Developing individual in society Lecture 21: 10/05/2021 Prosocial Behaviour Lecturer: Annemieke van Den Tol Prosocial behaviour: Acts valued positively by society. - Behaviour with positive social consequences and contributes to physical and mental well-being of another person. o Such as altruism, bystander intervention, charity, cooperation, friendship, helping, rescue, sacrifice, sharing, sympathy and trust. o Contrast to anti-social behaviour. Helping: An intentional act that benefits another living being or group. - Intention does not need to be prosocial or benefit others. Can also be strategic or anti-social when the intention is not to benefit others. o Such as when managing a social image. o Or showing that others incompetent. Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. - Empathetic concern, feelings of warmth, having compassion for a person in need and being soft-hearted. o Empathic concern increases help-giving behaviour. Altruism: An intentional act that is motivated by the desire to benefit another rather than oneself. - Having the intention to benefit does not necessarily mean the other will actually benefit. It is tough to determine if pure altruism truly exists. - Experiments show that seeing one in distress increases arousal, helping lowers this arousal. - Helping can make someone feel good about themselves and reduce feeling worse afterwards. - People may also be motivated by expectations of reciprocity. However, some argue it does exist. - Empathic concern increases help giving behaviour even in the absence of expected arousal reduction. - Prosocial behaviour is even observed between species, indicating it might be a genetic trait, later softened to be a communicative gene.
‘Kitty Genovese' murder - NYC, 1964. - Kitty is attacked by a man with a knife on her way home from work late at night. - Screamed for help, but no one called the police or helped. - Half an hour after her death the police were called. - Later, 28 people admitted to hearing her scream. Bystander effect: - Research shows people are less likely to help when in a group than when alone ftor pointed out as a helper). This is due to: Diffusion of responsibility: The more people around us, the less likely we feel that we are responsible. o Audience inhibition: People don't want to overreact or make a social blunder. o Social influence: People are programmed to conform, meaning that if others are not worried, why should they be? When are people likely to help? - When helping is perceived as high reward, low cost. - When people perceive a higher similarity between themselves and the person needing help. - When the reason for needing help is not due to the persons own doing. - When there is communication between bystanders. - When the helper has high levels of empathy as a trait or as a state. As well as when: - The situation causes more psychological or physiological arousal. - More weight to genetics in life or death situations. - More weight to needing help in mundane situations. - When the