PSY359: Chapter 6: The Psychology of Prosocial Behavior

• Prosocial behavior

a broad category of helping behaviours that is not chiefly motivated by personal gain or motives

---

“is a broader category of helping behavior that does not stress personal motives, whereas altruism must involve some kind of clear self-sacrifice”

• Altruism

a type of prosocial behaviour referring to acts that are carried out voluntarily by individuals without concern for themself and with no expectation of any kind of reward

---

“refers to acts that are carried out voluntarily by individuals who have no concern for themselves and who have no expectation of any kind of reward”

3 Theories of prosocial behavior:

• • Evolutionary

• • Social exchange

• • Empathy-altruism

• Evolutionary psychology is 

the attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that evolved over time, according to the principles of natural selection

Darwin recognized that altruistic behavior posed a problem for his theory BECAUSE…

• If an organism acts altruistically, it may decrease its own reproductive fitness

  • How can we reconcile this?

• The idea of kin selection 

• the idea that behaviors that help a genetic relative are favored by natural selection

• Suggests can pass on genes by helping genetic relatives have children or by helping their children survive

evolutionary perspective on explaining prosocial behaviour

 the norm of reciprocity referring to the expectation that helping others will increase the likelihood of receiving help in the future

social exchange theory perspective on explaining prosocial behaviour

outcomes and costs

• the idea that behaviour is based on the desire to maximize outcomes while minimizing the costs

  • Outcomes - rewards

    • Ex. improves impression/other’s opinion on you, free tuition, strengthening relationships/ties, may make you feel like a better person/makes you feel better about yourself 

  • Costs - negative reinforcers

    • Ex. perception of danger, time cost, financial implications

  • Is what i will get back from it equal or worth the sacrifice/energic contribution etc

  • Cost benefit analysis!

• The norm of reciprocity

• the expectation that helping others will increase the likelihood that they will help us in the future

• Suggests reciprocity may increase likelihood of survival

Evaluation of Evolutionary Approach

• It is based on Retrospective explanations, no hard evidence

• Social exchange theory 

(theory based on self interest)

• argues that much of what we do stems from the desire to maximize our outcomes and minimize our costs

• Like evolutionary psychology, it is a theory based on self-interest; unlike it, it does not assume that self-interest has a genetic basis

• Helping can be rewarding because it:

• • increases the probability that someone will help us in return

• • relieves the personal distress of the bystander

• • gains us social approval and increased self-worth

Helping can also be costly (danger, time, money); thus it decreases when costs are high

empathy-altrusim hypothesis in explaining prosocial behaviour

• states when we feel empathy, we are more likely to attempt to help (even for purely altruistic reasons)

what is empathy

what is sympathy?

• - the ability to understand and share the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of others

  • Being able to put urself in someone else’s shoes! 

  • Enough empathy = sympathy = experiencing emotion on that other peron’s behalf 

Batson (1991) is the strongest proponent of the idea that

people often help purely out of the goodness of their hearts

when does Batson (1991) argue pure altruism is most likely to come into play

• when we experience empathy for the person in need; that is, we are able to experience events and emotions the way that person experiences them

Men vs Women in helping in situations

• Women are universally perceived as kinder, more compassionate, and more helpful

• Women are more likely to help those they already know

  • • For example, women are more likely to help take care of a neighbor or elderly relative (longer-term, close relationships)

• Men are more likely to help strangers in emergency situations

  • • For example, men are more likely to help w/flat tire or in dangerous situation (short-term, strangers)

Gender differences in receiving help

• • Men are more likely to help women than men

• • Women are equally likely to help men and women

  • Women not only receive more help from men, but, due to how men are socialized, women also tend to seek more help

Individuals are more likely to help members of ___

their in group

similarity can impact wheather we decide to act in order to help someone

• People who are in a good mood are more likely to help

  • Good moods can increase helping for three reasons:

• 1. Good moods make us interpret events in a sympathetic way

• 2. Helping another prolongs the good mood

• 3. Good moods increase self-attention and this in turn leads us to be more likely to behave according to our values and beliefs (and most of us value altruism)

• Negative-state relief hypothesis

• that people help in order to alleviate their own sadness and distress; it exemplifies a social exchange approach

Variety of studies show that, when people feel sad, they are more likely to help (e.g., donate money to a charity)

• Pluralistic ignorance

• the phenomenon whereby bystanders assume that nothing is wrong in an emergency because no one else looks concerned

This greatly interferes with the interpretation of the event as an emergency and therefore reduces helping

Situational Determinants of Prosocial Behavior:

Social Loafing

• The tendency of individuals to exert less effort when working toward a common goal in a group than when individually accountable

• Occurs when people pool their efforts to achieve a common goal

Situational Determinants of Prosocial Behavior:

Diffusion of Responsibility

• In a large group of people, people may feel that individual responsibility to intervene is lessened because it is shared by all of the onlookers

• Occurs when responsibility for a task is spread across all members of the group so individual accountability is lessened

Situational Determinants of Prosocial Behavior:

Bystander Effect

• Posits the probability of a person's helping in an emergency is greater when there are no other bystanders than when there are other bystanders

  • The probability of helping decreased as the responsibility for helping was diffused across more participants

• Each bystander’s sense of responsibility to help decreases as the number of witnesses increases

  • This results in a reduction of helping

---

EXAMPLE: Kitty Genovese murder (1964)

• When returning home from work late one night Kitty Genovese was attacked and murdered in front of her apartment building

• At least 38 neighbors heard her cries for help but no one intervened and police were not called until the victim died

• INCIDENT EXAMPLE:  In 2008, a nineteen-year-old Florida boy told people on an online body building forum he frequented that he intended to commit suicide, and he posted a link to the live feed from his webcam in the forum, so they could watch

• More than 1500 people viewed the scene, but none intervened until a seventeen- year-old forum member in India finally was able to alert the Miami police

• By then, however, it was too late and the boy was dead

• This is one way in which bystander effects play out rather differently online, where ambiguity is heightened

• STUDY: researchers examined sharing patterns in 333 yahoo groups w/ almost 200k members by posting a simple query to each group that said:

  • I'm so happy that I found this group. However, I have one question: Does anyone know how I can upload more than one picture at once. Thanks, Sam

FINDING?

• As the bystander effect predicts, the researchers were most likely to receive a reply from someone in the small groups, with fewer than 100 members

STUDY - bystander effect in online disucssion forum w/o a response yet

• As the bystander effect predicts, the subjects who thought they were the only bystander in the forum were much more likely to respond to one or more of the messages, compared with subjects who thought there were thirty other people online

• • The subjects with red names who thought they were in a forum with thirty other people were more likely to respond to one of the messages, compared with those who thought they were the only bystander

  • • Their names in red seemed to make them feel as if they stood out in the crowd and were more accountable

• WITH A WEBCAM

  • Researchers found the same results

  • Bystander effect was reversed when subjects thought the big audience in forum may be watching = more accountable w/reputation at stake

  • This supports the theory that people sometimes decide to behave in a prosocial way after weighing the relative costs and rewards

STUDY RESULT: how did mood of using facebook affect people

• The researchers found that the more subjects used Facebook during one time period, the worse they felt when they answered the next text message

• Could be due to comparison!

whats the FINDING?

• STUDY: 2014 experiment, researchers at Facebook manipulated news feeds of more than 600,000 Facebook users such that some saw more of the posts from friends that contained positive words (“love,” “happy,” “joy”), and others saw more posts that contained more negative words (“sad,” “annoyed,” “worthless”)

• The randomly assigned users who saw more positive news about friends began adding more positive words to their own status updates, and the opposite was true for those who saw more negative posts

how anonymity does or does not foster pro social behaviours

• The lack of accountability = decreased likelihood for prosocial behaviours 

• Decreasing sense of anonymity fosters more prosocial behaviours even if the decreased sense of anonymity is only implied

what is a microvolunteer?

why do we use it?

is someone who completes small, bite-sized, low-commitment volunteer tasks—usually online or through mobile apps—that take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes of spare time.

Smaller ask = bigger chance of people participating in prosocial behaviour

• Examples include signing a digital petition, proofreading a short document for a non-profit, tagging images for scientific research, or sharing a charity campaign on social media.

How does online helping behavior differ from face-to-face helping when people are short on time?

Online communication is asynchronous, allowing people to help in small "micro time slots" at their own convenience rather than being stopped by immediate time pressure.

What primarily motivates microvolunteers compared to traditional volunteers?

Microvolunteers are driven by convenience and enjoyment while filling spare time, whereas traditional volunteers are motivated more by altruism toward a specific charity.

gender differences in helping in online situations

in what situations are men more likely to help?

• • Men help more than women do in situations that involve traditional male behaviors

  • • For example, men are more likely than women to provide technical expertise, and many formalize it by staffing the help channels and discussion groups in their free time

• • Requests for technical assistance are some of the most common kinds of help calls on the internet, and most are answered by males

• WOMEN: may be more likely to help on the internet may be in the support groups in which people are sharing personal problems

STUDY: gender effect of how many ppl contribute/help on wikepedia

whats the FINDING?

• 80% of editors are men bc content subjects are of more interest to men

• BUT most active women on the site made much larger revisions in artciles they edited compared to active men

are people more willing to help others they think are more like themseleves

YES!

in a situation where they have not met in person, who would judgements of similarities be made?

judgments about similarity might rely more on a convergence of attitudes and interests

•  they may not have very accurate information about people online whom they haven't met in person

How does similarity among Facebook friends affect relationship closeness and prosocial behavior?

Higher similarity in beliefs, interests, and mutual friends leads to stronger emotional closeness, more frequent contact, and an increased willingness to perform extreme prosocial acts (like donating a kidney).

How do niche online communities foster similarity and prosocial connections across distances?

Online spaces signal shared interests by name alone, allowing people with rare or specific hobbies to easily find like-minded peers and bond over shared attitudes regardless of location.

how does mood motivate prosocial behaviour

why is it concerning online?

• positive moods drive prosocial behaviours 

  • The inverse is also true! → negative moods or affective states (like anger, sadness, anxiety) are also predictive of willingness to participate in antisocial behaviors

  • Why this is concerning for online environments

    • Correlation between overall mood and time spent on social media → more time on screens/phones = more negative affective state (more reports of anxiety, numbness, disaffectedness etc)