LB - Prosocial Behaviour

• Prosocial Behaviour


  socially positively values acts with good social outcomes and benefits the wellbeing of others
• Helping Behavior


  intentionally helpful/beneficial acts towards others
• Altruism


  Form of helping behaviour. performed without personal gain and can be risky to helped
• Selfish gene

  • evolutionary perspective that focuses on survival of fittest genes
  • kin selection: helping genetic relations to common genes survive
• reciprocal altruism


  helping another to receive help in return
• indirect reciprocity


  someone who helps others is likely to get help when needed
• empathy - understanding another's perspective

  • biological explanation: mirror neurons
• Bystander-calculus model (Pilivian)

  • people weigh up empathy and personal costs of helping
  • help when self benefits are higher than costs
  • motivated by ego
• rewards of helping

  • helping others to help oneself
  • psychological/material reward
• social exchange theory

  • weighing up positive and negative outcomes of a situation before decision making
  • help when self benefits outweigh not helping
• feeling 'good'

  • self worth - improved by helping
  • neg state relief model "feel bad, do good"
• egoistic

  motivated by desire to improve one's OWN welfare
• altruistic

  motivated by desire to improve ANOTHER's welfare
• Empathy - altruism hypothesis

  • empathic concern produces altruistic motive to help (Bateson)
• Helping can be a default

  • act on instinct to help, no time to evaluate
• personality

  • agreeableness is a dominant factor in helping
  • certain altruistic personality traits
• Situational influences

  • prosocial norms : common cross-culturally
  • 2 key theories
  • reciprocity norm: help those who help us
  • social responsibility norm: duty to help without expectations
• social learning theory

  • PB learnt through observing others
  • media: media content is seen as model
• Bystander effect

  • social: norms, context
  • individual: cognitive processes, neuropsych
• stimulus overload created when others divert attention from the problem
• More ambiguity of situation = less likely bystander intervention

  pluralistic ignorance: everyone in group think their view is different
• diffusion of responsibility


  belief that someone else will help
• Social influence

  • reluctant altruism: altruistic behavior from peer pressure
• ways to get help

  • counteract ambiguity
  • time pressure