13.3: Helping and Harming Others: Prosocial Behavior

When participants appeared reluctant to shock the "Learner", Chapter 13 had more coercive instructions.

There was evidence that some of the participants in the study were skeptical of the cover story and that the study was just an investigation of learning.
Some of the studies may have been inflated by demand characteristics.

Stanley Milgram changed how we think about ourselves and others.

He made us aware that good people can do bad things and that rational people can act irrationally.
We may have been steered toward guarding against them by the warnings of these perils.

Philip Zimbardo wrote a book about evil and argued that ordinary people who are influenced by the power of the situation are more likely to perform evil acts.

Some of the most important situational influences can lead otherwise good people to do bad things.

Philosophers have debated whether human nature is good or bad.

Scientific truth can fall into one of two extremes.
Evidence shows that human nature is a blend of both constructive and destructive tendencies.

Frans de Waal, a colleague of two of your text's authors, argues that the bonobo and the Chimpanzees display the seeds of both prosocial and antisocial behavior.

We share more than 98 percent of our genes with both species, which gives us a fuzzy evolutionary window into our own nature.
Aggressive acts and behavior intended to help others are examples of antisocial behavior.

Frans de Waal shows a male in a primate photo how to reconcile after arguments and make love.

They help behaviors that we normally associate with humans.

A lot of psychologists fil ing up the water moat.

The children of thebonobo group were playing in the empty and argued that they had a tendency toward moat.
When they went to the kitchen to turn on the water, they saw the old male of the group and he was our primate heritage.

bonobos are more prone to aggression.

Chimpanzees sometimes wage all-out wars against other Chimpanzees, with brutal murders, infanticide, and cannibalism.

We're probably a bit of both.

In the next section, we'll look at the roots of prosocial and antisocial actions, with a particular emphasis on situational factors that contribute to both types of behaviors.

We will look at why we don't help in some situations but help in others.
We will look at why we act aggressively toward members of our species.
The research sheds light on the social influences that can lead to harm.
We will soon discover that there is more to the story.

It's best to be in the company of others when we are in danger, according to popular wisdom.

There are two real-life examples.

On March 13, 1964, at 3 a.m., Catherine (Kitty) Genovese was returning to her apartment in New York City, having just gotten off work.

A man stabbed her suddenly.
He came and left three times.
As the lights from nearby apartments turned on, Kitty screamed and begged for help.
By the end of the gruesome attack, Kitty Genovese was dead, some of which claimed that as many as 38 witnesses saw the crime and failed to intervene.
The best evidence suggests that at least half a dozen of her neighbors heard the events but didn't come to her aid.
Some didn't bother to call the police.

According to reports, no one called the police even though many of the on group had cell phones.

Figure 13.6 The Murder of Kitty Genovese rickshaw driver fled the scene after hitting a man in Delhi, India.

These real-world stories are useful for illustrating concepts, but they don't allow for scientific generalizations.

Kitty Genovese was helpless to help when she drove into the parking lot.

Darley and Latane parked her car here.

She became nervous when she saw a man in the lot.

She was attacked by the man who caught her.

He attacked her again at this spot.

She tried to get away, but the man attacked her again.

To intervene in an emergency, we need to know that 510 Chapter 13 is an emergency.

On your way to class tomorrow, you will see a student slumped across a bench.

This is where ignorant people come into play.

We notice that nobody is responding and assume that the situation is not an emergency.
We think the situation might be an emergency.
We are reassured that the coast is clear and there is nothing to worry about.

The "silent classroom scenario" is an example of pluralistic ignorantness that occurs after a professor gives a lecture.

Each student in the class looks nervously at the other students, all of whom are sitting quietly, and each assumes that he or she is the only one who didn't understand the lecture.

It's relevant when we're trying to figure out if an emergency is really a situation.

It doesn't explain the behavior of bystanders in the Kitty Genovese, the gang rape in California, or the rickshaw tragedies in India.
The presence of others still makes it hard to help when the situation is an emergency.

We need a second step to intervene in an emergency.

It's surprising that we help in emergencies, because there are a lot of obstacles to intervening.

You watched a simulation of the percentage study using a man instead of a woman in the video that opened this chapter.

In all of the studies, participants were more likely to help when they were in a group than when they were alone.

That is an impressive degree of replicability.

There are some grounds for optimism.

Smoke Woman Student when it's not dangerous.

When people know they might be watched, the bystander effect can be eliminated.

The consequences of not acting are held by people alone.

Two weeks later, the students came upon a person on a park bench.

In comparison to 25 percent of students who hadn't received the lecture, 43 percent of students who'd received it helped.
The study gave new knowledge about bystander intervention and made people more aware of the importance of helping.
The act of reading this chapter may cause people to assume the man is drunk or asleep rather than injured, and make you more likely to be a bystander.

The whole is less than its parts because of social loafing.

Some psychologists think that social loafing is a variant of bystander non intervention.

People working in groups feel less responsible for the outcome of a project than they do when working alone.

They don't invest as much effort.

Social loafing has been demonstrated in numerous experiments by psychologists.

In one case, a researcher put blindfolds on six people and asked them to clap or yell in large groups.
When participants thought they were making noise as a group, they were less loud than when they thought they were alone.

Cheerleaders cheer louder when they think they're part of a group than when they think they're alone.

Social loafing may be influenced by cultural factors.
People in individualistic countries like the United States are more prone to social loafing than are people in collectivist countries like China because they feel more responsible for the outcomes of group successes or failures.

One of the best antidotes to social loafing is to ensure that each person in the group is phenomenon whereby individuals identifiable, for example, by guaranteeing that managers and bosses can evaluate each indi as less productive in groups performance.

We can help diffuse responsibility by doing so.

Many students dislike group work because of the fear that their fellow group members will not pull their weight.

Imagine if you were hired by an advertising firm to cook up a group of ideas that were less effective than an individual brain marketing campaign for Mrs. Yummy's Chicken Noodle Soup.

Groups tend to come up with less advertising jingles that will instill in everyone an uncon ideas, and more good ones, than do individuals, Paulus, trollable urge to reach for the nearest cup of chicken noodle soup.

Although you initially plan to come up with slogans on your al y, your boss walks into your cubicle and informs you that you'll individual brainstorming.

Making matters worse, groups often over be participating in a "group brainstorming" meeting later that day that will estimate how successful they are at producing new ideas, which is noon in the executive suite.
You and 12 other firm members will let their imaginations run wild and explain the popularity of brainstorming.

Group brainstorming tends to be formula because of at least two reasons.

One way to generate novel ideas is by having a group of people come up with ideas.
They think bers may be anxious about being evaluated, leading them to think several heads are better than one.
To hold back good ideas.
Social loafing is the second.

Whatever the reason, it's better to work alone.

Although the idea behind group brainstorming may be better than two, at least when the brains are appealing, it turns out to be wrong.

Many studies show that they can communicate.

Even though there's usually danger rather than safety in numbers when it comes to others helping us, many of us do help in emergencies even when others are around.

One person may have called the police in the Kitty Genovese tragedy.

We help others only to benefit ourselves.

Daniel Batson and his colleagues showed that we sometimes engage in genuine altruism.
According to psychological research, we help others in some cases because we empathise with their feelings, and sometimes because we engage in genuine altruism.

When participants learned that their values and interests were similar to the victim's, they offered to take her place and receive shocks rather than reject her.

In some cases, we help to relieve the distress of others as well.

A number of psychological variables increase the odds of helping.

Let's look at some of the most important ones.

People are more likely to help in certain situations.

They are more likely to help others when they can't escape the situation by running or driving away.
They are more likely to help someone who collapses on the subway than on the sidewalk.

In one study, bystanders helped a person with a cane 95 percent of the time, but helped an obviously drunk person only 50 percent of the time.

Being in a good mood makes us more likely to help.
Exposure to role models who help others also contributes.

The study looked at seminary students who were on their way to deliver a sermon on the Good Samaritan, which describes the moral importance of assisting injured people.

Some students believed that they needed to rush over to give the lecture, while others thought they had some extra time.
While walking across the campus, the students came across a man who was slumped over in a doorway and had coughed and moaned loudly.
The seminary students were less likely to help the man if they were in a hurry than if they had time to spare.
The students stepped over him on their way to the lecture.

The likelihood of helping is influenced by individual differences in personality.

Participants who are less concerned about social approval are more likely to go against the grain and intervene in emergencies.
Extraverted people are more likely to help others.
Trained medical workers are more likely to offer assistance to others in emergencies than are other people.
Some people don't help on certain occasions because they don't know what to do.

The tendency for men to help more than women has been reported.

The ten Ruling Out Rival Hypotheses dency of men to help more than women only in situations involving physical or social risk is an alternative explanation for the difference.

If the Have important alternative women are physically attractive, men are more likely to help women than other men.

Chimpanzees engage in violence toward others.

As we write this chapter, there are at least nine fullscale wars, often defined as conflicts that kill more than 1,000 people per year, raging across the globe.

The good news is that the world is probably safer than it has ever been.
The proportion of people killed in wars is lower now than it has been in the past.
The democratization of the world probably contributes to the positive trend.
Over the past six decades, the rates of homicide have declined across more than 50 countries examined.
The threat of violent extremism continues to loom large even in Western countries, despite the fact that large pockets of the world remain terribly dangerous places.

To account for aggressive behavior on both large and small scales, we need to examine the role of situational and dispositional factors.

Some of the best findings are here.

We're more likely to act aggressively when we're frustrated and unable to reach a goal.

In one study, a research assistant asked participants to perform a difficult paper-folding task at an unreasonable rapid rate and either apologized for moving them too quickly or told them to pick up the pace.
Those in the second condition were more likely to give the assistant a low evaluation.

An impressive body of laboratory and naturalistic evidence points to the conclusion that watching media violence can increase the odds of violence through observational learning.

Experiments show that playing violent video games increases the odds of violence in both Western and Asian cultures.
Critics have questioned the extent to which the findings generalize to the real world.

Ferguson and Kilburn questioned how well the findings generalize beyond the laboratory, and also questioned how well the findings were overhyped.

It's not clear whether hot sauce or electric shocks can be used to measure aggression in a research study.

Guns and knives can serve as discriminative stimuli for aggression, making us more likely to act violently in response to provocation.

The presence of a gun on a table triggered more aggression in participants who'd been provoked by mild electric shocks for supposed poor performance on a task.

When our nervous system is revved up, we may wrongly attribute arousal to anger, leading us to act aggressively.

Participants who pedaled an exercise bicycle delivered more intense electric shocks to someone who had annoyed them than did participants who sat still.

Certain substances can affect our brain's prefrontal cortex and make it harder for us to act violently.

After being provoked with electric shocks by an "opponent" (who was actually fictitious) during a competitive game, participants chose more intense electric shocks after consuming alcohol or Valium, than after consuming a placebo.
When the target of our aggression occupies the focus of our attention, and someone is threatening us directly, alcohol is likely to cause aggression.
The effects of alcohol on aggression are especially pronounced in participants who are already impulsive.

The average temperatures in the regions of the United States are similar to the rates of violent crime.

The rates of violent crime are correlated with how close countries are to the equator.

People are more likely to lose their tempers when provoked or frustrated by warm temperatures.
In order to rule out the rival hypothesis that the heat effect is due to geographical region, investigators had to look at the violent crime rates in the southern United States.

Research shows that violent crime rates coincide with warm weather.

The heat wave has an effect on crime.

On a typical day in the United States, there are approximately 43 murders.

There is a grim picture painted by these statistics.
Only a tiny percentage of people engage in physical aggression toward others, and the majority are generally law-abiding.

When confronted with an insult, gossiping, and using non-verbal means differ in their tendencies to behave aggressively.

A dangerous cocktail of aggression proneness can be created by certain personality traits.
People with high levels of negative manipulation emotions are more prone to violence.

The rates of crime, including violent crime, would drop by two-thirds if all males between the ages of 12 and 28 were placed in a state of temporary hibernation.

The reasons for the sex difference in aggression are not known.

The correlation between testosterone and aggression is controversial because aggression may cause higher Correlation vs. Causation testosterone.

The female spotted hyena has high levels of a hormone that is related to testosterone.

Parents and teachers pay more attention to boys when they engage in aggression and to girls when they engage in dependent behaviors like clinginess.