Prosocial Behaviour

Prosocial Behavior

Prosocial behavior is any behavior that benefits someone else, including cooperative, affectionate, and helpful actions. Altruism is a costly type of prosocial behavior driven by a desire to help others, often linked to empathy.

Development of Prosocial Behavior in Children

Early psychologists, such as Freud and Piaget, viewed children as primarily antisocial. However, research indicates that children as young as 13-20 months show empathic concern, increasing with age. Prosocial behaviors like sharing and hugging also increase as children mature. Instrumental helping is more common than empathic or altruistic helping in young children. Mother's and father's warmth are associated with increased prosocial behavior in children. Genetic factors account for approximately 45% of individual differences in prosocial behavior; 25% of the differences in empathy depend on genetic factors.

Stages of Empathy Development (Hoffman)

• Global Empathy (1st year): Infant matches others' emotions.
• Egocentric Empathy (12-18 months): Child consoles others with what they find comforting.
• Empathy for Feelings (2-3 years onward): Child notes, matches, and responds to feelings in non-egocentric ways.
• Empathy for Life Conditions (Late childhood): Child responds to general life situations.

Theories of Prosocial Behavior

Evolutionary Perspective

Individuals are motivated to ensure their genes survive. Key concepts:

• Inclusive fitness: Natural selection favors organisms maximizing gene replication.
• Kin selection: Organisms favor offspring and genetically related individuals.

The interdependence hypothesis suggests altruism developed from mutualistic collaboration.

Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis vs. Negative-State Relief Model

• Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis (Batson): Empathy leads to altruistic motivation to increase another person's welfare.
• Negative-State Relief Model (Cialdini): Prosocial behavior stems from egoism; helping others relieves our own distress. People walk away to alleviate distress.

Societal Norms

Societies have norms promoting fairness. Third-party punishment can reduce selfishness and increase cooperation.

Cultural Influences on Altruism

Collectivistic cultures emphasize group needs, resulting in children often having family responsibilities that foster altruism. Individualistic cultures emphasizes competition and personal success which reduces cooperation and altruism.

Encouraging Prosocial Behavior in Children

Parents can promote prosocial behavior by providing clear guidelines, emotional convictions, parental modeling, and empathic/warm parenting. Genetic factors and parental negativity are associated with prosociality.

Television and Video Games

Watching prosocial television is associated with increased prosocial behavior, but causality isn't proven. Playing prosocial video games increases prosocial emotions and behaviors, while reducing aggressive behavior.

The Bystander Effect

The bystander effect is the phenomenon where individuals are less likely to help a victim when other bystanders are present due to diffusion of responsibility. However, if bystanders know each other, the likelihood of help increases.

Factors Influencing Bystanders’ Behavior

• Similarity to victim
• Victim deserving help
• Reluctance to get involved in strangers' lives
• What the bystander was doing before the incident
• Bystanders with relevant skills

Providing information about factors inhibiting helping behavior can increase bystander intervention.

Arousal: Cost-Reward Model

Bystanders go through five stages before deciding whether to help:

1. Becoming aware of need for help.
2. Experience of arousal.
3. Interpreting cues and labeling their state of arousal.
4. Working out rewards and costs.
5. Making a decision and acting on it.

Dangers in situations are recognised faster as real emergencies (Stage 1), which produces heightened arousal (Stage 2), which is then interpreted as indicating a serious emergency (Stage 3).

• Costs of helping: Physical harm, delay in other activities.
• Costs of not helping: Ignoring responsibility, guilt, criticism.
• Rewards of helping: Praise, satisfaction.
• Rewards of not helping: Continuing activities.