Prosocial Behavior Flashcards

Starter Activity

  • Is there safety in numbers?
  • PS1105
  • Topic: Prosocial Behaviour
  • Dr Tessa Webb
  • tmw3@le.ac.uk

Learning Aims

  • By the end of the lecture on prosocial behaviour you should be able to use the material covered to:
    • Describe the case of Kitty Genovese (as originally told) and its place in the wider scheme of research into prosocial behaviour
    • Define general key terms for the topic area
    • Identify theories for the motives underlying prosocial behaviour, specifically the role of genetics and empathy
    • Explain what determines whether we’ll help, specifically:
      • Arousal and cognitive processes as described in Piliavin’s Bystander calculus model, covering the costs of helping (and not helping).
      • How we use other people’s responses to a situation, covered in Latane & Darley’s Bystander Model (including describing the experimental evidence supporting it).
    • Define the 3 key processes that contribute to bystander apathy
    • And finally, how individual differences (gender and where people are from) affect helping behaviour
    • Suggest how helping behaviour can be increased (based on experimental findings)

Lecture Overview

  • Kitty Genovese
  • Motives underlying prosocial behaviour
  • Determinants of prosocial behaviour
    • What is the cost of helping?
    • The bystander effect
    • Why do some people help more than others?
  • Increasing helping behaviour

The Case That Started It All

  • Apathy?
  • Dehumanisation?
  • Moral callousness?
  • Indifference?

Defining Terms

  • Prosocial behaviour: positive social consequences, voluntary
  • Helping behaviour: intentional
  • Altruism: selfless, no reward

Genetics and Helping Behavior

  • Tendency to help based on degree of kinship (Burnstein et al., 1994)
  • Graph showing tendency to help (4 point scale) relative to degree of kinship (One-half, One-quarter, One-eighth)
  • Separate lines for sick/everyday and healthy/everyday scenarios

The Role of Empathy

  • Empathy: an emotional response to someone else’s distress
  • Helping involves identifying what someone else is going through

How Much Does ‘Helping’ Cost?

  • Bystander calculus model (Piliavin et al. 1981)
  • Physiological responses + cognitive processes = helping behavior
  • Physiological arousal
    • High arousal -> likely to help
  • Labelling the arousal
    • Empathy? Distress?
  • Evaluating the consequences
    • Time & effort

How Much Does ‘Helping’ Cost? - Empathy vs. Personal Costs

  • Empathy costs of not helping vs. Personal costs of not helping
  • Factors considered:
    • Clear emergency?
    • Severe emergency?
    • How close am I?
    • How similar am I?

Bystander Calculus Model and the Kitty Genovese Story

  • Think about:
    • Physiological arousal level
    • Label the arousal
    • Evaluate potential consequences
    • Costs of not helping?
  • What calculation does it predict?

The Bystander Effect

  • Deciding whether or not to help in Latané and Darley’s cognitive model
  • Source: based on data from Latané & Darley (1970)

Latane & Darley’s (1970) Decision Model of Helping

  • A lot of opportunities NOT to help!
  • Flowchart showing the decision process for helping, with multiple decision points leading to either helping or not helping

Latane & Darley - Where There's Smoke There's Fire

  • 3 conditions:
    • Alone
    • 2 strangers
    • 2 confederates

Percentage of Participants Reporting Fire

  • Condition 1: Participant is ALONE - 75%
  • Condition 2: Participant + 2 other participants (all strangers + all naïve to the experiment) - 38%
  • Condition 3: Participant + 2 confederates (strangers to participant + purposely ignoring the fire) - 10%

Conclusion: Presence of Others Is Important!

  • Condition 1: Participant is ALONE
  • Condition 2: Participant + 2 other participants (all strangers + all naïve to the experiment)
  • Condition 3: Participant + 2 confederates (strangers to participant + purposely ignoring the fire)
  • No. of participants
  • Time taken to report

3 Key Processes That Contribute to Bystander Apathy

  • Diffusion of responsibility
  • Audience inhibition
  • Social influence
  • If alone we accept responsibility
  • Don’t want to ‘over-react’ (and look silly)!
  • If others are passive our assessment is ‘this is not an emergency’

Gender and Helping

  • Insufficient research on gender identity and helping
  • Social role theory
    • Women are less likely to initiate interactions with (male) strangers
    • Women are more empathetic than men
  • BUT….
  • GRIP theory
    • Croft et al (2021)
    • Gender roles inhibit prosocial behaviour
  • Are men more likely to help women than women are to help men?

Bright Lights, Big City….No Help?

  • Effect of population level on willingness to help a stranger
  • Source: based on data from Amato (1983)

How Can Helping Be Increased?

  • Raise awareness of barriers to helping (Beaman et al., 1978)
  • If you don’t act – probably no-one else will
  • Caveat: People may not always want to be helped
  • Saw a lecture about Bystander Effect: ~45% helped later
  • Saw an unrelated lecture <25% helped later