Altruism/ Cooperation Chapter 14 (PSYC 351)

altruism

prosocial behavior that benefits others without regard to consequences for oneself

• when you help someone just to help them, without expecting anything in return—even if it costs you something.

social reward

a benefit, such as praise, positive attention, something tangible, or gratitude, that may be gained from helping others and thus serves as a motive for altruistic behavior

• something good you get—like praise, attention, or thanks—for helping others. It’s one reason people might act kindly or do good things.

personal distress

a motive for helping others in distress that may arise from a need to reduce one’s own distress

empathic concern

identifying with someone in need, including feeling and understanding what that person is experiencing, accompanied by the intention to help the person

• when you truly feel what someone else is going through and care about their pain or struggle—so much that you genuinely want to help them.

bystander intervention

assistance given by a witness to someone in need

volunteerism

assistance a person regularly provides to another person or group with no exception of compensation

diffusion of responsibility

a reduction of the sense of urgency to help someone in an emergency or dangerous situation, based on the assumption that others who are present will help

• when people don’t help in an emergency because they think someone else will. The more people around, the less likely anyone feels it's their job to step in

kin selection

an evolutionary strategy that favors the reproductive success of one’s genetic relatives, even at a cost to one’s own survival and reproduction

• the idea that you’re more likely to help family members, even if it costs you, because helping them ensures that your shared genes get passed on to future generations.

reciprocal altruism

helping others with the expectation that they will probably return the favor in the future

prisoner’s dilemma

a situation involving payoffs to two people who must decide whether to cooperate or defect. in the end, trust and cooperation lead to higher joint payoffs than mistrust and defection

• a situation where two people have to choose between working together or acting selfishly. If they both cooperate, they both do better, but if one betrays the other, the betrayer gets a better outcome while the other suffers. It shows that trusting each other and cooperating leads to the best result for both.

reputation

the collective beliefs, evaluations, and impressions people hold about an individual within a social network

tit-for-tat strategy

in the prisoner’s dilemma game in which the player’s first move is cooperative; thereafter, the player mimics the other persons’ behavior, whether cooperative or competitive. this strategy fares well when used against other strategies

• when you start by cooperating, and then you just do whatever the other person did in the previous round. If they cooperate, you cooperate; if they act selfishly, you do the same. This strategy works well because it encourages cooperation while punishing betrayal.