Prosocial Behavior Notes

Prosocial Behavior

• Definition: Behavior intended to increase or improve the welfare of another.
• Originally termed "helping behavior."
• Psychologists have identified various prosocial motivations.

When Do We Help?

• Five-Step Process:
  1. Notice a potential need situation: The observer's attention must be drawn to someone in need.
  2. Perceive need: The observer must recognize that the person is in need, identifying a discrepancy between their current and ideal state of well-being.
  3. Assume responsibility: The observer must believe they are responsible for providing help.
     • Diffusion of responsibility: Factors that reduce an observer's belief that they are responsible for helping, such as multiple bystanders or an ambiguous situation.

Darley & Latane (1968) Experiment

• Purpose: To study diffusion of responsibility.
• Participants: 52 male and female college students.
• Cover Story: Investigation of personal problems faced by students in a high-pressure urban environment.
• Conceptual Variables:
  • Number of bystanders aware of a need situation (none, few, many).
  • Helping.
• Operational Variables:
  • Number of other ostensible participant witnesses (0 vs. 1 vs. 4) aware of a person experiencing a seizure.
  • Percentage of participants and their speed of leaving the cubicle to help.
• Procedure:
  • Participants were told the study was about understanding personal problems in a high-pressure urban environment.
  • To ensure anonymity, participants communicated over an intercom, and the experimenter did not listen in.
  • Participants discussed problems in turn, with only one microphone activated at a time.
  • A "victim" spoke first, mentioning difficulty adjusting to the city and studies, and hesitantly mentioned suffering from seizures.
  • Each of the "other bystanders" and the actual participant spoke about their problems.
  • The victim then simulated a seizure.
• Results:
  • The percentage of participants leaving their room to help increased as the number of other witnesses decreased.
  • A similar pattern was observed for the speed of leaving the room.

Continuing the Five-Step Process:

• Motivation to help: Observers experience various motivations to either help or not help.
• Decision to help: The combined influence of these motivations leads to a decision to help (or not).

Why Do We Help: Egoism

• Egoism: Motivation driven by the ultimate goal of increasing one's own welfare.

  • Self and Public Punishments: Helping to avoid personal feelings of guilt or public consequences (e.g., reputation damage).

  • Self and Public Rewards: Helping to gain personal rewards (e.g., feelings of pride) or public rewards (e.g., increased reputation, material gains).

  • Negative-State Relief: Helping to improve one's own mood.

  • Vicarious Joy: Helping to experience the positive emotions of someone whose welfare is improved.

  • Oneness: Helping another person to benefit aspects of the self perceived in them.

  • Aversive-Arousal Reduction: Helping to reduce unpleasant feelings caused by witnessing another's need.

Why Do We Help: Altruism

• Altruism: Motivation driven by the ultimate goal of increasing another's welfare.

• The empathy-altruism hypothesis: Feeling empathic concern (e.g., compassion, sympathy, tenderness) leads to an altruistic motivation to benefit the other.

  • Considerations include the unintended consequences of helping.

  • Motivational pluralism.

Batson et al. (1981) Experiment

• Purpose: Testing the empathy-altruism hypothesis.
• Participants: 44 female college students.
• Cover Story: Study investigating impression formation under stressful conditions.
• Conceptual variables:
  • Empathic concern (low vs. high).
  • Difficulty of escape from the need situation (easy vs. difficult).
  • Helping.
• Operational Variables:
  • Similarity information (person in need has similar values/preferences vs. dissimilar values/preferences).
  • Number of trials of shock participant must view if decision is not to help (2 more vs. 10 more).
  • Volunteering to complete shock trials for the person in need (yes vs. no) and how many trials.
• Procedure:
  • Participants completed a prescreen measure to assess values and preferences.
  • Participants were told it was a study looking at task performance and impression formation under stressful conditions.
  • One participant would make impressions of the other while the other was the worker.
  • The impression participant would view the worker performance over closed-circuit television.
  • The participant always drew the impression role while the ostensible participant always drew the worker role.
  • Participants watched the worker react progressively worse to shocks, and after trial 2, the worker requests a drink of water.
  • The experimenter returned and asked if the observer would be willing to complete trials for her; the researcher explained that the choice was up to them, and they would have to watch either two more trials or ten more trials.
• Results:
  • A higher percentage of participants agreed to complete shock trials (and a higher number of trials) in both similarity conditions and in the difficult escape/dissimilar condition.
  • The pattern was more consistent with the empathy-altruism hypothesis prediction than the aversive-arousal reduction prediction.

Other Motivations for Helping

• Collectivism: Motivation with the ultimate goal of increasing the welfare of a group.
• Principlism: Motivation with the ultimate goal of upholding a moral principle.

Table 12.1: Prosocial Motivations for Helping and Their Ultimate Goals

Evolutionary Origins of Prosocial Behavior

• Evolutionary Psychology: A sub-discipline of psychology that seeks to understand how mental processes and behavior develop within species as responses to reproductive challenges.
• Adaptation: A mechanism originally selected for because it provided a direct reproductive advantage for individuals of the species.
• Exaptation: A mechanism originally selected for one type of reproductive advantage but later provides reproductive advantage for a different reason.
• Functionless byproduct: A mechanism that serves no reproductive advantage but is a byproduct of an adaptation.
• Spandrel: A mechanism that was originally a functionless byproduct but then comes to provide reproductive advantage for individuals of the species.

Adaptation Accounts for Helping Behavior

• Reciprocal altruism: Helping mechanism produces a cost to the individual but long-term reproductive advantage.
• Kin selection: Helping mechanism produces a cost to the individual but provides reproductive advantage to closely related individuals.
• Group selection: Helping mechanism provides a cost to the individual but provides reproductive advantage by promoting the individual’s group (more controversial).

Benefits of Helping

• Conflicting Findings:
  • Volunteerism is positively associated with higher mental, physical, and subjective well-being.
  • Long-term (informal) caregiving is associated with lower mental, physical, and subjective well-being.
  • Helping in laboratory experiments produces higher mental and subjective well-being than not helping, but only if the helping is voluntary and successful.

Strain-Satisfaction Model of Helper Well-Being (Lishner & Stocks, 2018/2024)

• Helping produces three types of strain for the helper (behavioral, motivational, vicarious), which combine to reduce helper well-being.
• Successful attainment of prosocial motivation goals produces increases in helper well-being through greater feelings of autonomy, competency, and connectedness.
• Helper well-being = amount of satisfaction of prosocial motivation goals – amount of helping strain. This can be expressed as: HelperWellBeing = Satisfaction - Strain