesis. People in cities are constantly bombarded with stimulation so they keep to themselves to avoid being overwhelmed.

Noticing an event (time): "Good samaritan study" - Darley & Batson (1973). Seminary students told to rush or take time across campus grounds. 63% of those not in a hurry vs. 10% in a hurry helped a groaning stranger as they passed. Time pressure particularly affected those who believed their research participation was of vital importance.

Interpreting the event as an emergency (pluralistic ignorance): Darley & Latane (1968) - Columbia University students were invited to share their views about problems of urban life. They were instructed to first report to a waiting room where they'd fill out some forms before being interviewed. As they filled out forms, smoke began to enter the room through a small vent in the wall. In the 1st condition when students were alone, they investigated the smoke more closely then went to tell someone about it. In the 2nd condition, when 2 or 3 confederates were in the room having no reaction to the smoke, only 1 of the 10 participants reported the smoke

Taking responsibility: people may look to others in authority positions or helping professions. Diffusion of responsibility: bystanders to an emergency share responsibility. The more bystanders, the less any one of them feels responsible to act. Being given responsibility increases helping

Knowledge of how to help: perceiving oneself as competent to help increases likelihood of taking responsibility. More likely to help if you know how or have the ability to help in emergencies - people in the medical field or people trained in first aid more helpful

Making the decision to act:

Evaluation apprehension, may be afraid of

• Making a fool of yourself
• Doing the wrong thing
• Placing yourself in danger

Most of the time, people will weigh costs and benefits. Other times, people may act impulsively, based on things like emotions and values.

Helping increases when a victim is liked, similar (Hayden et al, 1984), or not responsible for their ordeal (Higgins & Shaw, 1999). If the bystander is not in a hurry, and is in a good mood, they are more likely to help

People are more willing to help when they're in a good mood. Isen & Levine (1972): 84% of participants helped after finding money in a payphone, but only 4% with no money helped.

Feeling excluded or rejected reduces prosocial behaviour (Twenge et al, 2007). Participants made to feel rejected after a false feedback that in the future they'll experience rejection (vs acceptance), made smaller donations. It was not simply about a negative state - people who were told they'd face misfortune gave as much as the accepted condition. Excluded participants report less empathy.

Participants in dark vs bright room and wearing sunglasses vs none were more likely to act in a selfish manner (Zhong et al, 2010).

Evolutionary psychology: attempts to explain social behaviour in terms of genetic factors that evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection. Altruism doesn't seem to be explained by evolution. However, Hamilton (1964) came up with the theory of Kin selection to explain altruistic acts. Kin selection dictates that behaviours that help a genetic relative are favoured by natural selection as this increases the likelihood of passing on our genes. Fitness can be increased by a direct route (passing on genes through own offspring) or indirect route (ensuring survival of relatives who also carry our genes). Reciprocal altruism is also relevant here (William, 1966; Trivers, 1971): because helping is usually reciprocated, people provide help to obtain help in the future.

Competitive altruism: people help others more when their actions are witnessed by someone and a possiblity of building a reputation exists. Helping boosts status and reputation, which will ultimately bring benefits like cooperation, leadership roles, and higher attributed status.

Norm of reciprocity: the expectation that helping others will increase the likelihood that they will help us in the future

Group selection: natural selection operates on individuals. People who have traits that make them more likely to survive are more likely to reproduce and pass on those traits. Natural selection also operates at a group level; selfless behaviour can benefit the whole group.

Social exchange theory: human relationships are formed by the use of a subjective cost-benefit analysis and the comparison of alternatives. Helping can be rewarding in a number of ways: norm of reciprocity, investment in future, relief of bystander distress, and gaining rewards such as social approval and increased feelings of self-worth.

The capacity to be able to experience other's emotional states, feel sympathetic towards them, and take their perspective (Eisenberg, 2000). We help others because we experience any unpleasant feeling they're experiencing, and want to help them bring their negative feelings to an end.

• Emotional empathy: sharing emotions and feelings of others
• Empathic accuracy: perceiving accurately the feelings and emotions of others. Related to greater social adjustment
• Empathic concern: concern for other's wellbeing

When people are lacking in empathy, they can reduce their own distress either by helping a person in need or escaping the stiuation. For those who are high in empathy, escaping will not work because a person is still suffering. Only helping can reduce the distress.

Empathy-altruism hypothesis: Altruistic helping is motivated by empathy (Batson, 1991). Motivation to help is other-oriented (based on empathetic concerns for others) rather than self-oriented (based on a desire to relieve one's own personal distress). The person provides help simply because the victim needs help, and it feels good to provide help.

Empathy-altriusm hypothesis (Toi & Batson, 1982): participants told to focus on feelings (empathy) or be objective as they learned about a woman with 2 broken legs who needed assistance with schoolwork. 78% of high empathy participants (vs only 33% of low empathy) agreed to help the woman with coursework. Personal cost was manipulated after, by telling participants whether or not they'd face the woman in class. Participants high in empathy helped regardless, but in the low empathy condition, this increased helping.

In people with low empathy, rewards and costs are more concerning rather than just helping the victim for the sake of helping. In Toi & Batsons study, it was only when costs were high (seeing the woman in their class and feeling guilty about not helping) that agreement to help (71%) was around as much as those high in empathy (81%).

We help in-group members when we feel empathy. We only help out-group members when it furthers our own self-interests.

Model of altruism (Piliavin et al, 1983): physiological arousal response -> distress response -> weighing the costs of helping (personal interest, emotions) vs. not helping (breaking social norms, others more qualified) -> decision about helping

Are people altruistic or egoistic while helping? Egoistic people do not adopt the other person's perspective, feel personal distress as their emotional response, and main satisfaction of motive is to reduce their own distress. Altrustic people adopt the other person's perspective, feel empathic concern, and main satisfaction of motive is to reduce the other's distress.

Negative state relief theory: people help others in order to relieve their own distress and negative feelings associated with witnessing the emergency or not helping (Cialdini et al, 1973). Empathy is not a necessary component.

Empathic-joy hypothesis: people help because they want to accomplish something, helping is an accomplishment and accomplishing is rewarding in and of itself. People only want to help if they could receive feedback about effectiveness of advice (Smith et al, 1989).

Empathy-altruism hypothesis: we experience empathy toward others when we see them in need -> this leads us to help them

Negative state relief hypothesis: seeing others in need induces negative feelings in us -> we help others to reduce these negative feelings

Empathic-joy hypothesis: we want to have a positive impact on others -> we engage in prosocial behaviour to produce such effects

• Cialdini et al (1997): including others in the self predicted helping better than empathy
• Decety & Chaminade (2003): shared neurological substrates for processing self and others
• Krueger et al, 2009): the same areas of the brain respond to the self and others similar to self

Assessing empathy:

• through neural and bodily responses to seeing pain (Bufalari et al, 2007)
• Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980)
• Reading the mind in the eyes test (Baron-Cohen et al, 2001). Measures ability to accurately empathise
• Sally-Anne test (Baron-Cohen et al, 1985) for young children

Mirror neurons fire when animals act, and when they observe the same act, performed by another (Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004). The neuron "mirrors" the behaviour of the other, as if the observer were acting themselves. These neurons have been directly observed in primate species. It is argued that mirror neurons may be important for understanding the actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation. Some speculate that mirror systems may simulate observed actions, and thus contribute to theory of mind skills.