Welcome!
Social Psychology
PSY450
Instructor: Briana Harvey
Prosocial Behavior
Prosocial Behavior:
Doing What’s Best for Others
• What is Prosocial Behavior?
• Cooperation, Forgiveness, Obedience, and Conformity
Oskar Schindler – Holocaust rescues
• Why do humans behave in helpful and cooperative
ways even when it is not in their own self interest to do
so?
What is Prosocial Behavior?
 Doing something good for someone or for
society as a whole
 Builds relationships; allows society to function
 Prosocial Behavior:
1. Helping others
2. Conforming to socially acceptable behavior
3. Cooperating with others
4. Obeying the rules
Why be Prosocial?
• Social status
– I helped, now I’m the leader
• Reciprocity
– You give, I give
• Conformity
– Public compliance
Why be Prosocial?
• Rule of law
– Fairness
• Evolutionary
– Kin-selection
• Altruism
– Selfless good deed
Born to Reciprocate
• Obligation to return in kind what another has done for
us
– The movie “Pay it Forward”
• More likely to accept help if we think we can repay it in
the future
Prosocial Behavior Reciprocation
– Kunz & Woolcott (1976)
– These psychologists send 578 Christmas cards to
random people in the phone book
– Surprisingly:
– Received 117 Christmas cards in return
– Some with notes, some just signed
– 6 people actually confessed to not remembering him!
– “Happy Holidays, stranger....”
Born to Be Fair
• Norms that promote fairness
1. Equity: the idea that each person receives
benefits in proportion to what he or she
contributes
2. Equality: the idea that everyone gets the same
amount
• People desire a system based on fairness and social
exchange
Is reciprocity unique to
humans?
• http://video.ted.com/talk/podcast/2011X/Non
e/FransDeWaal_2011X.mp4
Born to Be Fair
Unfairness
• Underbenefited
– Getting less than you deserve
– Dissonance
• Overbenefited
– Getting more than you deserve
– Guilt
Cooperation
• Each person does their part and works toward a
common goal
• Prisoner’s dilemma
– Forced to choose between competition and
cooperation
– If one of the pair is not cooperative, then
cooperation is typically doomed
• Communication improves cooperation
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Forgiveness
Ceasing to feel angry toward or seek retribution against
someone who has wronged you
• If someone wronged you they owe you a debt
according to theories of reciprocity, fairness, and
equity
• Forgiveness allows good relationships and cooperation
in the future
Forgiveness
“Holding on to anger is
like swallowing poison and
expecting the other
person to die”
Obedience
• Following orders from an authority figure
– Type of prosocial behavior
• Conform to rules under authority = help society
• However: Blind obedience to authority can be
destructive (e.g., Nazi Germany)
Obedience
• Milgram studies(1963)
– Participant told it was a “memory test”
– Really a test on obedience to authority figure
Milgram Studies
• The participants were 40 men recruited using newspaper
ads.
– Each was paid $4.50
• Instructed to “shock” learner in other room every time
they got on answer wrong on memory test
– Shock level increased with each wrong answer
Milgram Obedience Study
 Fake screams of pain from other room
 If subject wanted to stop, authority figure would say:
1. "Please continue."
2. "The experiment requires that you continue."
3. "It is absolutely essential that you continue."
4. "You have no other choice, you must go on."
Milgram studies - Today
Milgram Obedience Study
• More than 65% of participants continued memory test and
delivered the lethal amount of shocks.
Why did they Obey?
• The physical presence of an authority figure
dramatically increased compliance.
• The fact that the study was sponsored by Yale (a trusted
and authoritative academic institution) led many
participants to believe that the experiment must be
safe.
• Participants assumed that the experimenter was a
competent expert.
• The shocks were said to be painful, not dangerous.
Obedience
• Milgram’s research represented obedience as a
negative (negative outcome)
• Without obedience, society would not function
• Obedience fosters
– Social acceptance
– Group life
Conformity
• Going along with the crowd
– Can be prosocial
– Conform to social norms more when others are
watching
– Washing hands in bathroom
Prosocial Behavior:
Doing What’s Best for Others
• Why Do People Help Others?
• Who Helps Whom?
• Bystander Help in Emergencies
• How Can We Increase Helping?
Why Do People Help Others?
• Egoistic helping
– Wanting something in return for helping
– Negative state relief theory
– Help to reduce your own distress
• Altruistic helping
– Expecting nothing in return for helping
– Empathy-altruism hypothesis
– Motivated by empathy
Mirror Neurons
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/mirrorneurons.html
Bateson et al. (1981)
Elaine would get shocked to induce stress while
performing a task (shocked as child)
Conditions:
• High Empathy- told the participant had values similar to
their own
• Low Empathy-told the participant had values very different
from their own
• Easy escape situation-can leave after participant gets
shocked twice
• Difficult escape situation-must watch participant get
shocked 10 times
Bateson et al. (1981)
Alternative hypotheses
• Empathy-specific reward hypothesis
– Empathy triggers the need for social reward
– Ex. Praise, honor, pride
• Empathy-specific punishment hypothesis
– Empathy triggers the fear of social punishment that
can be avoided by helping
– Ex. Guilt, shame, censure
Is Altruism possible?
• Is there such a thing as a “selfless good deed”?
• Or do we always gain some benefit from helping?
Altruism
• Helping others with focus on their benefit (cost to you).
• WHY?
– Feel good about yourself
– Innately selfish??
• For example:
– Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
– Largest philanthropic organization in world!
– Aims to spend ALL of its $40 billion in the next 100 years
Prosocial Behavior - Charity
Who Helps Whom?
• Helpful Personality
• Similarity
– Appearance, social status, group membership
• Males are more helpful in broader public sphere,
toward strangers and in emergencies
• Females are more helpful in family sphere, toward
close relations and in repeated contact
Who Helps Whom?
Females are more likely to receive help than males
People are more likely to help attractive individuals!!!
• Evidence from field and lab experiments (Harrell,
1978)
Why Do People Help Others?
• Evolutionary benefits
– Kin selection
–More likely to help
others who share our
genes
–Life-and-death helping
is affected more
strongly by genetic
relatedness
Increase Help Behavior by Mimicking
Bystander Helping in
Emergencies
• Bystander effect
– People less likely to help when they are in the
presence of others, and no one else is helping
– Example:
– Kitty Genovese
– 38 witnesses
Bystander Effect
Five Steps to Helping
1. Notice that something is happening
2. Interpret meaning of event
– Pluralistic ignorance:
– Looking to others for cues about how to behave,
while they are looking to you.
3. Taking responsibility for providing help
– Diffusion of responsibility
– The reduction in feeling responsible that occurs
when others are present.
Five Steps to Helping
4.
Know how to help
5.
Provide help
– Audience inhibition
– Failure to help in front of others for fear of feeling
like a fool if one’s offer of help is rejected