2nd edition

Part IV. How We Relate to Others

Module 11:
Helping Others

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Module 11: Helping Others

Module Overview

In Module 11 we move away from discussions of aggressive behavior, prejudice and

discrimination covered in preceding modules, and talk about a more positive topic – prosocial

behavior. We start by contrasting prosocial, altruistic, and egotistical behavior and then move to

an evolutionary explanation for prosocial behavior. From this we cover dispositional or personal

reasons why someone may help (or not) to include personal responsibility, time pressures,

personality, self-conscious emotions, religiosity, feeling good, gender, empathy, and egotism.

Next up are situational reasons to include the bystander effect, the decision-making process

related to helping, and social norms. We end with ways to increase helping behavior.

Module Outline

• 11.1. Defining Prosocial Behavior

• 11.2. Why We Help – Dispositional Factors

• 11.3. Why We Help – Situational Factors

• 11.4. Increasing Helping Behavior

Module Learning Outcomes

• Differentiate prosocial, altruistic, and egotistical behavior.

• Clarify if there is an evolutionary precedent for helping behavior.

• Outline dispositional reasons for why people help or do not.

• Outline situational reasons for why people help or do not.

• Strategize ways to increase helping behavior.

11.1. Defining Prosocial Behavior

Section Learning Objectives

• Define prosocial behavior.

• Clarify the difference with altruistic behavior.

• Contrast prosocial and egotistical behavior.

• Explain how evolutionary psychology might approach the development of helping

• Differentiate kin selection and reciprocal altruism.

11.1.1. Defining Terms

As a child, most of us learn to help an old lady across the street. First responders

feverishly work to free trapped miners. Soldiers risk their own safety to pull a wounded comrade

off the battlefield. Firefighters and police officers rush inside a burning building to help rescue

trapped residents all while cognizant of the building’s likelihood to collapse on them. People pull

over to help a stranded motorist or one involved in a car accident. And normal everyday people

make tough decisions to take a little less of a valued commodity or give a little more so a public

good can be provisioned. These are all examples of what is called prosocial behavior. Simply

put, prosocial behavior is any act we willingly take that is meant to help others, whether the

‘others’ are a group of people or just one person. The key is that these acts are voluntary and not

forced upon the helper. The motive for the behavior is not important. This is different from

altruistic behavior, in which we choose to help another person voluntarily and with no

expectation of reward or acknowledgement. If we make a life saving organ or blood donation

and ask never to be identified, the act is altruistic. Whereas if we do not mind if the person

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knows, the act would be considered prosocial. The intention of the helping behavior is what is

key.

Likely, the opposite of prosocial behavior is what is called egotistical behavior, or

behavior focused on the self. According to [Link], egotistic refers to behaviors that are

vain, boastful, and selfish. Individuals like to talk about themselves and are indifferent to the

well-being of others. The Merriam-Webster dictionary online adds that egotistical individuals are

overly concerned with their own needs, desires, and interests.

11.1.2. An Evolutionary Precedent for Prosocial Behavior?

So, is the desire to help others an inborn tendency, or is it learned through socialization

by caregivers and our culture? We will first discuss whether helping behavior could be the

product of nature, not nurture. Evolutionary psychology is the subfield of psychology which

uses changes in genetic factors over time due to the principle of natural selection to explain

helping behavior. Charles Darwin noted that behaving in an altruistic way can prevent an

organism from passing on its genes and so surviving. Being selfish pays while altruism does not,

so then why has altruistic/prosocial behavior evolved? In the Descent of Man (1874, 2nd edition),

Darwin writes:

It has often been assumed that animals were in the first place rendered

social, and that they feel as a consequence uncomfortable when separated

from each other, and comfortable whilst together; but it is a more probable

view that these sensations were first developed, in order that those animals

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which would profit by living in society, should be induced to live together,

in the same manner as the sense of hunger and the pleasure of eating were,

no doubt, first acquired in order to induce animals to eat. The feeling of

pleasure from society is probably an extension of the parental or filial

affections, since the social instinct seems to be developed by the young

remaining for a long time with their parents; and this extension may be

attributed in part to habit, but chiefly to natural selection. With those

animals which were benefited by living in close association, the

individuals which took the greatest pleasure in society would best escape

various dangers, whilst those that cared least for their comrades, and lived

solitary, would perish in greater numbers.

Source: [Link]

According to ethologists and behavioral ecologists, altruism takes on two forms.

First, kin selection, also known as inclusive fitness theory, states that any behavior aiding

a genetic relative will be favored by natural selection (Wilson, 2005). Why is that?

Though our own ability to pass our genes to offspring may be compromised, our relative

shares those same genes and so indirectly we are passing on our genes. An example is

putting the welfare of our children ahead of our own. Most would have no issue with this

and I always find it interesting how on an airplane we are reminded that in the event of an

emergency, we should put our own oxygen mask on first before helping others. This

especially relates to our wanting to help our kids but if we are able to get their mask on

before our own, and then we pass out, we really are not helping them at all. It's best then

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to make sure we are conscious and then help them out so that we can be with them in the

event of a crash. Still, it seems selfish to do this in light of kin selection.

Next is reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971) and is the basis for long-term

cooperative interactions. According to it, an organism acts in a way that benefits others at

expense to itself. It does so because it expects that in the future, the recipient of the

altruistic act, who does not have to be related to the altruist, will reciprocate assistance.

An example of this would be a firefighter. They run into burning buildings to save people

at a risk to their own life. They do this with the belief that someone will save them or

their family if they are in the same situation. Another possible example would be anytime

you help someone in need. The belief is that if you are in need someone will help you. As

Ashton et al. (1998) writes, “If the benefits to the recipient of this assistance outweigh the

costs to the benefactor, then interactions of this kind, when reciprocated, result in a long-

run net gain in chances for survival and reproduction for both individuals.” The authors

looked for correlates of kin altruism (selection) and reciprocal altruism and found that for

the former empathy and attachment were important, while for the latter forgiveness and

non-retaliation mattered most. Kin selection was further related to high agreeableness and

low emotional stability while reciprocal altruism (not kin related) was related to high

agreeableness and high emotional stability (Ashton et al., 1998).

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11.2. Why We Help – Dispositional Factors

Section Learning Objectives

• Clarify how a sense of personal responsibility can lead to helping behavior.

• Clarify why being in a rush may reduce helping behavior.

• Provide evidence for or against an altruistic personality.

• Describe how the self-conscious emotions of embarrassment and guilt may affect
helping behavior.

• Clarify whether religiosity is an accurate predictor of helping behavior.

• Describe the effect of mood on helping.

• Clarify whether males or females are more likely to help.

• Explain the role of empathy in helping.

• Clarify whether egotism can lead to helping behavior.

11.2.1. Personal Responsibility

If we sense greater personal responsibility, we will be more likely to help, such as there

being no one else around but us. If we see a motorist stranded on the side of the road on an

isolated country road, and we know no other vehicle is behind us or approaching, responsibility

solely falls on us, and we will be more likely to help. Keep this in mind for when we talk about

diffusion of responsibility in a bit.

11.2.2. Time Pressure – The Costs of Motivated Behavior

Stopping to help someone in need takes time and represents a cost of motivated behavior.

But what if we are in a rush to get to work or an appointment…or to class. Will we stop?

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Research by Batson et al. (1978) says that we will not. In a study utilizing 40 students at a large

midwestern university, participants showed up at one location but were told they had to proceed

to a different building for the study. Half were told they were late and half were told they were

on time. Also, half were told their participation was vital while the other half were told it was not

essential. As you might expect those in the unimportant condition stopped to help a confederate

slumped in a doorway with his head down and coughing and groaning (Darley and Batson, 1973;

Good Samaritan paradigm). Most who were late for their appointment did not stop to help.

11.2.3. An Altruistic Personality?

It would seem logical to assume that personality affects the decision to engage in helping

behavior and we might hypothesize that moral behavior might be related to altruistic behavior.

We would be wrong. In a classic study, Hartshorne and May (1929) found that the correlation of

types of helping behavior and moral behavior was only 0.23 in a sample of 10,000 elementary

and high school children. Subsequent research has also questioned whether such a construct is

viable (Bierhoff & Rohmann, 2004) and Batson (1987) argued that prosocial motivation is

actually egotistical when the goal is to increase one’s own welfare but altruistic when the goal is

to increase the welfare of another person. Kerber (1984) found that those who could be classified

as altruistic did examine the costs-benefits of engaging in helping behavior, though they viewed

these situations as more rewarding and less costly than those low in altruism.

More recently, Dovidio et al. (2006) concluded that there truly is a ‘prosocial personality’

and that differences in the trait vary with the action a specific situation calls for such as rescuing

people who are in danger, to serving as a volunteer, and to helping an individual in distress.

Carlo et al. (2009) point out that gaps in the study of altruism exist and need to be studied to

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include changes in altruistic traits and behaviors over time, how altruism develops in childhood

and adolescence, the biological basis of altruism, and cross-cultural and broader social contextual

factors beyond proximal socializing agents of altruism. They conclude, “A focus on the positive

aspects of human functioning will facilitate the development of more balanced, comprehensive

solutions designed to enhance the personal and environmental factors that promote and foster a

more caring, beneficent, and thriving society” (pg. 289).

11.2.4. Self-Conscious Emotions

We will be more likely to help if we do not expect to experience any type of

embarrassment when helping. Let’s say you stop to help a fellow motorist with a flat tire. If you

are highly competent at changing tires, then you will not worry about being embarrassed. But if

you know nothing about tires, but are highly interpersonally attracted to the stranger on the side

of the road holding a tire iron with a dumbstruck look on their face, you likely will look foolish if

you try to change the tire and demonstrate your ignorance of how to do it (your solution is

usually to call your auto club or AAA when faced with the same stressor).

Guilt can be used to induce helping behavior too. In one study, 90 adults received either a

positive mood induction or no stimulus followed by a guilt induction, a distraction control, or no

stimulus at all. Helping increase in relation to being in a positive mood but also being made to

feel guilty. When the guilt induction followed the positive mood induction, there was no increase

in helping behavior. In a second experiment, guilt was shown to increase helping only when an

obligation to help was stressed (Cunningham, Steinberg, & Grev, 1980).

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11.2.5. Religiosity

Does religious orientation affect prosocial behavior? According to Hansen, Vandenberg,

& Patterson (1995) it does and of the three orientations – intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest –

intrinsically oriented individuals prefer nonspontaneous helping opportunities while quest prefer

spontaneous helping behaviors. Another study found that higher reports of subjective spirituality

were linked to increased prosocial behavior (Bonner, Koven, & Patrick, 2003), though yet

another study found evidence of altruistic hypocrisy such that intrinsic and orthodox religion

were shown to be related to positive views toward helping others but were inversely related to

actual altruistic behavior (Ji, Pendergraft, & Perry, 2006).

Before moving on, it is important to share an interesting article published by NPR in

2016. The article reported the results of a paper by Decety et al. (2015) which showed that in a

sample of 1,151 children aged 5 to 12 and from cities in six different countries (i.e. Chicago,

Toronto, Cape Town, Istanbul, Izmir, Amman, and Guangzhou) children from non-religious

homes were more altruistic than children from Christian and Muslim households. In terms of

religions affiliation, 23.9% of the sample were Christian, 43% were Muslim, and 27.6% were not

religious. Here’s the issue. A re-analysis of the data by Azim Shariff of the University of

California, Irvine, found that the original authors failed to consider variation in altruistic

behavior that was actually accounted for by country and not religious affiliation. He updated the

conclusions and found that country (likely culture) made a difference in altruistic behavior and

not religion. Shariff concluded that religion does make people more generous but it is not the

only factor, or even the best one. Even non-religious people can be motivated to engage in

prosocial behavior.

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To read the article for yourself, please visit:

[Link]

altruism

11.2.6. Feeling Good

It is not surprising to surmise that people in a good mood are more willing to help than

those in a bad mood. Maybe we did well on a test, found $20 on the street, or were listening to

uplifting or prosocial music (Greitmeyer, 2009; North, Tarrant, & Hargreaves, 2004). Though

more of a situational factor, it should be noted that pleasant ambient odors such as the smell of

baking cookies or roasting coffee lead to greater levels of positive affect and subsequent helping

behavior (Baron, 1997).

We might also help because we have a need for approval such as we realize by helping

save the old lady from the burning building, we could get our name in the paper. This of course

could make us feel good about ourselves. Deutsch and Lamberti (1986) found that subjects high

in a need for approval were more likely to help a confederate who dropped books if they had

been socially rewarded and not punished while those low in the need for approval were

unaffected by social reinforcement.

Might a person in a bad mood engage in helping behavior? According to the negative-

state relief model a person might alleviate their own bad mood and feel better. This relieves

their discomfort and improves their mood (Cialdini, Darby, & Vincent, 1973).

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11.2.7. Gender

Would you like to make a hypothesis about which gender is more likely to help? If you

guessed males, you are correct. If you guessed females, you are correct. It all depends on what

the prosocial behavior is. When it comes to being heroic or chivalrous, men are more likely to

help, while nurturant expressions of aid are generally engaged in by women (Eagly & Crowley,

1986). In a 2009 study, Eagly found further evidence for gender differences in relation to classes

of prosocial behaviors. Women specialize in prosocial behaviors that are communal and

relational while men engage in behaviors that are collectively oriented and agentic. The author

proposes that these differences are linked to the division of labor and hormones, individual traits,

and social expectations mediate how these gender roles influence behavior.

11.2.8. Empathy

Before we can understand empathy, we need to distinguish it from sympathy. Sympathy

is when we feel compassion, pity, or sorry for another due to the hardships they have

experienced. Empathy is when we put ourselves in another person’s shoes and vicariously

experience their perspective. In doing so, we can feel sympathy and compassion for them.

Batson proposed the empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson et al., 1991) which states that when

we feel empathy for a person, we will help them for purely altruistic reasons with no concern

about personal gain. If we do not feel empathy for them, then we need to decide whether the

benefits of helping outweigh the costs. In one study, 84 female participants were exposed to a

person in distress and asked to either observe the victim’s reactions (the low empathy condition)

or imagine the victim’s feelings (the high empathy condition). They also assessed how easy it

was for the participant to escape without helping (2 levels – easy or hard). Results showed, and

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in keeping with the empathy-altruism hypothesis, that participants low in empathy helped less

when escape was easy which led the authors to speculate that they were only trying to reduce

their own distress in an egotistical way. Those high in empathy helped no matter how easy

escape was. Analysis of the participants self-reported emotional response showed that feeling

empathy, not distress, evoked altruistic behavior (Toi & Batson, 1982). The link between

personal distress and an egotistic motivation has been found in subsequent research as well

(Batson, Early, & Salvarani, 1997).

11.2.9. An Egotistical Reason to Help?

Another important strategy is called social exchange theory and arose out of the work of

George Homans, John Thibaut, Harold Kelly, and Peter Blau from the late 1950s to the mid-

1960s, though it has undergone revisions since (Cook et al., 2013) to include the addition of

emotion (Lawler, 2001; Lawler & Thye, 1999). It is the idea that we utilize a minimax strategy

whereby we seek to maximize our rewards all while minimizing our cost. Helping can be costly

and so we help only when the gain to us is greater. In social exchange theory, there are no truly

altruistic acts. Consider your decision to donate your time to a charity such as at Thanksgiving.

Maybe you are considering volunteering at a homeless shelter and giving out food to those in

need. You of course will consider the costs of such motivated helping behavior which includes

less time with family, less time grazing at the dinner table, being unable to play or watch

football, and possibly not having the time to do some shopping and get Black Friday deals. Then

there are the benefits of helping which include feeling good about oneself, making a difference in

someone else’s life, giving something back to your community, and possibly logging community

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service hours for your university or fraternity/sorority. If the benefits outweigh the costs, you

volunteer. If not, you don’t.

Or we might help with an expectation of a specific form of repayment, called perceived

self-interest. We offer our boss a ride home because we believe he will give us a higher raise

when our annual review comes up. Maybe we engage in helping behavior to increase our self-

worth. In a way, we have to wonder if it even matters. The recipient of the help is grateful and

without it, may have been much worse off. If I am stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire

and a stranger stops to help me change it, I really don’t care if they are there because they

genuinely want to help or because they want to feel better about themselves.

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11.3. Why We Help – Situational Factors

Section Learning Objectives

• Clarify whether the presence of others either facilitates or hinders helping behavior.

• Outline the five-step process for how we decide whether to help or not.

• Describe the effect of social norms on helping behavior.

11.3.1. Bystander Effect

As we saw in Section 11.2.1, if we are the only one on the scene (or at least one of a very

small few) we will feel personal responsibility and help. But what if we are among a large group

of people who could help. Will you step up then? You still might, but the bystander effect

(Latane & Darley, 1970) says likely not. Essentially, the chances that we will aid someone

needing help decreases as the number of bystanders increases. The phenomenon draws its name

from the murder of Ms. Kitty Genovese in March 1964. Thirty-eight residents of New York City

failed to aid the 28-year-old woman who was attacked and stabbed twice by Winston Moseley as

she walked to her building from her car. Not surprisingly, she called for help which did

successfully scare Winston away, but when no one came out to help her, despite turning on lights

in their apartments and looking outside, he returned to finish what he started. Ms. Genovese later

died from her wounds. Very sad but ask yourself, what would you do? Of course, we would say

we would help….or we hope that we would but history and research say otherwise.

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11.3.2. A Step-by-Step Guide to Helping???

Latane and Darley (1970) proposed that there are a series of five steps we follow when

deciding whether to render assistance or not. These include noticing an event, interpreting an

event as an emergency, assuming responsibility, knowing how to help, and deciding to help.

First, we have to notice that an emergency situation is occurring. This seems simple enough but

is an important first step. Consider Milgram’s (1970) urban overload hypothesis which says

that high levels of urban stimulation can overload people and produce negative effects on their

perception of the city and other residents such that they tune them out. Hence, we may not notice

emergency situations when they are occurring.

Second, we need to interpret the event as an emergency. According to Shotland and

Huston (1979) an emergency is characterized by something happening suddenly such as an

accident, there being a clear threat of harm to a victim, the harm or threat of harm will increase if

no one intervenes, the victim cannot defend or help him/herself, and there is not an easy solution

to the problem for the victim. Ambiguity can make interpretation difficult. Let’s say you are

driving down the road and see someone pulled on the side. You can see them in the front seat but

cannot tell what they are doing. If the situation does not clearly suggest an emergency, you will

likely keep driving. Maybe the person was acting responsibly and pulled over to send a text or

take a call and is not in need of any assistance at all. Latane and Darley (1968) conducted a study

to examine the effects of an ambiguous event on the decision to intervene in an emergency. They

predicted, and found, that the sight of nonresponsive others would lead a participant to perceive

the event as not serious and bring about no action as compared to when there was a solitary

participant in the room.

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Third, when others are around, we experience a diffusion of responsibility (Darley &

Latane, 1968), meaning that we are less likely to assume responsibility. Consider this. If 10

people witness an accident, each person has just 10% responsibility to act. If there are 5 people

present, our responsibility is 20%. If 2, 50% and if we are the only person present, 100%. What

if 100 people witnessed the accident? We have a 1% responsibility. So in keeping with the

bystander effect as the number of people present increase, we will be less likely to act possibly

because we assume less responsibility. To act, we have to feel personally responsible.

The final steps in the Latane and Darley (1970) model involve weighing the costs and benefits to

engaging in helping behavior. We might decide that helping is risky as we could look foolish in

front of other witnesses called audience inhibition (Latane and Nida, 1981) or we might feel

pressured by peers to engage in altruistic behavior such as donating blood or donating money to

charity called reluctant altruism (Reyniers & Bhalla, 2013; Ferguson, Atsma, de Kort, &

Veldhuizen, 2012). Once we have decided to help, we need to figure out what type of assistance

will be most useful.

11.3.3. Social Norms and Culture

Consider the idea of the reciprocity norm (Gouldner, 1960) which states that we

are more likely to survive if we enter into an understanding with our neighbor to help in

times of need. If we help a friend move into their new apartment, we expect help from

this individual when we move our next time. The norm is strongest when we are

interacting with another person of equal status.

The norm of social responsibility, in contrast, states that we should help another

person without any concern about future exchange. For instance, a parent cares for a child
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and a teacher instructs students. We might wonder if there are cultural differences in

regards to this norm, particularly as it relates to collectivist and individualist cultures.

Consider that collectivistic cultures have an interdependent view of the self while

individualistic cultures have an independent view, and so we expect the former to engage

in helping behavior more than the latter. Its not that simple though. Our discussion of in

and out groups in Module 4 and again in Module 9 show that we will be more likely to

help an ingroup member than an outgroup member. How strongly we draw a distinction

between these groups can affect helping behavior. Collective cultures may make a firmer

distinction between in and out groups and so help ingroup members more compared to

individualistic cultures.

11.4. Increasing Helping Behavior

Section Learning Objectives

• Describe how modeling could be used to increase helping behavior.

• Outline reasons to volunteer.

11.4.1. Modeling Helping Behavior

One way to increase prosocial behavior comes from observational learning and the idea

of copying a prosocial model. According to research by Schuhmacher, Koster, and Kartner

(2018) when infants observed a prosocial model, they engaged in more helping behavior than if

they had no model. Schuhmacher states, "These findings tell us that children's prosocial

development may be affected not only by direct and active structuring of helping situations by

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others, as when parents offer suggestions to babies to help someone, but also through learning by

observing people who help others” (See Science Daily for more information on this article -

[Link]

11.4.2. Reasons to Volunteer

Clary and Snyder (1999) proposed five motivations for volunteerism. First, they suggest

that people volunteer due to values and a desire to express or act on values such as

humanitarianism. Second, understanding is critical and people volunteer so that they can

exercise underused skills or learn about the world. Third, enhancement leads us to engage in

volunteer activities so that we can grow and develop psychologically. Fourth, our career may

lead us to volunteer so we gain career-related experience. Fifth is social or volunteering so that

we can strengthen our social relationships. Finally, we volunteer to reduce feelings of guilt or to

escape personal problems as a protective function. The authors used these functions to create the

Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI).

For additional reasons to volunteer, please read the Psychology Today article. Additional reasons

include living longer, benefiting society, and giving a sense of purpose or meaning in life (Klein,

2016).

[Link]

volunteer

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Module Recap

Module 11 covered the important, and more positive topic, of helping behavior. Of

course, though prosocial behavior is generally a good thing, understanding reasons why someone

may willingly choose not to help can be hard to process. We focused on a series of dispositional

and situational factors and then proposed ways to increase helping. With this module now

finished, we end the class on an equally important, and definitely more positive, topic of

attraction.

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