Social Psychology
David Myers
10e
Copyright 2010 McGraw-Hill Companies
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Chapter Twelve
• Helping
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Why Do We Help?
• Social Exchange
– Theory that human interactions are transactions
that aim to maximize one’s rewards and minimize
one’s costs
• Rewards
– Internal
– External
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Why Do We Help?
• Social Exchange
– Internal rewards
• Reduction of guilt (Feel bad-do good)
• Exceptions to the feel bad-do good scenario
– Effect occurs only with people whose attention is on others
• Feel good, do good
– Positive mood can dramatically boost helping
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Why Do We Help?
• Social Norms
– Reciprocity norm
• Expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who
have helped them
• Helps define the social capital
– Supportive connections, information flow, trust, and
cooperative actions—that keep a community healthy
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Why Do We Help?
• Social Norms
– Social-responsibility norm
• Expectation that people will help those needing help
– Gender and receiving help
• Women offer help equally to males and females
• Men offer more help when the persons in need are
women
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Why Do We Help?
• Evolutionary Psychology
– Kin protection
• Genetic relatedness predicts helping
– Kin selection
» Idea that evolution has selected altruism toward one’s
close relatives to enhance the survival of mutually shared
genes
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Why Do We Help?
• Evolutionary Psychology
– Reciprocity
• Predicted by genetic self-interest
• Works best in small isolated groups
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Comparing and Evaluating Theories of
Helping
Table 12.1
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Why Do We Help?
• Genuine Altruism
– Our willingness to help is influenced by selfserving and selfless considerations
• Empathy
– Vicarious experience of another's feelings
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Egoistic and Altruistic
Routes to Helping
Figure 12.4
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When Will We Help?
• Number of Bystanders
– Noticing
• We are less likely to notice a situation if we are not
alone
– Interpreting
• Illusion of transparency
• Bystander effect
– Finding that a person is less likely to provide help when there
are other bystanders
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When Will We Help?
• Number of Bystanders
– Assuming responsibility
• Responsibility diffusion
– Revisiting research ethics
• After protecting participants’ welfare, social
psychologists fulfill their responsibility to society by
giving us insight into our behavior
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When Will We Help?
• Helping When Someone Else Does
– Prosocial models do promote altruism
• Elevation
• Similarity
– We tend to help those whom we perceive as being
similar to us
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Who Will Help?
• Personality Traits
– Individual differences
– Network of traits
• Positive emotionality
• Empathy
• Self-efficacy
– Particular situations
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Who Will Help?
• Religious Faith
– Predicts long-term altruism, as reflected in
volunteerism and charitable contributions
• Surveys confirm the correlation between faith
engagement and volunteering
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How Can We Increase Helping?
• Reduce Ambiguity, Increase Responsibility
– Personalizing bystanders
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Personal request
Eye contact
Stating one’s name
Anticipation of interaction
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How Can We Increase Helping?
• Guilt and Concern for Self-Image
– Door-in-the-face technique
• Strategy for gaining a concession
– After someone first turns down a large request, the same
requester counteroffers with a more reasonable request
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How Can We Increase Helping?
• Socializing Altruism
– Teaching moral inclusion
• Moral exclusion
– Perception of certain individuals or groups as outside the
boundary within which one applies moral values and rules of
fairness
• Moral inclusion
– Regarding others as within one’s circle of moral concern
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How Can We Increase Helping?
• Socializing Altruism
– Modeling altruism
• Prosocial TV models
– Learning by doing
• Helpful actions promote the self-perception that one is
caring and helpful, which in turn promotes further
helping
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How Can We Increase Helping?
• Socializing Altruism
– Attributing helpful behavior to altruistic motives
• Overjustification effect
– Result of bribing people to do what they already like doing;
they may then see their actions as externally controlled rather
than intrinsically appealing
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How Can We Increase Helping?
• Socializing Altruism
– Learning about altruism
• Can prepare people to perceive and respond to others’
needs
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