PRO_SOCIAL behavior

Helping behavior and recipient reactions

• Helping or prosocial behavior is any act that benefits others.

• The term is applied to acts that do not provide any direct benefit to the
person who performs the act and may even involve some degree of risk.

• Helping behavior or prosocial behavior includes acts such as sharing,

donating, comforting, cooperating, and rescuing. These actions may be
motivated by empathy (the ability to understand and share the feelings of
another) and by concern about the welfare and rights of others, as well as
for practical concerns.
• Evidence suggests that prosociality is central to the well-being of social
groups and empathy is a strong motive in eliciting prosocial behavior.

• The term altruism is sometimes used interchangeably with prosocial

behavior, but altruism is an unselfish concern for the welfare of others.

• Altruism refers to prosocial behaviors that are carried out without the
expectation of obtaining an external reward (concrete reward or social
reward) or internal reward (self-reward).
Perspectives on helping behaviour
• 1. Reciprocity-Reciprocal Altruism: A basic rule of social life suggests that individuals tend to treat others as these
persons have treated us.

• In choosing between cooperation and competition, we seem to adopt the general rule of reciprocity. When others
cooperate with us and put their selfish interests aside, we usually respond in kind. In contrast, if they defect and
pursue their own interests, we generally do the same.
• Social psychologists have evolved with the theory of reciprocal altruism and suggested that by sharing resources
such as food, organisms increase their chances of survival and, thus, the likelihood that they will pass their genes
on to the next generation.

• Further, they tend to share in such a way that the benefits are relatively great for the recipients of such
cooperation while the costs are relatively minimal to the provider.

• When the situation is reversed, cooperation will again benefit both parties and increase their chances of survival.

• In contrast, organisms that act in a purely selfish manner do not gain such benefits.
• 2.Negative-state relief model: Helping Sometimes Reduces Unpleasant
Feelings: Another possible motive for helping others is, in a sense, the
mirror image of empathy. Instead of helping because we care about the
welfare of another person (empathic concern), understand their feelings
(empathic accuracy), and share them (emotional empathy), we help
because such actions allow us to reduce our own negative emotions. In
other words, we do good thing in order to stop feeling bad.

• In other words, prosocial behavior can act as a self-help undertaking to

reduce one’s negative affect.

• For instance, you engage in a prosocial act primarily as a way to improve

your own negative mood. In this kind of situation, unhappiness leads to
prosocial behavior, and empathy is not a necessary component.
• 3.Empathy-Altruism-It Feels Good to Help Others: The suggestion that
some prosocial acts are motivated solely by the desire to help someone in
need. The powerful feeling of empathy provides validating evidence to the
individual that he or she must truly have the other person’s welfare. The
person provides help simply because the victim needs help and because it
feels good to provide help.

• The motivation to help can be sufficiently strong that the individual who
provides help is willing to engage in unpleasant, dangerous, and
life-threatening activity.

• 4.Empathy-joy Hypothesis: The view that suggests that helping stems from
the positive reactions recipients show when they receive help (e.g., gifts),
and the positive feelings this, in turn, induces in helpers.
• 5.Genetic Determinism Model: Kin Selection Theory: Helping Ourselves by
Helping People Who Share Our Genes

• A very different approach to understanding prosocial behavior is offered

by the kin selection theory. From an evolutionary perspective, a key goal
for all organisms— including us—is getting our genes into the next
generation. Support for this general prediction has been obtained in
many studies, suggesting that, in general, we are more likely to help
others to whom we are closely related than people to whom we are not
related. For example, Burnstein, Crandall, and Kitayama (1994) conducted
a series of studies in which participants were asked whom they would
choose to help in an emergency. As predicted on the basis of genetic
similarity, participants were more likely to say they would help a close
relative than either a distant relative or a non-relative.
• 5. Social Exchange Theory: According to the social-exchange theory,
people help because they want to gain goods from the one being
helped. People calculate rewards and costs of helping others, and aim
at maximizing the former and minimizing the latter, which is known
as a "minimax strategy” (philosophy for minimizing the possible loss
or alternatively, it can be thought of as maximizing the minimum gain
(maximin or MaxMin).

• Rewards are incentives, which can be materialistic goods, or social

reward which can improve one' s image and reputation (e.g. praise)
or self-reward.

• Rewards are either external or internal. External rewards are

obtained from others when helping them, for instance, friendship and
gratitude. People are more likely to help those who are more
attractive or important, whose approval is desired.
• Internal rewards are generated by oneself when helping, for example, sense
of goodness and self-satisfaction. When seeing someone in distress, one
would empathize the victim and are aroused and distressed.

• We may choose to help in order to reduce the arousal and distress.

• Preceding helping behavior, people consciously calculate the benefits and

costs of helping and not helping, and they help when the overall benefit of
helping outweigh the cost.
• A major cultural difference in helping behavior is the difference between
"collectivism and individualism ". Collectivists attend more to the needs and
goals of the group they belong to, and individualists focus on their own
selves. With such contrast, collectivists would be more likely to help the
in-group members, but less frequent than individualists to help strangers.
• ✓Thus, prosocial behaviors occurs because such actions increase
positive affect or decease negative affect.

• ✓People engage in helpful behavior either because it feels good or

because it makes one feel less bad.

• ✓The emotion that is elicited by performing a prosocial act is

sometimes labelled helper’s high- a feeling of calmness, self-worth,
and warmth.
 Factors Influencing Prosocial Behavior
• 1. Situational factors:
• a)The bystander effect: Responding to an Emergency: The fact that the likelihood of a
prosocial response to an emergency is affected by the number of bystanders who are
present.
• As the number of bystanders increases, the probability that anyone bystander will help
decreases and the amount of time that passes before help occurs increases.
• For example, when someone drops a stack of papers on a crowded sidewalk, most people
are likely to continue passing him/her by. This example can be extended to even more
urgent situations, such as a car crash or natural disaster.
• The decision model of bystander intervention noted that whether or not an individual gives
aid in a situation depends upon their analysis of the situation.

• An individual will consider whether or not the situation requires their assistance, if the
assistance is the responsibility of the individual, and how to help.
• b)Attraction: A bystander’s attraction toward a victim increases the probability of
a prosocial response if the individual needs help.

• ➢Appearances or a physically attractive victim receives more help than an

unattractive one.

• ➢It is surprising to learn that bystanders are more likely to help a victim who is
similar to themselves than one who is dissimilar.

• c) Attribution: Help is not given as freely if a bystander assumes that “the victim is
to blame.”
• d) Prosocial models: In an emergency situation, it is indicated that the presence of
fellow bystanders who fail to respond inhibits helpfulness. It is equally true,
however, that the presence of a helpful bystander provides a strong social model,
and the result is an increase in helping behavior among the remaining bystander.

• In addition to prosocial models in the real world, helpful models in the media also
contribute to the creation of a social norm that encourages prosocial behavior.
• 2. Individual factors: Social and individual standards and ideals also
motivate individuals to engage in prosocial behavior. Factors such as
social responsibility norms (A societal rule that tells people they should
help others who need help even if doing so is costly) and social
reciprocity norms (it is the expectation that people will respond
favorably to each other by returning benefits for benefits. The
expectation is common in many interpersonal encounters and
relationships.

• As an example, consider the child who is positively reinforced for

"sharing" during their early childhood years. When acting prosocially,
individuals reinforce and maintain their positive self-images or personal
ideals, as well as help to fulfill their own personal needs.
• Another important psychological determinant of prosocial behavior is
someone’s personal or moral norm.

• A possible explanation is that when prosocial behaviors such as

donating take place in a private setting (in the absence of any
exogenous social pressure), the behavior is more likely to be guided
by internal moral considerations.

• It should be noted that social and moral norms are closely related
because social groups deliver standards for what is viewed as right or
wrong, it is over time, when social norms have been internalized that
they become a personal moral norm operating independently of any
immediate social context.
• c) Motivational factors: This indicates three major motives relevant
when a person is faced with moral dilemmas:

• i) self-interest(sometimes called egoism): it is an exclusive concern

with one's own personal needs and welfare rather than with the
needs and welfare of others;

• ii) moral integrity: it is the motivation to be moral and actually engage

in moral behavior and;

• iii) moral hypocrisy: behavior that is designed to appear moral but

that satisfies individual’s own needs and desires.