Prosocial Behaviour

What is prosocial behaviour?

Acts that are valued positively by society, they contribute to the wellbeing of another person, are voluntary and have the intention of benefitting others

Do individuals have an innate tendency to help others?

No, this is more likely:

A genetic predisposition to be altruistic + Social norms for altruistic behaviour + Developmental plasticity = Evolutionary origin of altruism

What is fitness?

Biological term for how successful a gene is in getting into future generations

• The closer the relative, the more genes shared

What is kin selection? (Hamilton, 1964)

The amount of help given to relatives is positively correlated with the degree of relatedness

What is Hamilton’s rule?

rB>C

r = the relatedness between the individuals

B = the benefit to the recipient of the act

C = the cost the individual incurs for performing the act

The greater the value of r, the greater the difference between the cost and the benefit

What is empathy?

An emotional response to someone else’s distress which follows an initial state of arousal

What is ethology?

The study of behaviour from an evolutionary perspective

What are Niko Tinbergen’s 4 Whys/Levels of Causality?

1. Proximate or mechanistic cause

2. Developmental or ontogenetic cause

3. Phylogenetic or historical cause

4. Functional or ultimate cause

What is the Bystander-Calculus Model? (Piliavin et al., 1981)

1. Physiological arousal - The more arousal, the more likely a bystander will help

2. Arousal labelling - Personal distress needs to arise when someone else requires help; the act of helping reduces the level of arousal and distress

3. Consequence evaluation - The greater the cost, the less likely an individual will help

What 2 normative influences are related to altruistic behaviour?

1. Reciprocity norm

2. Social responsibility norm

What is reciprocal altruism? (Trivers, 1971)

How cooperation could have evolved between non-relatives

Individuals will help another, provided that the recipient can and will return the favour in the future

What are Trivers’ conditions for reciprocal altruism? (1971)

1. The cost must be less than the benefit

2. The species it occurs in must be highly social, guaranteeing continued interaction between individuals

3. Species in which it occur must have appropriate cognitive capacities such as memory

What is the social responsiblity norm?

Help should be given freely to those in need and without reciprocation, however, such a norm of social responsibility is often ‘selectively‘ applied

What are Batson’s 4 motivational approaches?

1. Egoism

2. Altruism

3. Collectivism

4. Principlism (morality)

What are Latane & Darley’s Bystander Intervention factors? (1968)

• Diffusion of responsibility

• Audience inhibition

• Social influence

• The more people available to help, the less likely helping behaviour occurs

• Participants who were alone were more likely to help than those in pairs

• When participants were paired with more than two confederates, helping decreased to 10%

What did Bateson do? (2006)

Found that images of eyes encourage people to be more honest

What personal characteristics make people more likely to help others?

• Similarity

• Perceived fairness and responsibility

• Gender