cflapter 9 prosocial Behavior J-{elping Others -Chapter Overview Why People Help: Motives for Prosocial Behavior Factors That Increase or Decrease the Tendency to Help Lmp,1thy-A ltnnsm: It Feels Good to Help Others Factors That Increase Prosocial Beha,ior Negt1th e·St,1te Relief: Helpmg Can Reduce Unpleasan t What Research Tells Us About. ..Pa 1ing It Fon..-ard: Feelings Helping Others Because We HaYe Been Helped Fmp.1Lh.ic Joy: Feeling Good by Helping Others Factors That Reduce Helping CPrnpeHtivc Altruism: Why Nice People Sometimes What Research Tells Us About. ..How People React to Finish Virsl Being Helped Km Selection Theory Crowdfunding: A New Type of Prosocial Beha,ior Dl'iensive Hdping: Helping Outgroups to Reduce Emotion and Prosocial Behavior: 1Iood. Feelings of 11wir Threat lo Our lngroup Eh:•\ ation, and Helping Responding to an Emergency: Will Bystanders Help? Gender and Prosocial Beha,;ior: Do, \'omen and Helping in Emergencies: Apathy-or Action? :t-.Ien Differ? Is llwre Sc1fety m Numbers? Sometimes, but Not Final Thoughts: Are Prosocial Beha,ior and Aggressio ,\lways Opposites? Kt>) Steps in Deciding to Hrlp-Or Not One Sllilny day in An1es, fowa, Chris Ihle was reh.1rnmg from lunch. He had ju St parked his 1notorc\·cle when he noticed a car parked on the tracks at a railroad crossing. Look ing up, he ~av,r a train approaching-and fast! He ran to the car and shouted at then-, , people inside to move immediately, but the dri er sat frozen at the 'vvheel, and neither he nor his passenger replied. Thinking fast, Clrris shouted to the driver to put the car in neutral and then tried to push it fonvard from behind. VVhen it didn't move, he ran to the front and tried to push it back. This time, it did move and he managed to get 1t off the track, just as the train rushed by-it missed the car by a fevv inches. So his act of heroism saved the tv:o people in the car, 84-year-old Marion Papich and his 78-year-old \vife, Jean-from \vhat was certain to be serious injury, or e,·en death. Truly, he was a hero \\·ho risked his own life to help two strangers ... and succeeded. Around the globe, more than 3 billion people cook their meals and heat their homes with small stoves; these stoves bum many kinds of fuel-,vood, charcoal, waste from farm land-but all of them are dangerous, both to the people who use them and to entire planet. These stoves are highly inefficient-they require a large amount of fuel to make a small amount of heat. They emit dangerous fumes, soot, and many other pol­ lutants. And while you might think that these arnounts are small, remember that they are probably more than a billion of them in use! The result: Together they account for more than 12 percent of all greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere (Global Al­ liance for Safe Cookstoves). Further, the pollution they emit is as harmful to the people exposed to it, since the stoves are often u sed in very small enclosures. And perhaps even worse, many thousands of children are burned by these hot stoves every year. Clearly, this is a major social and environmental problem, but can anything be done to relieve it? A group of engineers believed that it could and founded a company­ Aprovecho- which means "make the best use of" in Spanish. Their goal was to build a better, safer, and more efficient cookstove and provide it to hundreds of millions of people at a price they could afford-a price that would provide no profits for the com­ pany or its founders, but would help solve this serious problem. More recently, this task has been carried forward by the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, vvith the same goal and again, without making any profit. One of the stoves they developed is shown in Figure 9.1, and it-and others that burn different kinds of fuel-has been provided (at the lowest price possible) to more than 100 million people, who benefit greatly from these products. \l tir~l gl.,nct', tlw:,c s lllriL•s might seem totally Figure Pro~ocial 8Bhav1or Can Help One ,I 1tl'd.; in tl'rms of tl·w l'\'L'nls they Lil-scribe they "re 9.1 1111 ft • . • ' u Person-or Many Millions ftcn•nl But, m Jad, thL•rc is ,1n undt>rlyi n<• lhl'JT\e that I 1 ' Tl ·1 t'1 ,,1n1H'ds tlwm: ~t'\' I lust'.·.. 1tl ~ wh,1t soci,,1 psychologists Prosocial actions can be focused on helping one or a few dL'~.:ribe as prosoc1a~ beha:1or- -actions by individu,1ls lh,1t other people, but can also benefit millions of people. A dramatic instance of this is provided by efforts to develop hdP others, ott~n, ,v1th no nnmc-tii,1tc lw,wfil to llw lwlpl'rs. cooking stoves that are more efficient-and safer-than Chris Jhk' ~ertamly h~Iped_tlw coup It• tht> car, in s,l\'ing them the ones that exist today. The scientists working on this frl101 certnm harm. L_1kt.>w1se, efforts \l) s upply htt11drl'd., of tnsk are doing so without any pay or other compensation. rni!lions of people with safer and morL' L'ffkh•nl cookstovps l hus, th ey are showing prosocial behavior. certainly help tlwm, an~i the entire planet, loo. So, prosoci,1I 11 :1\'ior t,1k.es man)' different forms ,,,c~ c 1. f l}~ ' ' " .I ,11\ L)l' OCU SL'l 1 on " . neopk, or on helping hw•e nun"lb(•i·s · .· a fe r , . n . - 111 Vil110us ways. ln one sense, p1osoc1c1l behavior 1·s sun c,wl . t . • • 1 1a myslen ~· Wh, should the people who enrrw·c' ·n ·l .· k th • ci U• • • • • o< o 1 1 11 s cir own :,..•• fetY , well-bemg, and tnne to help otl1ers, wl~o, canno. t re dprocate (at least immediately or overtly) such help? The answer, as uncovered by social psychologists, is that there are mam· motives behind such behavior·, ar~d, many f ac tors that increase, or decrease, its occurrence. In this. chapter, ~ve will examine many aspects of proso­ cial bchavmr We V,'111 start by describing the motives from which it springs. Then, since dramatic instances in which people help others occur in emergency situations (as it did in tlie situation involving the car stuck on the railroad track), we \\ ill focus attention on helping in such situations, becau e the, prm ide important insights into the nature of prosoci,11 behavior. After that, we will examine several fac­ tors that influence the occurrence of prosocial actions-both e\.ternal factors relating to the situations in which it occurs and personal characteristics that influence the likelihood that specific people will, or will not, provide help when it is needed. We will also focus attention on an especially intrigui ng question: How do people who receive help respond to it? Will it be with gratitude, OJ, perhaps with embarrassment, or even resentment over receiving such assistance? 9.1 : Why People Help: Motives for Prosocial Behavior OhiPr.tive Assess the factors that lead people to help others Why do people help others? Before addressing the specific factors that increase or decrease the tendency to engage in such actions, we will first focus on a key question: What motives underlie the tendency to help others? As we will see soon, many factors play a role in determining whether, and to what extent, specific people engage in such actions. Several aspects of the situation are important, and a number of personal (i.e., dispositional) factors are also influential. We will focus on these factors in later discussions. 9.1.1: Empathy-Altruism: It Feels Good to Help Others One explanation of prosocial behavior involves empathy-the capacity to be able to experience others' emotional states, feel sympathetic toward them, and take their perspective (e.g., Eisenberg et al., J 999; Hodges, Kiel, Kramer, Veach, & Vil­ laneuva, 2010). In other words, we help others because we vicariously experience any unpleasant feelings they are experiencing and want to help bring their negative feelings to an end, and one way of doing so is to help them in some way. This is unselfish because it leads us to offer help for no extrinsic reason, but it is also self­ ish, in one sense, since the behavior of assisting others helps us, too: It can make us feel better. Reflecting these basic observations, Batson, Duncan, Ackerman, Buckley, and Birch offered the empathy-altruism hypothesis, which suggests that at least some prosocial acts are motivated solely by the desire to help someone in need. Such moth·ation can be sufficiently strong that the helper is willing to engage in unpleasant, dangerous, and even life-threatening activities. Compassion for other people mar outweigh all other considerations (Goetz, Keltner, & Simon-Thomas, 2010) In fact, research findings indicate that empathy consists of three distinct compo- nf'nts: an emotional aspect (emotional empathy, which involves sharing the feelings and emotions of others), a cognitive component, which involves perceiving others' thoughts and feelings accurately (empathic accuracy), and a third aspect, known as empathic concern, which involves feelings of concern for another's well-being (e.g., Gleason, Jensen-Campbell, & Ickes, 2009). This distinction is important, because it appears that the three components are related to different aspects of prosocial behav­ ior, and have different long-term effects.