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Chapter 10
Helping Others
Evolutionary and
Motivational Factors
Why Do People Help?
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Evolutionary Factors
in Helping: The “Selfish Gene”
• What is important is survival of the individual’s
genes, not survival of the fittest individual.
• Kinship selection is the tendency to help
genetic relatives.
– Strongest when biological stakes are
particularly high
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Evolutionary Factors in
Helping: Reciprocal Altruism
• What is the reproductive advantage of helping
someone who isn’t related to you?
• Through reciprocal altruism, helping someone
else can be in your best interests.
– Increases the likelihood that you will be helped in
return.
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Evolutionary Factors in
Helping: The Cooperative Group
• Humans can sometimes increase their
reproductive success in two ways:
– By protecting their own self-interest in relation to
other individuals; and
– By protecting their group’s interests in relation to
other groups
• Helping based on social connections rather than
genetic relationships.
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Putting Common Sense to the Test…
People are more likely to help someone in an
emergency if the potential rewards seem high and
the potential costs seem low.
Answer: True… Let’s see why!
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Rewards of Helping:
Helping Others to Help Oneself
• More likely to help when the potential rewards of
helping seem high relative to the potential costs.
• Arousal: Cost-Reward Model
– What are the costs and rewards associated with
helping?
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Rewards of Helping:
Helping to Feel Good
• More likely to help:
– If self-esteem has been threatened by failure
– Feeling guilty about something
• Relationship between helping and feeling better.
• Helping others to feel good is often not a
conscious decision, but it can be.
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Rewards of Helping:
Helping to Be or Appear Good
• May help because motivated to behave in ways
that are consistent with moral principles.
• Sometimes help for the appearance of morality
but really have selfish motives.
– Moral hypocrisy
– Overhelping
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Costs of Helping or of Not Helping
• Helping has its costs as well as its rewards.
• Helping can also be more sustained and deliberate.
– Courageous resistance
• Helping can have negative health effects if involves
constant and exhausting demands.
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Altruism or Egoism: The Great Debate
• Is helping motivated by altruistic or egoistic
concerns?
– Altruistic: Motivated by the desire to increase
another’s welfare.
– Egoistic: Motivated by the desire to increase one’s
own welfare.
• Batson: The motivation behind some helpful
actions is truly altruistic.
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Figure 10.1: The
Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
From C.D. Batson, The Altruism Question, 1991. Reprinted with permission of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
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Telling the Difference
Between Egoistic and Altruistic Motives
• How easy is it to escape from a helping
situation?
• If egoistic motive, helping should decline when
escape from the situation is easy.
• If altruistic motive, help is given regardless of
ease of escape.
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Egoistic Alternatives
• Empathy encourages helping because of
concern about the costs to the self of not
helping.
• Empathy highlights the potential rewards for
helping others.
– Negative state relief model
• Helper experiences empathic joy by helping
another person.
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Altruism vs. Egoism:
Limits and Convergence
• Strong evidence for the empathy-altruism
hypothesis.
• Limitations to empathy-altruism hypothesis:
– Not all helping is altruistically motivated.
– Motives do not guarantee behavior.
– Is the assumption that there is a clear divide between
the self and the other a valid one?
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Why Does The
Motivation to Help Matter?
• Helps us determine whether or not helping will
even occur.
• Motivational factors play important roles in more
long-term helping behaviors.
– Number of motivations underlie volunteering.
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Table 10.1: Motivations to Volunteer to
Help People with Aids
Copyright © 1995 by the American Psychological Association. Reproduced with permission. From A.M. Omoto and M. Snyder, “Sustaining
Helping Without Obligation: Motivation, Longevity of Service, and Perceived Attitude Change Among AIDS Volunteers," Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 68, 671-686, 1995. No further reproduction or distribution is permitted without written permission from the American
Psychological Association.
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Situational Influences
When Do People Help?
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Putting Common Sense to the Test…
In an emergency, a person who needs help has a
much better chance of getting it if three other people
are present than if only one person is present.
Answer: False…Let’s see why!
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Bystander Effect
• The tragic story of Kitty Genovese.
– Why did no one help?
– Latané & Darley: Were social psychological
processes at work?
• Bystander Effect: The presence of others
inhibits helping.
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Figure 10.3: The Five
Steps to Helping in an Emergency
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Figure 10.4:
The Implicit Bystander Effect
S.M.Garcia, K. eaver, G.B. Moskowitz, and J.M. Darley (2002) Crowded Minds: The Implicit Bystander
Effect." Copyright © 2002. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 843-853.
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Figure 10.5: Cyberhelping
Reprinted from Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 16, P.M. Markey, pp. 183-188.
Copyright © 2000, with permission from Elsevier.
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Time Pressure
• Time pressure can conflict with one’s good
intentions of helping those in need.
• Darley & Batson’s (1973) Good Samaritan study
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Darley and Batson's results
70
60
50
Percentage 40
who helped 30
20
10
0
Ahead of Schedule
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On Time
Late
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Location and Culture
• Do individuals have a worse chance of being
helped in an emergency in a big city than in a
small town?
• Greater population density is associated with
less helping.
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Table 10.2: Helping in the USA
Helping in the U.S., from "Helpfulness Index: How U.S. Cities Rank," The Boston Globe, July
7, 1994. Copyright © 1994 The Boston Globe. Reprinted courtesy of The Boston Globe.
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Table 10.3:
Helping Around
the World
Based on R.V. Levine, A. Norenzayan and K. Philbrock,
"Cross-Cultural Differences in Helping Strangers," Journal of
Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 32, pp. 543-560. Copyright ©
2001 by Sage Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of
Sage Publications, Inc.
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Putting Common Sense to the Test…
People are much more likely to help someone when
they’re in a good mood.
Answer: True… Let’s see why!
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Figure 10.6: Scents and Sensibilities
From R.A. Baron, "The Sweet Smell of ... Helping: Effects of Pleasant Ambient Fragrance on Prosocial Behavior in
Shopping Malls," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 23, pp. 498-503. Copyright © 1997 by Sage Publications,
Inc. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Inc.
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Good Moods Lead to Helping: Reasons
• Why feeling good leads to doing good:
–
–
–
–
Desire to maintain one’s good mood
Positive expectations about helping
Positive thoughts
Positive thoughts and expectations about social
activities
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Good Moods
Lead to Helping: Limitations
• Why feeling good might not lead to doing good:
– Costs of helping are high.
– Positive thoughts about other social activities that
conflict with helping.
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Putting Common Sense to the Test…
People are much less likely to help someone when
they’re in a bad mood.
Answer: False… Let’s see why!
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Cunningham et al
80
70
60
Percentage 50
who helped 40
next person 30
20
10
0
Believed Broke Camera
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No Broken Camera
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Bad Moods and Helping
• When negative moods make us more likely to
help others:
– If we take responsibility for what caused our bad
mood (i.e., feel guilty)
– If we focus on other people
– If we are made to think about our personal values
that promote helping
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Bad Moods and Helping (cont.)
• When negative moods make us less likely to
help others:
– If we blame others for our bad mood
– If we become very self-focused
– If we are made to think about our personal values
that do not promote helping
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Helping and Role Models
• Role models are important in teaching children
about helping.
• How do role models inspire helping?
– Provides an example of behavior to imitate directly.
– Teaches that helping is valued and rewarding.
– Increases awareness of societal standards of
conduct.
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Helping and Social Norms
•
•
•
•
•
Norm of reciprocity
Norm of equity
Norm of social responsibility
Concerns about justice or fairness
Norm of self-interest
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Figure 10.7: The Norm
of Social Responsibility
From J.G. Miller, D.B. Bersoff, and R.L. Harwood, "Perceptions of Social Responsibility in India and in the United
States: Moral Imperatives or Personal Decisions?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 33-47,
1990. Copyright © 1990 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted with permission.
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Personal Influences
Who is Likely to Help?
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Are Some More Helpful Than Others?
• Some evidence of individual differences in
helping tendencies.
– Tendency may be relatively stable over time.
– Differences are in part genetically based.
• Is there an altruistic personality?
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What Is the
Altruistic Personality?
• Empathy
• Internalized and advanced moral reasoning
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Interpersonal Influences
Whom Do People Help?
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Putting Common Sense to the Test…
Attractive people have a better chance than
unattractive people of getting help when they need it.
Answer: True… Let’s see why!
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Attractiveness of Person in Need
• More likely to help physically attractive people.
• More likely to help friendly individuals.
• Charisma of one person can determine how
much help other people receive.
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Figure 10.8: Magic’s
Influence on Helping Others
Penner & Fritzsche, 1993.
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Figure 10.9: Volunteering
Before and After 9/11
Penner et al, 2005
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Attributions of Responsibility
• Beliefs about the needy person’s responsibility
influences helping.
• Effect particularly strong among those who
believe in a just world.
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The Fit Between Giver
and Receiver: Similarity
•
•
•
•
More likely to help those who are similar.
May be a form of kinship selection.
Effects of racial similarity are highly inconsistent.
Intergroup biases in helping can be reduced if
perceive selves as members of a common
group.
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Putting Common Sense to the Test…
In any situation, people are more likely to help a
friend succeed than a stranger.
Answer: False… Let’s see why!
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The Fit Between Giver
and Receiver: Closeness
• People help their friends more than strangers or
acquaintances.
• What if person’s ego is threatened?
– Self-evaluation maintenance model
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Figure 10.10: Not Giving
Much Help to Our Friends
Data from Tessr & Smith, 1980.
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Putting Common Sense to the Test…
Women seek help more often than men do
Answer: True… Let’s see why!
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Gender and Helping
• Classic male-helper scenario:
“Knight in shining armor”
• Classic female-helper scenario:
“Social support”
• Gender differences in willingness to seek help.
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Reactions to Receiving Help
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Threat-to-Self-Esteem Model
• Help is experienced as self-supportive when
recipient feels appreciated and cared for.
• Help is experienced as self-threatening when
recipient feels inferior and overly dependent.
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When Is Receiving
Help Perceived as Threatening?
• Those with high self-esteem tend to react more
negatively than those with low self-esteem.
• Being helped by a similar other may imply that
recipient is inferior.
• Help from a significant other on an ego-relevant
task can threaten one’s self-esteem.
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