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Chapter 8 - Prosocial Behavior

Chapter 8 - Prosocial Behavior. What is Prosocial Behavior? Your Fair Share Cooperation, Forgiveness, Obedience, and Conformity Why Do People Help Others? Who Helps Whom? Bystander Help in Emergencies How Can We Increase Helping?. Doing What’s Best for Others.

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Chapter 8 - Prosocial Behavior

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  1. Chapter 8 - Prosocial Behavior • What is Prosocial Behavior? • Your Fair Share • Cooperation, Forgiveness, Obedience, and Conformity • Why Do People Help Others? • Who Helps Whom? • Bystander Help in Emergencies • How Can We Increase Helping?

  2. Doing What’s Best for Others • Oskar Schindler – Holocaust rescues • Why do humans behave in helpful and cooperative ways even when it is not in their own self interest to do so?

  3. What is Prosocial Behavior? • Doing something good for someone or for society • Builds relationships; allows society to function • Includes helping others • Obeying the rules • Conforming to socially acceptable behavior • Cooperating with others

  4. Factors in Prosocial Behavior • Effective rule of law • Fairness and justice • Public circumstances • Wanting to make a good impression

  5. Reciprocity • Obligation to return in kind what another has done for us • Direct reciprocity • Indirect reciprocity • Willingness to request or accept help is often predicated on ability to return in kind

  6. Fairness • Norms that promote fairness • Equity • Equality • People desire a system based on fairness and social exchange • Sensitivity about being the target of a threatening upward comparison

  7. Unfairness • Underbenefited • Getting less than you deserve • Overbenefited • Getting more than you deserve • Fairness requires both and is found only in humans • Survivor guilt

  8. Your Fair Share • Tragedy of the Commons • Depletion of resources owned collectively • Hoarding • Can be influenced by group and individual differences

  9. Cooperation • Each person does their part and work toward a common goal • Prisoner’s dilemma • Forced to choose between competition and cooperation • If one of the pair is not cooperative, then cooperation is typically doomed • Communication improves cooperation

  10. Tradeoffs - Prisoner’s Dilemma • Choice is between cooperative response and an antagonistic response • Choice is between what is best for one person versus what is best for everyone • Non-zero-sum game

  11. Imprisoned In a Role PLAYVIDEO

  12. Forgiveness • Ceasing to feel anger toward or seek retribution against someone who has wronged you • Forgiveness helps repair relationships • Provides health benefits to both parties

  13. Forgiveness • When is forgiveness more likely? • Minor offense • Offender apologizes • Who is more likely to forgive? • Religious people • People committed to a relationship • Not self-centered or narcissistic

  14. Is Bad Stronger Than Good? Moral and Immoral • Establishing a good reputation can be shattered by one scandal • A good impression, established by moral behavior, can be ruined by the slightest immoral behavior • Very difficult to reverse an initial bad impression with subsequent good behaviors

  15. Obedience • Following orders from an authority figure • Milgram (1963) • Majority of participants delivered extreme shocks to a screaming victim in obedience to an authority figure

  16. Obedience • Milgram’s research represented obedience as a negative (negative outcome) • Without obedience, society would not function • Obedience fosters • Social acceptance • Group life

  17. Conformity • Going along with the crowd • May be good or bad • Asch (1955, 1956) • Normative social influence • Conformity to be accepted by the group • Informational social influence • Conformity based on actions of others as evidence about reality

  18. Conformity • People conform more when others are watching them • Public conformity • Going along with the crowd regardless of what one privately believes • Private attitude change • Altering one’s internal attitude

  19. Food for Thought - Restaurants, Rules, and the Bad Taste of Nonconformity • In restaurants we tend to be nonconforming • People tend to order different menu items • People who order the same item, when it is their first choice, enjoy it more than those who switch to avoid conformity

  20. Why Do People Help Others? • Evolutionary benefits • Kin selection • More likely to help others who share our genes • Life-and-death helping is affected more strongly by genetic relatedness

  21. Why Do People Help Others? • Egoistic helping • Wanting something in return for helping • Negative state relief theory – help to reduce your own distress • Altruistic helping • Expecting nothing in return for helping • Motivated by empathy

  22. Why Do People Help Others? • Empathy-altruism hypothesis • Empathy motivates people to reduce other’s distress • Low empathy, people can reduce their own distress by escaping the situation • Batson et al. (1981) • Negative state relief theory

  23. Who Helps Whom? • Helpful Personality • Similarity • Males are more helpful in broader public sphere, toward strangers and in emergencies • Females are more helpful in family sphere, toward close relationships and in repeated contact

  24. Who Helps Whom? • Females feel more sympathy and empathy • Females are more likely to receive help • Beautiful victims

  25. The Social Side of Sex Helping, Sex, and Friends • Many people are introduced to sex partners by friends, co-workers, and relatives • Spring break sex • Men will support and help each other to engage in casual sex • Women will support and help each other to avoid casual sex

  26. Belief in a Just World • Life is essentially fair and people generally get what they deserve • Blaming the victim • Fallacy of affirming the consequent • People who hold belief in a just world will help if they think those people deserve help

  27. Emotion and Helping • Positive feelings increase helping • Negative emotions may or may not increase helping • Focus on self versus the victim

  28. Bystander Helping in Emergencies • Kitty Genovese • Bystander effect – people less likely to help when they are in the presence of others

  29. Thanks For Nothing: Bystander Apathy PLAYVIDEO

  30. Steps to Helping • Notice that something is happening • Interpret meaning of event • Pluralistic ignorance • Taking responsibility for providing help • Diffusion of responsibility • Know how to help • Provide help

  31. Too Busy to Help? • People in a hurry, help less • Even when thinking about helping • The more time people had, the more likely they were to help

  32. How Can We Increase Helping? • Obstacles to helping can be overcome when you • Reduce distractions • Reduce pluralistic ignorance • Reduce diffusion of responsibility • Reduce concerns about competence to help • Reduce audience inhibitions

  33. How Can We Increase Helping? • Helping can be increased by • Reduce uncertainties of obstacles • Educate others about bystander indifference • Model helpfulness • Teach moral inclusion

  34. What Makes Us Human? • Humans that help individuals and society • Humans frequently exhibit prosocial behavior toward others who are not family • Rule following, obedience, and conformity are prosocial acts • Reciprocity and cooperation with strangers

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