4.8 • +11k Ratings
Save
Print
Edit
According to the mechanisms of natural selection, individuals compete for survival. The fittest will live and reproduce successfully, while the less fit won’t be able to survive the harsh conditions and will have a lower chance of successfully reproducing. Despite this evolutionary basis of competition, humans evolved to care for each other, even at their peril, which extends beyond the adult development of morality; there are even examples of prosocial behaviours in early childhood.
So, why do we help others? What are the benefits of prosocial behaviour? Is there a difference between prosocial behaviour and altruism? Let’s find out.
Helping hand, Flaticon
Prosocial behaviour refers to actions that result in a benefit to other people.
Social norms, reciprocity or empathy, can motivate prosocial behaviours. We can distinguish two main types of prosocial behaviour:
Mutualism or cooperation, which mutually benefits the actor and recipient.
Altruism, which benefits the recipient with no benefit for the actor.
Examples of prosocial behaviour include volunteering, taking care of others, donating blood or protecting others from harm by taking action at the time of emergency.
Prosocial behaviour can also result in benefits to society as a whole. It encourages reciprocity and cooperation or even selfless support of others in need. If prosocial behaviour is the standard, we can expect others to help us once we need it.
Some explanations propose we help others because we learn growing up that helping is the right thing to do, while others emphasise potential benefits helping can bring us.
Prosocial behaviour can be studied using surveys or experiments. Experiments can involve presenting participants with an opportunity to help a person in need and recording their behaviour.
Growing up, we learn helping behaviour by being exposed to social norms like reciprocity (if you do good to others, they will repay with the same behaviour) or social responsibility (we are responsible for helping those who depend on us).
Parents may also encourage and reward helping behaviour in children.
Social learning theory argues children learn to be prosocial through reinforcement and exposure to social norms.
Gentile et al. (2009) demonstrated that exposure to prosocial video games encouraged more prosocial behaviour in children and young adults.
First study: a survey-based study of 727 Singaporean secondary-school students found a positive correlation between time spent playing prosocial video games and children’s prosocial behaviour.
The second study collected survey data from 780 Japanese children around the age of 11. Researchers measured prosocial behaviour and time playing prosocial video games, and the two were again positively correlated. They repeated the measurements three to four months later with the same results, showing a longitudinal relationship between content consumed and behaviour.
Third study: 161 US college students played either a prosocial game or an aggressive game for 20 minutes before an experimental task (choosing puzzles of different difficulty for a partner). Playing prosocial games predicted helping behaviour in the task (choosing easy puzzles), while playing aggressive games predicted hurting behaviour (choosing complex puzzles), demonstrating immediate causality between content consumed and behaviour.
Studies done with children show that prosociality is already present in early childhood.
Between ages one and two, children spontaneously help adults in need. Warneken and Tomasello (2006) showed that when children see an adult holding books and is interested in putting them in the cabinet, they read adult intentions, see the adults’ hands being full and open the cabinet door for them before being asked for help.
However, it is hard to conclude whether prosocial behaviour is innate or learned. The universality of prosociality across cultures and the innate character of empathy suggests an intrinsic component to prosocial behaviour.
Even newborns seem to be concerned with the well-being of others. Newborns get upset when they hear another baby crying. Interestingly, they don’t get upset by their own recorded cries, which indicates that it’s the distress of others that affects them, not just the noise (Dondi et al., 1999).
Is this behaviour produced out of altruistic concern? Or perhaps the newborns are distressed because they know a potential threat is in the immediate area because of the other newborns’ cry?
Social exchange theory proposes that we interact with others to maximise benefits and minimise costs to ourselves. According to this theory, people engage in prosocial behaviour when it can provide them with significant gains at relatively low costs.
So what are the benefits of helping?
In the case of cooperation, both parties benefit. Groups can often achieve more than one single person can.
Cooperation – in hunter-gatherer societies, men hunted in groups. By hunting in groups, they could hunt down bigger prey than they could alone.
Reciprocity refers to an expectation that other people will repay you for your efforts to help. If we help someone, they will likely want to help us too.
Benefit from helping others can be indirect – feeling good, improving your reputation in the community and signalling that you deserve cooperation in the future.
Indirect reciprocity
One of the most critical factors influencing prosocial behaviour is how we feel responsible for acting. Even in situations of emergency, people don’t act if they don’t feel personally accountable. The more people we are surrounded by, the less likely we will take action.
This phenomenon is called the diffusion of responsibility: if everyone is responsible, no one is.
The bystander effect, Flaticon
Another explanation for the bystander effect is pluralistic ignorance.
Pluralistic ignorance incorrectly assigns the majority position/opinion as the minority position/opinion, and vice versa; the minority position is mistakenly seen as the majority’s position/opinion.
People base their judgements on the reactions of others. If we don’t see others around us reacting, we might conclude there is no emergency. It, therefore, takes effort to be the first person to react when surrounded by an ignorant crowd.
Overall, possible situational variables that may affect behaviour and the urge to help are:
In the 1960s, a young woman was murdered on the street outside her apartment in New York. The newspaper reported that 38 people witnessed the murder but did not respond during the entire 35 minutes that the murder was occurring.
The murderer was interrupted several times, but no one deterred him from continuing the crime. People in the area could hear Kitty screaming and calling for help, but it was 20 minutes before anyone called the police.
Did the witnesses have no sympathy for the woman? The more likely explanation is that they had compassion but did not feel personally responsible or were too afraid to act. If they had seen other people nearby, they might have assumed that someone else would surely call the police.
The bystander effect: a man not speaking, Flaticon
Latané and Darley (1968) designed an experiment to test the bystander effect:
Participants were asked to sit in a room and complete questionnaires when suddenly the room would start to fill up with smoke.
Participants sitting alone in the room reacted immediately; after six minutes, 75% reported the smoke.
When in a 3-person group, most participants (62%) never took any action or addressed the potential emergency.
Participants later stated they referred to the group for signs of distress, but everyone seemed calm, so they didn’t do anything about the smoke.
This experiment shows people are less likely to act prosocially if in a group due to pluralistic ignorance, or at least not appreciate the potential gravity of the situation if others appear to take it less seriously.
Altruism is a selfless concern for the well-being of others. Altruistic behaviour refers to acts that benefit others with no benefit to you or at a cost to yourself. It can be motivated by genetic survival, feelings of empathy, or social norms.
Altruism is a type of prosocial behaviour. Contrary to other prosocial behaviours, which can involve reciprocity or some benefits to the actor, altruistic behaviour comes at a cost without bringing any benefits.
| Recipient Benefits | |
| Benefit given to Actor | Cooperation and reciprocity |
| No Benefit or Cost to Actor | Altruism |
Kin selection: one evolutionary explanation points to increasing genetic survival as a reason behind altruism. When we direct altruism towards someone genetically related to us, like our child, helping them means improving the reproductive success of our genes.
However, it doesn’t explain altruism towards strangers.
Mothers can stay awake all night taking care of a crying baby, even if it means working exhausted the next day.
Empathy: people seem to show innate distress in response to the suffering of others, which could motivate altruistic action.
Hepach and colleagues (2012) research found that 2-year-old children showed distress in response to an adult in need. This distress decreased when they either helped the adult or saw someone else help them.
Is altruism genuinely selfless?
The negative-state relief model Cialdini (1987) proposed suggests we help others to minimise our distress rather than out of concern for others. According to Cialdini, our ego pushes us to help, an egoistic desire to relieve our sadness.
Social norms: As the social learning theory proposed, we could learn altruistic behaviour if we internalised social norms that support it. By internalising the social responsibility norm, we learn to believe it’s only right to help those that depend on us.
If we believe it’s our responsibility to take actions that benefit society, we might decide to recycle or save water and electricity even if it’s an inconvenience to us personally.
Volunteering because your school requires you to or because you want to improve your CV is not a good example of altruism. Altruism refers only to helping behaviour motivated by the concern for others, not by obligations or benefits to yourself.
Altruism is a type of prosocial behaviour. Contrary to other prosocial behaviours, which can involve reciprocity or some benefits to the actor, altruistic behaviour comes with no benefit or at a cost to the actor.
Prosocial behaviour can result in benefits to society as a whole. It encourages reciprocity and cooperation or even selfless support of others in need. If prosocial behaviour is the standard, we can expect others to help us once we need it.
Prosocial behaviour can be driven by altruism but it's not always the case. In some cases, prosocial behaviour is driven by expectations of reciprocity or mutual benefit.
Examples of prosocial behaviour include volunteering, taking care of others, donating blood or protecting others from harm by taking action at the time of emergency.
Prosocial behaviour can be studied using surveys or experiments. Experiments can involve presenting participants with an opportunity to help a person in need and recording their behaviour.
60%
of the users don't pass the Prosocial Behaviour And Altruism quiz! Will you pass the quiz?
Start Quiz
Be perfectly prepared on time with an individual plan.
Test your knowledge with gamified quizzes.
Create and find flashcards in record time.
Create beautiful notes faster than ever before.
Have all your study materials in one place.
Upload unlimited documents and save them online.
Identify your study strength and weaknesses.
Set individual study goals and earn points reaching them.
Stop procrastinating with our study reminders.
Earn points, unlock badges and level up while studying.
Create flashcards in notes completely automatically.
Create the most beautiful study materials using our templates.
Sign up to highlight and take notes. It’s 100% free.
