PJ

Helping Behavior: Summary Notes

The Bystander Effect

  • The bystander effect describes the phenomenon where individuals are less likely to help in an emergency when others are present.
  • Diffusion of Responsibility: In a group, individuals feel less personal responsibility to intervene.
  • Ambiguity of the Situation: People look to others to interpret a situation; if others don't react, they may assume no emergency exists.
  • Evaluation Apprehension: Fear of doing something wrong or being negatively evaluated by others can inhibit action.

Environmental Conditions

  • Weather: People are more likely to help on pleasant, sunny days.
  • City Size: Strangers are more likely to receive help in small towns than in large cities.

Time Pressures

  • People are less likely to help if they feel hurried or are under time pressure.
  • Conflict between helping a stranger and keeping an important appointment can reduce helping behavior.

Volunteerism

  • Volunteer activities are planned, sustained, and time-consuming, unlike spontaneous acts of helping strangers.
  • Motives: Personal values, gaining understanding, strengthening social relationships, career advancement, self-protection, and self-enhancement.

Caregiving

  • Most helping occurs in close relationships with family, friends, and coworkers.
  • Gender Roles: Women are often the primary caregivers in families.

The Experience of Receiving Help

  • Reactions to receiving help can be mixed, including happiness, gratitude, discomfort, or resentment.
  • Attribution Theory: People want to understand why they need help and may feel threatened if it implies personal inadequacy.
  • Norm of Reciprocity: Help is appreciated when it can be reciprocated; one-way help can lead to indebtedness and power imbalances.
  • Reactance Theory: People want to maintain freedom of choice and may react negatively to help that feels like a threat to their autonomy.

New Ways to Obtain Help

  • Self-Help Groups: Minimize costs of receiving help through reciprocal helping and shared experiences.
  • Computers: Provide private assistance without judgment or expectation of reciprocity.

Summary

  • Altruism is helping without expecting personal benefit; prosocial behavior includes any act that helps.
  • Evolutionary and sociocultural perspectives explain helping behavior through inherited tendencies and societal norms.
  • Learning perspective emphasizes reinforcement and modeling of prosocial behaviors.
  • Decision-making perspective involves perceiving need, taking responsibility, weighing costs/benefits, and deciding how to intervene.
  • Situational factors like the bystander effect, weather, city size, and time pressure influence helping behavior.
  • Receiving help can impact self-esteem, create indebtedness, and threaten freedom.