1. Helping

2. Definitions
• Prosocial behavior = any act performed
with the goal of benefiting another person
• Altruism = motive/desire to help another
person even if it involves a cost (or at least
no benefit) to the helper
– no rewards for helping

3. Evolutionary psychology
• Who would you save?
• Twin vs. mother/father
– save the person who is closer in our genetics, to pass
on your genetics

4. Evolutionary psychology
• 1 vs. 5 year old child
– save the 5 year old, they will be more likely to survive
• 20 vs. 40 year old child
– save 20 year old, in reproductive stage

5. Evolutionary psychology
• Who is the kinder grandmother?
– maternal grandmother, because of maternal certainty
(not sure with paternal grandparents, that it is the
male’s child)

6. Evolutionary psychology
• Male vs. female
– female, because females can have children (needed
more then men)

7. Why do we help?
• Evolutionary Psychology
– If the goal is to ensure our own survival, why should
we help others at a cost to ourselves?
– Kin selection = behaviors that help a genetic relative
are favored by natural selection
• Thus, a gene that causes an individual to help
genetic relatives is actually helping a copy of itself
• Example: People say they would be more likely to
help their relatives than their non-relatives in life-
threatening situations

8. Who do we help?
• Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama (1994)
– Participants in this study were asked to imagine
scenarios like the following:
• There are three people asleep in different rooms of
a burning house:
– Your 7 year-old female cousin
– Your 75 year-old grandfather
– A 21 year-old acquaintance
• You have time to rescue only one…
– Who do you save?

9. Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama
(1994)
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
High Mod. Low None
(children, (grandparents) (first (acquaintances)
parents) cousins)
Degree of relatedness

10. Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama
(1994)
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
High Mod. Low None
(children, (grandparents) (first (acquaintances)
parents) cousins)
Degree of relatedness

11. Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama (1994):
Findings
• Kin are helped more than non-kin, especially in life-
or-death situations
• Females are helped more than males, except elderly
females (post-menopausal)
• Young are helped more than old
• Healthy relatives helped more than non-healthy in
life-or-death situations
• In life-or-death helping, relatedness matters (this
assures that our genes will continue)
• In everyday helping situations, needs prevail over
genes

12. Why do we help?
• Evolutionary Psychology
– Why do we help non-kin?
– Reciprocity: helping others now ensures
that they help us later
• Adaptive strategy for our ancestors 
becomes genetically-based tendency

13. Why do we help?
• Evolutionary psychology
– Learning social norms
• People who learn norms have a survival
advantage  ability to learn norms becomes
genetically-based
– Other social norms
• Social-responsibility norm = we should help
those who are dependent on us
• Norm of justice = we should help those who
deserve help

14. Why do we help?
• Social Learning Theory
– Helping is learned through observation and
reinforcement
• Children learn to help by being rewarded
– As people mature, reinforcements become
less necessary
• internalize the value of helping

15. Why do we help?
• Social Exchange Theory
– Maximizing rewards and minimizing costs
– People will help when the rewards are high relative
to the costs
– Rewards: social approval, feeling good about
yourself, increasing likelihood of being helped in
future
– Costs: physical danger, time, embarrassment, guilt

16. Who will help?
• Gender Differences
– Women are more likely to give long-term,
nurturing help
– Men are more likely to help in emergencies,
especially when there is:
• an audience
• potential danger
• a woman in need of help

17. Who will help?
• Religiosity
– Religious people are only slightly more
likely to help during emergencies
– Religious people are more likely to
provide “planned” help
– Examples:
• volunteering, giving to charity

18. Who will help?
• Mood
– good moods can lead to helpful behavior
• Examples
– Tips on sunny vs. cloudy days
• Isen and Levin (1972)
– IV: found a dime in coin return slot of telephone
– DV: Help confederate pick up papers
• no dime -> 4% helped
• dime -> 84% helped

19. Who will help?
• Why do good moods predict pro-social
behavior?
– Helping maintains good mood
– Good moods make us see the good in people
• positive thoughts -> positive behavior
– Good moods increase self-awareness
• More likely to act in accordance with our values

20. Who will help?
• Mood
– Bad moods can sometimes lead to prosocial
behavior
– Negative-state relief hypothesis: people help to
alleviate their own bad mood
• Exceptions: people who are very depressed or
angry do not tend to help much

21. Mood
• Guilt: Feelings of guilt tend to increase the
likelihood of helping
– Churchgoers are more likely to contribute
to a charity before confession than
afterward
– “Breaking” a camera increases likelihood
of helping a completely different person

22. Similarity
• we are more likely to help those similar to us
• We like those who are similar to us
– Liking lecture and shared b-day study
• Example: Students in England who identified them
selves as fans of the Manchester United soccer football
team were assigned to see another student fall and act
as though they were in pain (Levine et al., 2005).
– This student was wearing a Manchester United or
rival Liverpool shirt
– results: students were almost 4 times more likely to
help the student in the United shirt

23. Situational Influences
• Time pressure
• Good Samaritan study
– Princeton Theological Seminary students were
told they were either early or late to give a talk
– They all encountered a man slumped in a
doorway who was coughing and groaning.
– How many people stopped to see if the man
needed help?

24. Good Samaritans
• Results
– Had time/early: 65% helped
– Running late: 10% helped
– Topic of talk had no effect on helping!

25. Situational Influences
• Rural vs. urban environment
• Example: staged injury
– Small town: about 50% of the pedestrians
offered to help
– Large city: about 15% of pedestrians offered to
help
– Why the difference?

26. Situational Influences
• Why do people help more in small towns?
– Urban overload hypothesis = people
living in cities are constantly bombarded
with stimulation, so they keep to
themselves to avoid being overwhelmed
– immediate surroundings matter more than
internalized values

27. Latane and Darley (1970)
• Students in cubicles communicating over
intercom (alone, 1, or 4 students)
• one student has a seizure

28. Bystander Effect
100 Alone
1 other bystander
4 other bystanders
75
Percent 50
who helped
25
0
60 seconds 150 seconds
Number of seconds elapsed from
start of seizure

29. Bystander Effect
• the more
bystanders who
witness an
emergency, the
less likely one of
them will help

30. Bystander Intervention
Step 1:
• What prevents Step 1?
– Distraction: other people distract our attention
– Manners: we don’t stare at others; we keep
our eyes to ourselves

31. Step 1
• Example: Smoke-filled room study
– Participants filled out a questionnaire either
alone or with two strangers
– Staged emergency: smoke poured into the
room through a wall vent
– Who noticed the smoke more quickly?
• Participants working alone noticed the smoke
almost immediately
• Participants working in small groups took longer

32. Bystander Intervention
• Step 2: Interpreting the event as an
emergency
• What prevents Step 2?
– ambiguity
– pluralistic ignorance

33. Step 2
Interpreting the event as an emergency
– Pluralistic ignorance: The state in which people
mistakenly believe that their own thoughts and
feelings are different from those of others, even
though everyone’s behavior is the same
– specifically, bystanders assume nothing is wrong
in an emergency becuse no one else looks
concerned
– Smoke-filled room study

34. Step 2
• Example: Smoke-filled room study
– Most people in groups continued to work on the
questionnaire as they coughed and waved smoke away
with their hands.
– People glanced at others (saw that they were working
diligently)
– Participants’ interpretation of the smoke:
• A leak in the air condition
• Steam pipes
• Chemistry labs in the building
• Truth gas

35. Bystander Intervention
• Step 3: Assuming responsibility
• What prevents Step 3?
– Diffusion of responsibility = each bystander’s
sense of responsibility to help decreases as the
number of bystanders increases
• When people are alone, they feel
responsible.
• When people are not alone, everyone places
the responsibility on everyone else.

36. Step 4: Decide how to help
• Why do people not help? They do not
want to appear foolish
• prevents = lack of knowledge and
competence

37. Step 4: Decide how to help
• Cramer et al. (1988)
– Emergency (seizure)
– Participants were students or nurses
– Participants alone or with others

38. Step 4: Decide how to help
• Results
– Alone or with others, 70-75% of
nurses helped
– 70% of students helped when alone;
– 25% helped when with others

39. Bystander Intervention
• Step 5: Deciding to implement the help
• What prevents Step 5?
– Costs of helping
• legal problems
• embarrassment (audience inhibition)
• personal danger

40. Step 5: Must actually provide help
• Audience inhibition
– fear that others will evaluate them
negatively if they intervene and the
situation is not an emergency

41. How can helping be increased?
• Increase the likelihood that bystanders will intervene
– Reduce ambiguity
– Increase responsibility
– Increase self-awareness
– give specific instructions
– teach people about the bystander effect