Prosocial Behavior & Interpersonal Relationships

Empathy vs. Personal Distress Model

Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis

The proposition that empathetic concern for a person indeed produces an altruistic motive for helping

Motives for helping behavior -Altruism

selfless concern for the welfare of others, can be motivated by a variety of factors, including empathy a desire to reduce negative feelings, social rewards and a sense of interconnectedness

Empathy

The process by which observers come to understand and/or feel the state of another through direct perception of imagination of their state

Sympathy

Tenderhearted feelings of compassionate concern, feeling “sorry for” the other

Metalizing

Extracting and understanding another person’s goals by making inferences about his/her mind state

Mind Perception

How people perceive the mental state of others focusing on two key dimensions: Agency (the ability to think, plan and act) and experience (the ability to feel have sensations and be conscious)

Shared Attention

When two people focus on the same thing, whether it’s an object, an event, or another person, and acknowledge that they are sharing that focus

Perspective Thinking

Ability to understand and consider a situation from someone else’s pov

Mirroring/Experiencing Sharing

Simulating the state of the other understand the content of their mind. The rationale is that observing another person activated the corresponding motor and mental representations in the observer, enabling them to understand the other’s mind

Neural Synchrony

Observation of actions, emotion, experiences of pain, etc activated the same neural substrates that are active during the actual performance of the action, emotional experience, experience of pain, etc by the observer

The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis- An Experiment (Method)

• Participant and Confederate draw straws to determine who will receive electric shocks

• Participant observed Confederate receiving shocks

• Measure emotions (personal distress vs. empathy)

• Opportunity to help: “Take some of the shocks?”

• Escape manipulation: “you can watch tv,” “you have to watch the confederate”

The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis - An experiment (results)

People who are feeling empathy still help, even when escape is easy

Neural Synchrony & Empathy

Synchrony is involved in action understanding, action coordination, observational learning, and empathy

Mental State Inference

Figuring out what another person thinks or wants, requires setting aside one’s own point of view

effects of biased empathy on helping

Empathy that is influenced by group membership-affects pro social behavior, particularly helping

Effects of biased empathy on helping - Experiment

Examined how people respond to the suffering of others depending on whether those others belong to their in group (e.g. same sports team) or out group (e.g. rival team)

Effects of biased empathy on helping - Experiment (Findings)

Ingroup Bias in Empathy: Participants felt more empathy for members of their ingroup. Neural responses in areas associated with empathy

Prediction of Helping Behavior: Biased neural empathy predicted actual costly helping behavior (e.g. enduring pain to reduce another’s pain)

Reduced Empathy for Outgroup: Weaker empathic to out group members correlated with reduced willingness to help them, even when their suffering was the same

Helping in Emergencies: 5 Stage Model

1. Noticing the Situation

2. Labeling the Situation as an Emergency

3. Assuming the Responsibility to Help: An Experiment

4. Deciding How to Help

5. Implementing the Decision to Help

Labeling the Situation as an Emergency

• Less likely if the situation is ambiguous

• Led likely if there are other people around who seem unconcerned

Assuming the Responsibility to Help: An Experiment (Method)

• Group Discussion via intercom conditions: Talk to 1 other participant & talk to 5 other participants

• One of the other “participants” points out a relevant health problem

• Participant with health problem calls for help

Bystander Effect

Phenomenon that helping behavior is less likely to occur as the number of witnesses to an emergency increases

Effects of Bystander Effect

Diffusion of Responsibility & Pluralistic Ignorance

Diffusion of Responsibility

Explanation that suggests that each bystander assumes someone’s else will assume responsibility

Pluralistic Ignorance

Explanation that suggests that bystanders use other people’s reactions (or lack of reactions) as N indication that the victim doesn’t need help

Deciding How To Help

Decisions to help are more likely if people perceive themselves as competent and capable of helping

Implementing the Decision to Help

• More likely if the costs of helping are low

• More likely if the victim is perceived as deserving of help

Cost of Helping: Experiment (Method)

• Participants read the parable of the Good Samaritan, then were asked to to a different building to give a talk. In what they had read

• Participants were told 1 of 3 things: “It’ll be a few minutes”, “They’re ready for you”, “You’re late”

• On their way to the next building, participants encouraged a person slumped in a doorway, head down, eyes closed not moving

In the Cost of Helping Experiment, how did the confederate scale their helpfulness

0. Failed to notice victims need

1. Perceived the victim as in need but did not offer aid

2. Did not stop but helped indirectly

3. Stopped and asked if victim needed help

4. After stopping, insisted on taking the victim inside

Cost of Helping Experiment Results

People with low hurry helped more than the people who high hurry. As well if one talked about good samaritanas than just seminarians

Attributions of Responsibility

Assigning blame or credit for an action or outcome, determining who is accountable for what happened

Attributions of Responsibility: perceptions of Controllability

If an event seems more controllable, people tend to attribute more responsibility

Example

• Low: Can I borrow your notes? I have a vision problem

• High: Can I borrow your notes? I was at the beach last class

Attributions of Responsibility (Schmidt & Weiner 1988)

Explored how people’s AOR for others’ misfortunes influence their emotional and helping responses. Grounded in Weiner’s attribution-emotion-action theory which connected to interpret causes of events

Attributions of Responsibility (Schmidt & Weiner 1988) Findings

• Casual Attributions: People make judgements about the causes of someone’s suffering

• Responsibly Judgements: If someone seems response for their misfortune (e.g. gambling addict that chooses to gamble), observers are less sympathetic

• Emotional Responses: HR → anger or difference, LR → sympathy or compassion

• Helping Behavior: Sympathy increases the likelihood of helping. Anger or blame reduced helping behavior

Attributions of Responsibility (Schmidt & Weiner 1988): Results

How we assign blame or responsibility directly impacts our willingness to help . The more we think someone “deserves” their situation the less likely we are to help

Belief in a Just World - Self

Believing I’m that the world is just for the self leads to greater life satisfaction

Belief in a Just world - Other

Believing that the world is just for others leads to harsher towards the p

Developing and Maintaining Friendships

Developing our friendship through 6 stages

Role Limited Interaction

Interact with others based on our social roles

Friendly Relations

Characterized by communication that moves beyond initial roles as the participants began to interact with one another to see if there are common interests, as well as an interest to continue getting to know one another

Moving Toward Friendship

Participants make moves to alter more personalized friendship

Nascent Friendship

Individuals commit to spend more time together

Stabilized Friendship

Friends take each other for granted as friends, but not in a negative way. Because the friendship is solid, they assume each other will be in their lives.

Waning Friendships

Sometimes friendships come to an end. Sometimes people change and grow into different directions

Challenges of Friendship

Gender: Women and men interact different within women’s and men’s friendships

Culture: Shape how we under our friendships

Misattribution of Arousal

Tendency for people to incorrect label the source of the arousal they are experiencing

Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love

Theory that proposed that there are three components of love: infancy, passion and commitment that define multiple types of love

Homophily

Tendency for people to form social networks, including friendships, marriages business relationships, and many other types of relationships with others who are similar

Reciprocity

The give and take in relationships

Stages of Relationships

No Interaction

Have not interacted yet

Invitational Communication

When we are attracted to someone, we may signal or invite them to interact with us

Explorational Communication

We share information about ourselves while looking for mutual interests, shared political or religious views, and similarities in family background

Intensifying Communication

Happy stage, where couples spend more time with the other person

Revising Communication

When the “relational high” begins to wear off, coupled being to have a more realistic perspective of one another and the relationship as a whole, here people may recognize the faults of the other person that they so idealized in the previous stage

Navigating

When couples continue to revise their communication and ways of interacting to reflect the changing needs of each person

Dyadic Phase

When partners make the choice to talk about their problems. They discuss how to resolve the issues and may seek outside help to help them work through the reasons they are growing apart

Social Support

When termination is inevitable and the partners being to look outside the relationship for social support. Couples will make the need public by telling friends and family

Grave Dressing

When couples reach closure in a relationship and move on with life

Intrapsychic Phase

Occurs when partners worry that they do not connect either one another in ways they used to or that they no longer do fun things together

Egoistic

Selfish Motivations may make us hell

Negative State Relief Model

Suggests that people sometimes help in order to make themselves feel better

Arousal: Cost- reward model

Provides an additional way to understand why people help

5 Factor Model

Each person has each factor, but they occur along a spectrum,

Machiavellianism

Widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort Machisvellj described most famously in the The Price

Machiavellianism, named after who?

Niccolò Machiavelli, was an Italian Renaissance his, politician diplomat philosopher

Pro social Moral Reasoning

Reasoning about moral dilemmas in which one person’s needs or desires conflict with those of needy others in a context in which there are few to no rules or formal obligations to prevent the needs

Social Exchange Theory

Posits that all human relationships are formed by the use of a subjective cost-benefit analysis and the comparison of alternatives

Overjustification Effect

When offering an external reward (extrinsic) for an activity can diminish intrinsic motivation for that activity

Intrinsic Motivation

Arising from internal factors that are performed because of these of personal satisfaction

Extrinsic Motivation

Arising from external factors that are performed in order to recurve something from others

Kin Selection

Favoritism shown for helping our blood relatives

Prosocial Moral Reasoning

About moral dilemmas in which one person’s needs or desires conflict with those of needy others in a context in which there are few to no rules or formal obligations to prevent the needs

Social Responsibility Norm

That tells us that we should try to help others who need assistance even without any expectation of future paybacks

Reciprocal Altruism

Everyone is better off in the long run if we help one another. If helping someone now increases the chances that you will be helped later then your overall chances of survival are increased.

Types of Intrinsic Motivations

• Personal Fulfillment: Specifically, “individuals are intrinsically motivated when they seek enjoyment interest, the satisfaction of curiosity, self-expression, or personal challenge in the work”

• Religious Expression: Out of moral duty or to benefit society

Over justification Effect

Where the introduction of a reward/incentive can have a negative effect on an individual’s intrinsic motivation to complete a task they were originally motivated to do

The Evolutionary Approach to Attraction

Behaviors, traits and other characteristics are associated with genes (which means they can be passed on to the next generation without learning)

Mate Selection

We prefer mates who increase our likelihood of propagating our genes. Because they increase the likelihood that we have kids with good genes and our kids will be successful at propagating their genes

Attractive Facial Features

Youthful, symmetrical & average faces

Facial Cues Experiment

Based on the picture 2 faces (mixture of faces from a certain place into one), asking participants which one wants a short or long term relationship

Facial Cues Experiment - Results

• The men thought the woman with the sharper features (short term) is more attractive

• Women found the man with sharper features (long term) more attractive

The Sociocultural Perspective

Women trade beauty for money because they often lack direct access to money → economic power increases desire for beauty

Sex Ratio Effects on Conspicuous Consumption

Do we Know What We Want? - Experiment

Results: Participants stated preferences DID NOT predict their actual choice

Similarity

• Opposites Attract: Do we like those who balance us out?

• Matching Principle: Do we like those who are similar to us?

Similarity → Attraction

General Concensus: Particpants report stronger attraction to objectively similar others

Ex. Attitudes (e.g. I like pop music), Personality traits (e.g. extraversion), External qualities (e.g. hairstyle)

Physical Similarity

Physical similar people are liked better and helped more, but people are less sexually attracted to them

Explanation: Liking - kin selection, Sexual attraction - avoid inbreeding

Polyamory (Consensual Non-Monogamy or CNM) Main Findings

• People in CNM relationships have positive outcomes compared to people in monogamous and NCNM relationships

Vow for Positive Illusions

“I promise to respect, admire, and appreciate you for who you are, as well as for the person you wish to become

Positive Illusions

Idealizing a romantic partner leads to: more relationship satisfaction, happiness, less fighting m, less decline in marital satisfaction over time

Michelangelo Effect (Positive Illusions)

Partners adapt to each other/sculpt

Vow based on Autonomy

“I promise to support and protect your freedom; because although our lives are intertwined, your choices are still yours alone

Autonomy

A sense of independence and the feeling that we have personal control over our behavior

• Altough humans are social creatures, it’s also important to maintain our individuality

Vow based on Responsiveness

“I promise to seek a deep understanding of your wishes, your desires, your fears and your dreams”

Responsiveness

A responsive partner is someone who is good at making you feel understood, validated and cared for

Vow based on Sacrifices

“I promise to always strive to meet your needs; not out of obligation, but because it delights me to see you happy”

Sacrifices

Relationship sacrifices are only related to relationship satisfaction when they are made our of approach (e.g. wanting to see your partner happy) as opposed to avoidance motives (e.g. wanting to avoid conflict)

Vow based on Attachment

“I promise to be there for you when you need me, whenever you need me”