UNIT 3

PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR
PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

• A helpful action that benefits other people without necessarily

providing any direct benefits to the person performing the act, and may
even involve a risk for the person who helps. Ex: helping someone at
the airport, saving a drowning stranger.
• Involves a mixture of making at least some mild personal sacrifice to
provide assistance & at the same time obtaining some degree of
personal satisfaction from having done so.
• Term Altruism is sometimes used interchangeably with prosocial
behavior. Altruism-behavior that reflects an unselfish concern for the
welfare of others.
DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY

• Proposal that the amount of responsibility assumed by bystanders to an

emergency is shared among them. If there is only one bystander,
he/she has total responsibility. IF there are two bystanders, each has
50% of the responsibility. IF there are 100 bystanders, each has only
1% of the responsibility.
• The more the bystanders, the less any one of them feels responsible to
act.
• Ex: Car breakdown, accident.
• Concept of diffusion of responsibility and Bystander effect were given
by John Darley, Bibb Latane after the murder of Catherine(Kitty)
Genovese in New York City.
BYSTANDER EFFECT

• The fact that the likelihood of a prosocial response to an emergency is

affected by the number of bystanders who are present. As the number
of bystanders increases, the probability that any one bystander will
help decreases and the amount of time that passes before help occurs
increases.
THE DECISION TO HELP IN AN EMERGENCY: 5
ESSENTIAL STEPS
• When you are actually face to face with emergencies, the situation isn’t
simple. Beyond diffusion of responsibility, there are numerous factors
that influence how people respond. Latane and Darley(1970)
conceptualized an individual’s response in emergency situations as a
series of 5 essential steps- 5 choice points that can either lead toward a
prosocial act or toward doing nothing.
• STEP 1: NOTICING THE EMERGENCY: No way to anticipate when or
where an unexpected problem will arise. We suddenly encounter a
stranded motorist, an accident on the highway, screams in the night,
fellow research participant having a seizure.
• People do not notice the emergency. They ignore/screen out many
sights, sounds as they are personally irrelevant.
• Field study by Darley, Batson (1973)- when a person is preoccupied by
personal concerns, prosocial behavior is unlikely to occur. Conducted
by seminary students-individuals who should especially likely to help
someone in need.
• Experimenters asked some of the participants to walk to a nearby
building on campus to talk to a group about a topic either related to
helpfulness or unrelated. In order to vary the degree of preoccupation,
the investigators created 3 different conditions.
• Some of the seminarians were told that they had plenty of extra time to reach
the other building, some were told they were right on schedule with just enough
time to get there, and the third group was told that they were late for the
speaking engagement and needed to hurry.
• In walking across the campus, the first group would be the least preoccupied,
the third group would be the most preoccupied.
• Along the route to the building where each participant was supposed to give a
talk, an emergency was staged. A stranger (actually research assistant) was
coughing and groaning, Would participants notice this apparently sick or injured
individual ?
• Degree of preoccupation had a major effect. Among those who were on
schedule, 45% helped. In the most preoccupied group, only 10%
helped. Many of the preoccupied seminarians paid little or no attention
to the person who was coughing and groaning.
• Conclusion: Person who is too busy to pay attention to surroundings
fails to notice even an obvious emergency.
• No help is given because there is no awareness that the emergency
exists.
STEP 2: INTERPRETING AN EMERGENCY AS
AN EMERGENCY
• Even when we do pay attention to what is going on around us, we have only limited and
incomplete information about what strangers might be doing. Most of the time, it
doesn’t matter and its none of our business. Ex: Man running down a road with a
briefcase. Late to work? OR a thief who has robbed a bank??
• Whenever potential helpers aren’t completely sure as to what is going on, they tend to
hold back and wait for further info. With ambiguous info, most people are inclined to
accept a comforting and non-stressful interpretation that indicates no need to do
anything.
• Multiple witnesses may inhibit helping not only because of the diffusion of responsibility,
but also because it is embarrassing to misinterpret a situation and act inappropriately.
• Pluralistic ignorance-tendency of bystanders in an emergency to rely on what other
bystanders do and say, even though none of them is sure about what is happening
or what to do about it. Very often, all of the bystanders hold back and behave as if
there is no problem and use this “information” to justify their failure to act.
• Latane and Darley(1968)-placed participants in a room alone or with two other
participants as they filled out questionnaires. After several minutes had passed,
experimenters pumped smoke into the room through a vent.
• When individuals were alone, 75% stopped doing what they were doing and
reported the problem. When 3 people in a room, only 38% reacted to the smoke.
When smoke became too thick that it was difficult to see, 62% did nothing!
• Being with other people who fail to respond seems to be a powerful inhibitor.
• Fear of misinterpreting a situation & making a blunder is reduced under certain
conditions. Ex: Social inhibitions are weaker if other bystanders are friends
rather than strangers; because friends are likely to communicate with one
another about what is going on and what to do about it.
• People in small towns- more likely to help than people in large cities, as they
tend to know many of their fellow citizens. People in large cities move faster,
avoid eye contact with those around, paying attention primarily to themselves.
• Fear of doing wrong things can also be reduced by consumption of alcohol-
reduces anxiety about opinions of others, thus increasing the tendency to help.
STEP 3: ASSUMING THAT IT IS YOUR
RESPONSIBILITY TO HELP
• Once an individual pays attention to some external event, interprets it as an emergency,
a prosocial act will follow only if the person takes responsibility for providing help.
• Ex: Firefighters, police officers, medical personnel.
• When responsibility is not clear, people tend to assume that anyone in leadership role
must be responsible. Ex: professors in classroom emergencies, bus drivers responsible
for their vehicles. One adult with several children; then the adult is expected to take
charge.
• Lone bystander is less likely to act as a bystander in a group- there is no one else present
who could take responsibility. With a group that has no obvious leader, there is a diffusion
of responsibility.
STEP 4: KNOWING WHAT TO DO

• Even if a bystander reaches step 3 and assumes responsibility, nothing

useful can be done unless the person knows HOW to be helpful. Some
emergencies are sufficiently simple that almost everyone has
necessary skills. Ex: someone has slipped, you can offer a helping hand
to help them get back on their feet.
• Some emergencies require special knowledge and skills that are not
possessed by most bystanders. Ex: someone drowning can be helped
only by someone who knows how to swim.
STEP 5: MAKING THE DECISION TO HELP

• Even if a bystander’s response at each of the first 4 steps is a yes, help will not occur
unless he/she makes the final decision to act.
• Helping can be inhibited by fears(realistic ones) about potential negative consequences.
• People seem to engage in “Cognitive algebra” as they weigh positive v/s negative
aspects of helping.
• Special type of unpleasant consequence- individual being threatened by someone in
his/her own family. Bystanders rarely offer help when they believe a woman is being
attacked by her husband/boyfriend; child being abused by a parent. Intervention in
domestic violence can be more dangerous than interference in a hostile interaction
between two strangers,
SITUATIONAL FACTORS THAT ENHANCE OR
INHIBIT HELPING: ATTRACTION, ATTRIBUTIONS,
PROSOCIAL MODELS
• A) Helping those you like:
• In most examples of actual emergencies reported in newspapers and bogus
emergencies devised by social psychologists, the person in need is actually a stranger.
• What if, instead of a stranger, the person is a close friend of yours? Would that make
you more inclined to offer help? Obviously YES!
• Victim-stranger- but similarity, physically attractive-you feel that this is someone you
would like-would such characteristics have any effect on your prosocial tendencies?
YES!
• Appearance. Physically attractive victim receives more help than an unattractive one.
• Bystanders are more likely to help a victim who is similar to themselves than one who
is dissimilar.
• Homosexuality is stigmatized by many people in society. On this basis,
Shaw, Borough, Fink(1994)-predicted that a homosexual stranger in
need of help would receive less help than a comparable heterosexual
stranger.
• Wrong number technique.
• Male research assistant named Mike dialed a random number &
pretended to have a flat tire. Used last quarter to make the call. Asked
people to call his girlfriend Lisa or boyfriend Rick and tell them that he
would be late for their anniversary dinner.
• Results- most people were willing to help heterosexual stranger than a
homosexual one.
B) ATTRIBUTIONS CONCERNING VICTIM
RESPONSIBILITY
• Man lying unconscious. What attributions would you make? Clothing-stained, torn;
empty bottle of wine. You decide he drank too much and passed out.
• Would you be more likely to help if his clothes were neat and clean & you notice a
bruise on his forehead? Yes!
• Help is not given as freely if a bystander assumes that the victim is to blame.
• Religious individuals-refrain from helping if they attribute responsibility to the
victim.
• Homosexuality & unemployment.
• Sexual assaults-perceptions of men and women.
• Power of similarity.
C) PROSOCIAL MODELS

• Someone collecting money for homeless or for needy children. Do you react by
making a contribution?
• Observe someone else making a donation. If others give money, you are also
likely to do so. Even presence of coins contributed earlier encourages you to
make a charitable response.
• In an emergency situation, presence of fellow bystanders who fail to respond
inhibits helpfulness. However, the presence of a helpful bystander provides a
strong social model & increases helping behavior among remaining bystanders.
• Ex: Flat tyre experiment.
• Helpful models in the media-contribute to creation of a social norm that
encourages prosocial behavior.
• Power of TV- episode of Lassie-rescue scene- a model for providing help.
• Second group watched a Lassie episode that did not center on a prosocial theme.
• Third group watched a humorous episode of The Brady Brunch- without prosocial
content. After watching the shows, children played a game in which the winner
could receive a prize. During the game, it was arranged that the children would
pass through a group of whining, hungry puppies. Each child- 2 choices- pause to
help or go on with the game.
• Decision to help- Depended on the show they watched. Children who watched rescue
episode stopped and spent much time trying to comfort the animals.
• Other shows-Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Sesame street, Barney & Friends-
preschool children who watched prosocial programs such as these are much more
apt to respond in a prosocial way than children who do not watch such shows.
• Negative effects- violent video games- Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter- decrease in
prosocial behavior.
• Models that are not violent-but are unconcerned about the plight of others- The
Simpsons and South Park-level of prosocial behavior could be negatively affected,
but relevant research is not done yet.