Chapter Twelve

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Chapter Twelve

• Helpful Social Behavior

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Types of Helping Behavior

• Prosocial behavior
• any action that provides benefit to others
• casual helping
• emergency helping
• substantial personal helping
• emotional helping

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Altruism vs. Egoism

• Why would people help?
• Egoistic motivation
• we help others to feel good ourselves
• Altruistic motivation
• we help others as an end in itself

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Parameters of Altruism

• Inclusive fitness
• helping as a means of preserving our genetic
  material
• Empathy-altruism hypothesis
• feelings of empathy lead to altruistic behavior?
• feelings of empathy lead to personal distress we
  help to feel better?

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Factors Influencing Helping

• Social norms
• Modeling helpful behavior
• Blaming the victim
• Good mood
• Guilt
• Individual differences

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Norms and Helping

• Norm of social responsibility
• we should help those who are deserving
• Norm of reciprocity
• we should repay a favor with a favor
• Personal norms
• we each have expectations about our behavior in
  particular situations

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Modeling Helpful Behavior

• Exposure to models of helpful behavior can
  influence the likelihood of our own helping
• Modeling has implications for the development of
  helping during childhood

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Blaming the Victim

• We sometimes conclude that a victims unfortunate
  outcomes are due to that victims own behavior
• Just world theory
• humans need to believe that the world is a fair
  and just place
• we therefore sometimes think that bad things
  happen to bad people, and good things happen to
  good people

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Mood and Helping

• The warm glow of a good mood can spark us to help
  others
• Feelings of guilt can spark us to help others

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Individual Differences in Helping

• Individual differences in empathy predict helping
  behavior
• Dimensions of empathy
• perspective taking
• empathic concern
• personal distress
• fantasy generation

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Concept Review
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Volunteerism

• Volunteering your time is an example of
  substantial personal helping
• Motives for volunteerism
• values
• community concern
• understanding
• personal development
• esteem enhancement

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Helping in an Emergency

• A decision tree of helping
• notice the emergency
• interpret it as such
• assume personal responsibility for acting
• choose a strategy
• implement that strategy

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Cultural Differences in Helping

• Individualism-collectivism may play a role in
  influencing helping
• cultural comparisons to Kenya, Mexico, Japan,
  India, and the Phillippines have been made

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The Recipients Negative Reaction to Help

• Norm of reciprocity
• help recipients may find themselves unable to
  reciprocate the help they receive
• Threats to self-esteem
• Attributions
• the attributed cause of the helping may determine
  ones reactions
• Individual differences in gratitude
• some people are more grateful than others

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Concept Review
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The Nature of Social Dilemmas

• Short-term, individual gain can lead to
  long-term, collective loss
• Tragedy of the commons is an example
• grazing, fishing, pollution
• Prisoners dilemma is an example
• weighing cooperation versus competition

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Decision-Making in Social Dilemmas

• Situational labels for a social dilemma influence
  our behavior
• Priming a schema for cooperation or for
  competition influences our behavior
• Social norms for cooperation or competition
  influence our behavior
• Similar models serve as a guide for behavior
• Communication can increase cooperation
• Social value orientation predicts helping

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Concept Review
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Social Support

• Perceiving that social support is available can
  be more beneficial than actual social support
  receipt
• both perceived and actual social support can be
  measured by questionnaires

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Social Support and Health

• Four ways that social support influences health
• informational support
• instrumental support
• companionship support
• emotional support