Helping behaviour studies

Rushton and Teachman (1978)

Bryan and Test (1967)

Hornstein (1970)

Batson et al (1981)

• participants saw a confederate receive ‘electric shocks’

• asked if they woul take the place of the person in next trial

Krebbs 1975

Kellys study - look at it

Cialdini et al (1987)

Model = person observes suffering victim then feels negative emotion (sadness) and so helps to alleviate their own sadness (unless alleviated in other way)

Fisher et al (2011)

• meta analysis finding robust results for bystander effect

• especially when nondangerous situations

Latane and Darley (1968)

Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavin (1969)

• Researchers staged an emergency on a subway train.

• A man would collapse in front of passengers.

• They varied the type of victim, including:

  • A “cane” condition (looked ill, respectable- like a normal commuter)

  • A “drunk” condition (appeared disheveled, smelling of alcohol- closer to a stereotypical “homeless” or stigmatized person)

Levine et al (2005)

• study of ‘football clubs and their fans’

  • study 1 = social identity as ManU supporter made salient

  • study 2 = inclusive identity as gootball fan made salient

• participants asked to walk to another building

• saw a jogger trip and fall, cluthing ankle in apparent pain

• reponses to incident recorded by concealed observers

Pagini et al (2025)

• Lady pregnant - give seat or not

• Presence of batman increases prosocial behaviour

  • 67% vs 37%

• 68 batman and 70 control

• 68% of prosocial behaviour woman

  • But perhaps just reflects the composition of train

• Asked why helped?

  • 43% didn't see batman

  • But others could also be - surprising event meant more alert so more noticed her

• These findings suggest that unexpected events can promote prosociality, even without conscious awareness, with implications for encouraging kindness in public settings

Bateson et al (2006)

• Honesty box for coffee in kitchen

• People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a control image

Fathi et al (2014)

• Used pictures of watching eyes (NB is this actually being watched, or diff interpretation?)

• Eye images did not make people conform more closely to the apparent norm overall.

• For an apparent norm of small donations, eye images made many participants more generous than the norm.

• For an apparent norm of large donations, there was an excess of participants giving zero in the no-eyes treatment, which was abolished in the eyes treatment.

• Our results can be explained by a combination of watching eyes increasing prosocial motivation and reluctance to leave a donation visibly less generous than the norm

• suggests is to do with pro social behaviour

Malhotra (2010)

• hypothesize that pro-social behavior is linked not to religiosity per se, but rather to the salience of religion and religious norms.

• Religious individuals are more likely than non-religious individuals to respond to an appeal “for charity” only on days that they visit their place of worship; on other days of the week, religiosity has no effect

• the result persists after controlling for a host of factors that may influence bidding, but disappears when the appeal “for charity” is replaced by an appeal to bid for other (i.e., competitive) reasons

• On Sundays, appeals to charity were over 300% more effective on religious individuals compared to non-religious individuals; on other days of the week (taken together), religious and non-religious individuals responded to such appeals almost identically

Kim, Kim, Kim (2025)

• Recent studies have found that individuals with intrinsic prosocial tendencies are non-responsive to social observation in various prosocial decision tasks.

• This study aimed to investigate whether individuals with intrinsic prosocial tendencies also exhibit a lack of change in their cognitive ability under social observation.

• We used the Prosocial Reinforcement Learning Task (PRLT) to assess the interaction effect of social observation and intrinsic prosocial tendency on prosocial learning tendency.

• A total of 102 participants were randomly assigned to either the observation or control group while performing a two-armed bandit task under self- and other-reward conditions, and their behavioral outcomes were analyzed using a reinforcement learning computational model.

• Under social observation, participants who were previously less prosocial exhibited increased prosocial learning.

• In contrast, those who were already more prosocial showed no significant changes in prosociality, and demonstrated only a numerical-but statistically non-significant-increase in learning for self.

• Our findings revealed the differential effects of social observation on modulating one's prosociality and cognitive ability according to individual differences in intrinsic prosocial tendencies.

• shows that ID matter and a group increase could just be down to the people who were worse initially