Prosocial Behaviour: Helping Others (Week 10)

Theory of the week-The Bystander Effect

Evolutionary Factors: The “Selfish Gene”

Kin selection

• Evolutionary perspective emphasizes survival of the fittest individual’s genes, not of the individual

• Kin selection: Preferential helping of genetic relatives, which results in the greater likelihood that genes held in common will survive

• In low-stakes, non-risky situations, people are as likely to help a friend as a sibling, but in highstakes, risky situations, they’re more likely to help a sibling.

Reciprocal Altruism

• Reciprocal altruism – Altruism that involves an individual helping another (despite some immediate risk or cost) and becoming more likely to receive help from the other in return

• Indirect reciprocity – A kind of reciprocal altruism in which an individual who helps someone becomes more likely to receive help from someone else • Noted in animals as well as humans.

Empathy •

Empathy: Understanding or vicariously experiencing another individual’s perspective and feeling sympathy and compassion for that individual

• Perspective-taking: cognitive aspect based on using the imagination

• Empathic concern: emotional component that involves other-oriented feelings

• Evidence of empathic concern and comforting behaviour in young children and higher primates.

Benefits of Helping: Feeling Good

• Dunn et al (2008) Spending money on others associated with more positive mood than spending it on yourself.

• Strong relationship between helping and mental & physical health.

• Altruistic behavior activates areas of the brain associated with receiving material rewards

• Negative state relief model states that we help others in order to improve our own mood.

• People who have experienced traumatic events show physical and mental health benefits from helping others.

Benefits v Costs

Egoistic v altruism

• Helping behaviour often comes with costs (physical, financial, emotional, time, opportunity) as well as benefits. • Do we only engage in helping behaviour if we perceive the benefits as outweighing the costs?

• Egoistic: Motivated by the desire to improve one’s own welfare. • Altruism: Motivated by the desire to improve another’s welfare.

Social exchange theory

• People are motivated to maximise benefits and minimise costs in their relationships with others.

• This can also be applied to helping behaviour.

• Based on his studies of persuasion and the norm of reciprocity, Robert Cialdini argues that all prosocial behaviour involves some form of self-interest.

The Empathy–Altruism Hypothesis

• Empathic concern for a person in need produces an altruistic motive for helping

• True altruism occurs when the focus is on the other person, not on how you would feel in that person’s situation

Empathy and Helping: Not Taking the Easy Way Out

Stocks et al (2009): Would you help out a fellow student in difficulty, if you could just forget about their situation?

• Students were induced to experience low or high empathy toward a suffering student named ‘Katie’, who was caring for two younger siblings following the sudden death of her parents. •

They were led to believe that they would remember or soon forget what they learned about Katie through the use of a memory training technique.

• The students were then given a chance to volunteer to help Katie.

• Students in the lowempathy condition tended to not offer their help if they thought they wouldn’t remember Katie and her plight.

• Students in the highempathy condition offered to help whether or not they thought they would forget her situation. • This would appear to support the empathy

However – Cialdini et al (1987) • Two groups of students – Experimental condition: given a pill that they were told would ‘freeze’ their emotional state. – Control condition: given no pill. • Both groups were shown an upsetting video of a fellow student who had been in an accident and needed help.

• Those students who believed that helping wouldn’t make them feel any better (because of the pill) were less likely to help than those in the control condition. • This seems to support the negative state relief model and social exchange theory perspectives.

So, who’s right? • It’s difficult to be conclusive. • It’s worth pointing out that the evidence from both sides of the debate comes from highly artificial experimental situations.

• In real-life helping scenarios, the distinction between purely altruistic and egoistic motivations for helping behaviour may not be crucial. • The important take away point may be that we are capable of being motivated to help for internal reasons as well as external rewards.

Convergence of Motives: Volunteering

• People tend to volunteer for multiple motives – Altruistic and egoistic Have you done volunteering work? What was your motivation for doing so?

• Omoto & Snyder found that people remained active volunteers longer if they had initially endorsed self-oriented motives (such as personal development and understanding) than other-oriented motives (such as community concern).

• Purely altruistic motives may not keep individuals motivated long enough to withstand the personal costs associated with some kinds of prolonged helping. • Volunteering also has group-related benefits. Longitudinal studies (Qu et al, 2020) have found that volunteering is associated with reduced mortality risk in older adults, whereas just donating money is not.

• This may be attributable to the social cure.

Individual Differences: The Altruistic Personality?

• People who tend to be more helpful are more likely to:

– Be very agreeable

– Be relatively humble

– Exhibit internalized and advanced levels of moral reasoning that considers others’ needs

– Behave more altruistically than others

– Show empathetic concern for others

Humility and helping: the braggart’s dilemma

• Those most likely to help tend to be the least likely to publicise it. • There is also a strong social norm to be modest about prosocial behaviour.

• However, donating and volunteering is more likely when we see other people do it!

• Thus, the braggart’s dilemma (Berman et al, 2015): how to draw attention to the fact that you’ve done something prosocial without making it seem like you only did so for selfish reasons i.e. to get praise?

Narcissism and ‘strategic helping’

• Narcissism: A personality trait characterised by excessively high self-esteem and relatively low empathy.

• This would lead us to expect relatively low levels of prosocial behaviour.

• However, a strong association between narcissism and prosocial behaviour when the behaviour is a.) public and b.) makes them look good.

• Konrath et al (2016) found that high scorers on a narcissism scale were significantly more likely to solicit donations for ALS/MND by posting a video of themselves taking the ice-bucket challenge, but significantly less likely to make a private donation themselves.

• Interesting implications for charity fundraising!

Gender and Helping

• Men – More likely to help in dramatic, public ways when they feel in competition with another man

• Women – More likely to provide day-to-day social and emotional support

• Men are less likely to ask for help than women – Attributable to social norms of masculinity

Religion and helping

• Some studies have shown that people describing themselves as religious are more likely to volunteer and donate to charity.

• However, this is mediated by choice: religious people in more secular countries tend to be more altruistic than those in countries where religion is more socially enforced.

• There is also a relationship with conservatism: people with highly conservative religious beliefs were more likely to help those they saw as deserving, but less likely to help those whose behaviour went against their religious beliefs (Jackson & Esses, 1997)

Perceived Characteristics of the Person in Need •

People are more likely to offer help and cooperation to others who are physically attractive

• This remains the case for anonymous, nonreciprocal helping – Benson et al (1976) University application envelopes left behind in an airport phonebooth were more likely to be forwarded on when it contained a photo of a good-looking person than a less attractive person.

• People who appear interpersonally attractive e.g. seeming nice, sociable, happy, are also more likely to receive help

Responsibility •

Barnes et al (1979) Students were less likely to offer their notes to fellow students who were seen as being responsible for their own misfortune.

• Lobchuk et al (2008) Caregivers of cancer patients had more negative emotions and gave less supportive help if they believed the patient was largely responsible for his/her illness

Similarity

• People are usually more helpful to those: – They know and care about

• Helping those who we are in a communal relationship with (close friends, family) is less determined by the norm of reciprocity than helping those who we are in an exchange relationship with (coworkers, acquaintances). – Who are in their ingroup

• The stronger our identification with our ingroup, the more likely we are to help fellow ingroup members.

• There is an ‘empathy gap’ when it comes to the needs of outgroup members – Brain imaging studies suggest we literally feel the pain of a suffering ingroup member more than a suffering outgroup member.

Levine et al (2005)

• Manchester United supporters were told they were participating in a study of football fans and asked to write an essay on how much they loved either

a.) United, b.) football in general.

• They were then confronted with a (staged) emergency involving either a.) someone in a United shirt b.) someone in a Liverpool shirt c. ) someone in a plain shirt • Those who had written the essay about being a United fan were far more likely to help the stranger in the United shirt.

• Those who had written the essay about being a football fan were more likely to help the stranger in either the United or the Liverpool shirt.

• Salient shared social identity predicts helping behaviour.

Social identity & helping refugees

• Kossowska et al (2023) on helping behaviour among Polish citizens towards Ukrainian refugees.

• Predicted by a shared social identity based of feelings of closeness between Polish and Ukrainian people, and also a shared fear of an outgroup: Russia.

• Politi et al (2022) found that dispositional prosociality and strong pro-European identities positively predicted helping intentions in Belgium towards Ukrainian refugees. Małgorzata Kossowska However, this does suggest that refugee groups that are less straightforwardly repositioned as ingroup members will find it more difficult to receive assistance.

Identifiable victim effect

• Individuals’ tendency to offer greater aid to specific, identifiable victims than to anonymous, statistical victims.

• First noted by economist Thomas Schelling in 1968.

• Kogut and Ritov (2005): when asked to help sick children who need a costly life-saving treatment, participants were more willing to contribute to a single child identified by age, name, and picture than to a single unidentified child or a group of unidentified children.

• Arguably leads to an inefficient distribution of aid: where narrative outweighs need

Take-away point: The Helping Connection • Helping requires the rec

ognition of individual human beings with whom we have a meaningful connection

The bystander effect (Theory) (Kitty)

• The effect where the presence of others may inhibit helping.

• This tradition of research was inspired by a single event: the brutal murder of a young woman in New York named Kitty Genovese in 1964

• It was reported at the time that 37 of Kitty’s neighbours witnessed her murder, but did nothing to intervene, or call the police.

• Many of the details of the story turned out to be more complex – however, it prompted much soul-searching about the nature of urban society and a quest for answers.

• In particular, social psychologists became interested in the circumstances under which people may fail to help others in an emergency. .

Kitty’s murder picked up

The Kitty Genovese Murder picked up by the New York press After a meeting with police Commissioner Murphy, Abraham Rosenthal the editor of the New York Times decided to use the case as the basis of a front page feature article.

For more than half an hour thirty-eight respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead.

5 Steps to helping in an emergency

Noticing • The presence of others can sometimes divert attention from noticing a problem

Interpreting • The more ambiguous a situation is, the less likely it is that bystanders will intervene • Pluralistic ignorance – The state in which people in a group mistakenly think that their own individual thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are different from those of the others in the group

Taking Responsibility • Diffusion of responsibility – The belief that others will or should take the responsibility for providing assistance to a person in need

Deciding How to Help and Providing Help • Audience inhibition – Uncertainty about competence to provide appropriate help – Reluctance to help for fear of making a bad impression on observers – Reluctance to break perceived norms that promote minding one’s own business

Avoiding the Bystander Effect •

The bystander effect can be reduced or reversed when: – The bystanders know or feel connected to each other – Effective helping would require multiple helpers – People feel they will be scorned for failing to help – When the situation is unambiguous: it is clear that there is an emergency • A person in a leadership role, or who is in a helping occupation, is more likely to help

Getting Help in a Crowd: What Should You Do?

• Counteract the ambiguity of the situation by making it very clear that you do need help

• Reduce diffusion of responsibility by singling out particular individuals for help with: – Eye contact – Pointing – A direct request

Time Pressure

• Time pressure can conflict with one’s good intentions of helping

– May fail to notice the need

– May be less likely to accept responsibility

– May decide the costs of helping are too high • Darley & Batson’s (1973) Good Samaritan study

The ‘Good Samaritan’ study

• Darley & Batson (1973)

• Asked seminary students to prepare a talk based on the parable of the Good Samaritan

• Instructed them to walk over to another lecture theatre to record the talk.

• Informed students they were a.) early b.) right on time or c.) running late

• The students encountered a staged emergency on the way to the talk.

• 63% of those who were early helped, 45% who were on time and 10% who were late.

“On several occasions a seminary student going to give his talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan literally stepped over the victim as he hurried on his way!”

Recap

• Helping behaviour may be innate, particularly with close relatives – there is evidence for reciprocal altruism and empathy in infants and animals.

• Helping can make us feel good – if the benefits outweigh the costs

• Genuine altruism is linked with empathy – however, this may be shorter-term than egoistic helping.

• We are more likely to help those we perceive as attractive, having low responsibility for their situation, and belonging to the same ingroup as ourselves: different ingroups can be made salient depending on the circumstances.

• The presence of others may detract from helping under certain circumstances

Testing the bystander effect

• Each experiment was intended to test some aspect of Darley & Latané’s emerging model of bystander intervention.

• They tested the principle of ‘diffusion of responsibility’ by comparing how people reacted to overhearing someone having a fit, under two circumstances: • when alone,

• and believing four other people were present

• Those who were alone were more likely to intervene, and did so quicker. In order to test the effect of others on ‘ambiguous situations’( like smoke filled room)

• They needed to create a situation that could be interpreted multiple ways.

The Smoke Filled Room

• Aims: – To test the bystander effect/group conformity in a room filling with smoke (harmless titanium dioxide)

• Methodology: – Participants were invited to participate in an interview on the challenges of student life in an urban university. – On arriving at the venue they were directed to a small waiting room to fill out a questionnaire before the interview.

– Condition 1: The participant answered a questionnaire alone

– Condition 2: Three participants

– Condition 3: One participant and two confederates – After the participant had filled out the first two pages of the questionnaire, clearly visible yet harmless smoke was introduced into the room via a small air vent.

The Smoke Filled Room • Results: – 75% of alone participants noticed the smoke and left the room to report it: on average, within two minutes of first noticing it – Only 10% of the participants with confederates reported it. – Surprisingly, in the three naive bystander condition only 38% reported the smoke.

The Smoke filled room

• Post-experiment interviews: – From those who reported

• “I wasn't sure whether it was a fire but it looked like something was wrong."

• "I thought it might be steam, but it seemed like a good idea to check it out."

– From those who didn’t

• Uniformly rejected the idea of a fire •

Suggested steam, smog, a ‘truth gas’ •

Many assumed it was part of the experiment The Smoke Filled Room

• Implications:

– Other studies have shown that togetherness reduces fear even when the danger isn't reduced. – It may have been that people in groups were less afraid and thus less likely to act. Or people were inhibited to show fear in a group situation. – The experiment shows there are strong situational factors that can inhibit people from acting in emergencies.

Does the Bystander Effect always hold true?

For the bystander effect to take place, Darley and Latané put forward these defining characteristics of what the event must be:

• Rare (few comparable experience or few models to draw on) • Unforeseen

• Requiring instant action

• They noted that, under different situations, people may go out of their way to help others.

• This has often been overlooked and misunderstood in popular understandings of the bystander effect.

Mis-representations of Latane and Darley : The equation of “the bystander effect” with bystander “apathy”. Wikipedia

Bystander effect From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present.

IN FACT Latane and Darley were keen to differentiate the “bystander effect” from common sense assumptions concerning “bystander apathy”!

“The 38 witnesses to Kitty Genovese’s murder did not merely look at the scene once and then ignore it. Instead they continued to stare out of their windows at what was going on. Caught, fascinated, distressed, unwilling to act but unwilling to turn away, their behaviour was neither helpful nor heroic, but it was not indifferent or apathetic either”. (Latane & Darley, 1970, p.4)

Latane and Darley described their experimental subjects as confronted by a DILEMMA – caught between the norms of the situation vs. general cultural norms.

They describe their participants as pulled between (a) Guilt and shame at not helping, and (b) Concern not to wreck the experiment plus potential embarrassment.

Evidenced by physical signs of distress…

“Subjects who failed to report the emergency showed few signs of the apathy and indifference thought to characterize “unresponsive bystanders”…Many of these subjects showed physical signs of nervousness; they had trembling hands and sweating palms.” Critical evaluation?

• Experimental realism? (Felt meaningful to the participants?)

• Ecological validity? (Similar to a real-world emergency?)

• External validity (Likelihood that findings can be generalized to other [e.g. real world] emergency?)

Mark levine • Revisits the conventional account of Kitty Genovese’s Murder.

Revisits the conventional account of Kitty Genovese’s Murder.

• Revisits the assumptions about bystander behaviour that have shaped social psychological theory and research.

• How DO bystanders ACTUALLY behave in “real life” (violent) emergencies?

Accuracy of newspaper (& textbook) accounts? Manning, Levine & Collins (2007) • No evidence that 38 people “witnessed” the attack. • Only 6(?) witnesses (and only 3 eyewitnesses to any aspect of the events testified in court

NO EVIDENCE THAT NEIGHBOURS DID NOTHING TO HELP!

• Robert Mozer yelled at Mosley who then ran away. "I hollered, 'Hey get out of there! What are you doing?' He jumped up and ran like a scared rabbit, took off real quick”. (Mozer then went back to bed, and was unaware that Mosley later returned).

• Several witnesses phoned the police/told other people to do so. – Also, no 911 number in 1964: and local police didn’t like being disturbed at night! The first call to the police went unanswered. – More broadly, distrust in competence of police, and fear of getting involved with the police from gay and immigrant witnesses.

• Kitty’s neighbour and friend, Sophia Farrar ran to her side as she lay dying, whispering “help is on its way” while they waited for the ambulance.

• The only neighbour who unambiguously could see what was going on and did nothing was a building superintendent, Joseph Fink, who considered getting his baseball bat to intervene, but decided to go to bed instead.

For more than half an hour thirty-eight respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead.

Does it matter that the Kitty Genovese story was inaccurate?

• Latané & Darley’s studies are generally seen as being quite robust, after their own fashion.

• The ‘bystander effect’ is a real phenomenon – that occurs, as Latané & Darley emphasise, in very specific circumstances.

• However, the emphasis on the inaccurate Kitty Genovese ‘parable’ and the lessons drawn from it, may have reinforced the idea that other people are an obstacle to helping behaviour.

• A need to redress the balance by pointing out the circumstances in which the presence of other people makes helping more likely

Collective resilience

In crowd contexts, danger or perceived threat

•Can engender emergent common identity/sociality among strangers

•This in turn motivates people to help others in emergencies, crowds are liable to PANIC and act selfishly and irrationally

In liverpool when the crowd fell and killed 97.

Drury opposes the assumption that . wd panic would’ve kicked in but people worked together. People under threat come together regardless of different social identities e.g. background, ethnicity.

Collective resilience: the 2005 London Tube bombings

• Evidence from media accounts, official testimonies and interviews with survivors. • Quick emergence of spontaneous helping behaviour among strangers. • Numerous accounts of feelings of sharing a common fate with other survivors.

Media kept bringing up we were all in this together.

Note; could see this even during covid-let’s all create this shared identity of helping eachother.

Evidence from CCTV

• Levine, Taylor & Best (2011) • Study using CCTV footage of night-time street violence in Manchester.

• Examined whether the intervention of bystanders tended to lead to an escalation or de-escalation of violence.

• Found that if only one person intervenes (even though others are present)- violence is MORE likely

• If intervention is by THREE different actors all supporting each other – peace is more likely • Successful intervention usually comes not from a single heroic individual – but from the coordinated action of the group

Recap

• The case of Kitty Genovese

• Darley and Latané’s research on the Bystander Effect – Smoke Filled Room • Factors influencing the Bystander Effect

• Bystander Effect VS Bystander Apathy

• Manning et al’s review of the portrayal of Kitty Genovese’s murder • Critical thinking in social psychology