Topic 8 - helping

Reasons for helping

• helps groups survive

• Because we care

• Avoid negative emotions

• Prosocial social norms

Evolutionary perspective

• favour those with genetic relatedness

• Kinship- more likely to do things to further gene pool

Altruism-egoism debate

• do we help others or ourselves

• Feeling empathetic so help vs trying to reduce bad mood

Negative state relief model

• drive to reduce own negative mood

Bystander effect

• likelihood of helping decreases as no of bystanders increase

Diffusion of responsibility

• responsibility divided between number of bystanders

Pluralistic ignorance

• if others aren’t reacting to event, we interpret response is not needed

Audience inhibition

• may fear embarrassment by helping

• Feel they lack competency to help

Pivilian et al 1969

• subway bystander effect experience

• Drunk condition

• Cane condition

• White vs black

Costs and rewards of helping

• motivation construct

• Cognitive decision making

• Concept of we ness

Common ingroup identity model - Gaertner et al 1993

• when in common group - hostility and bias can be reduced

• Football shirt experiment - helping ingroup members more