Development Of Pro- And Antisocial Behaviour (SOWPSB2SP70E)
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Summary LECTURES for Pro-and Antisocial Behavior (Radboud University Nijmegen)
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Development Of Pro- And Antisocial Behaviour (SOWPSB2SP70E)
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Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (RU)
Extensive summary of all relevant information from the lectures of Pro-and Antisocial behavior (2020). Information from the articles is mostly included. Achieved grade was an 8!
Development Of Pro- And Antisocial Behaviour (SOWPSB2SP70E)
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Main theories of prosocial behavior
What is prosocial behavior?
- Behavior that is defined by society as generally beneficial to other people and/or to the
ongoing political or cultural system
- It´s always interpersonal (one or multiple persons helping other person)
- Context dependent→defined by society, so a certain culture defines the behavior as
prosocial
- Specific forms of prosocial behavior are helping, altruism, cooperation
- Golden rule → do unto others as you would have others do unto you. There are many
examples of prosocial behavior in religious writings which intend to encourage people to act
in prosocial way
- Socrates → believed that each person pursued that which was “good”
- Plato → human beings will always be selfish to avoid pain and pursue pleasure and through
laws these base instincts could be prevented
- Aristotle → seeing people as basically noble, generous, good
Social psychology
- William McDougall → one of the founders; social behavior is governed by a set of primary
instincts, which are linked to emotions such as fear, anger etc.. Most important is the
parental instinct and the associated “tender emotion”, because it is the root of prosocial
behavior.
- Mc Dougal showed interest in prosocial behavior (1900) and said that prosocial behavior is a
core emotion/an instinct, but interest declined, because he was racist
- In 1960s there was a turning point→Kitty Genovese got murdered and all neighbors seeing it
did not intervene and let her die; this shocked the society and inspired a new line of research
1. Helping:
- Providing benefit to or improving well-being of another person
- 4 types of helping→casual helping (small favor, can be towards everybody); substantial
personal helping (considerable effort, mostly towards people you know); emotional helping
(emotional support, you probably now the person and requires quite some effort);
emergency helping (helping with an acute problem) (EXAM!)
- 3 dimensional classification system→direct/indirect; serious/not serious;
spontaneous/planned
2. Altruism:
- Helping purely out of the desire to benefit someone else, with no benefit (and often a cost)
to oneself
- Often it is difficult to say whether helping it is because of egoistic reasons or altruism
, 3. Cooperation:
- Acting together in the pursuit of shared goals, the enjoyment of the joint activity, or simply
furthering the relationship you have
When are people prosocial?
Latane and Darle model→whether a person will act prosocially is the result of a logical decision-
making process that includes 5 steps:
1. Notice the event→clarity and context of the event as well as the mood of the helper
determines whether someone notices something is wrong; the more ambiguity, the less
likely to help (clarity); the more rural the area, the less stimuli and more likely to notice
(context); the more sad you are, the more you look to yourself (mood)
2. Interpret event as emergency→clear signs of distress increase the chance of bystanders
interpreting situation as an emergency;
3. Taking personal→
- Bystander effect: when you are the only person witnessing emergency, you are more likely
to help
- Inverse relationship: the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely anyone will help
Because of: pluralistic ignorance (looking to one another to interpret situation) & diffusion
of responsibility (believing that someone else will take responsibility)
4. Know what to do/implement decision→less frequently examined
- Are people with a first aid training better able to decide what to do and do they take action?:
they do not help more often, but they do provide better quality of help
Five factors makes us perceive an event as an emergency:
1. Something happens that is sudden and unexpected
2. There is a clear threat to the person
3. Harm will persists or worsen if no one intervenes
4. Victims is helpless
5. Some form of effective assistance is possible
- People need enough time to think! In ambiguous situations, people help less!
Why are people prosocial?
Biological explanations:
- Natural selection → behaviors that promote survival are naturally selected, however
altruism is costly and seen in humans and animals (paradox of altruism)
- Reciprocal altruism → if you help someone, chances are they will repay the favor in the
future (in that case, there actually are survival benefits)
- Kin selection → the survival of a genotype is more important than the survival of an
individual
, - Genetic determinism → we choose lovers who are genetically similar to ourselves;
therefore, we are more likely to help people who are genetically similar to ourselves
Learning explanations:
- Rheingold suggests that young children frequently help other people and the learning view is
that they learn pro-social behavior by parents rewarding pro-social behavior, acting as
prosocial models and exposing children to other prosocial models
- Dispositional praise → the child is praised specifically “you are a helpful person”. This is
more effective than global praise “good job”.
- Willingness to help first increases with age, but past a certain age, it starts to decrease
- Audience inhibition → adults are less likely to help people if there are other people present
Norm theories:
Suggest that every member of society learns pro-social behavior as part of socialized norms
(unwritten rules that tell us how to behave in situations).
- Social norm→rules for acceptable and non-acceptable behavior in certain situations
(Schwartz theory of norm activation)
- Reciprocity norm→we feel inclined to help others who have helped us. It also means that
our favors for other people will also be returned by other people. Self-serving bias → we
tend to see our pro-social behavior as better than it is and the behavior of others as worse
than it is
- Social responsibility norm→we feel inclined to help others who are dependent on us.
However, people do not always offer help in emergencies, because:
1. Not everyone has learned this norm
2. It could be that individuals have learned multiple norms that may conflict with one another
3. People do possess the norm, but do not know how to apply the norm in a specific situation
- Personalized norms→are one´s individual feelings of moral obligation on how to behave in a
certain situation; vary a lot and are more predictive than social norms.
1. Activation stage: a person becomes aware of another´s needs and sees that he could do
something to help
2. Obligation: person feels a moral obligation to help
3. Defense: person will begin to assess the costs that are involved and might try to deny
responsibility
4. Response stage: person will take action or not based upon the defense stage
Three weaknesses: the number of norms is so enormous and vague that we could use them to
explain anything; norms may be conflicting with each other in situations; it could be that we need a
new norm for every new situation we encounter
Empathy and arousal:
- For an egoist perspective there are three options in an emergency:
1. If we help, others won´t think negatively of us or we won´t think negatively of ourselves
2. If we help, maybe we´ll receive praise or reward from other people (empathy-specific
reward)
3. If we avoid the situation by leaving, we can reduce our emotional arousal, but if we help, we
also reduce our emotional arousal
- Aversive arousal reduction, which means that we want to reduce our arousal when
witnessing an event or emergency either by helping or by walking away. Is it an altruistic
reason or egoism when helping person in crash?.
, Negative state relief model Empathy altruism model
Negative state relief model→motivation stems from egocentric reasons helping to make yourself
feel better
Empathy altruism model→motivation stems from altruistic reasons helping to make the other feel
better. We help to reduce the distress of the person in need
Empathic-joy hypothesis → compromise between the two models. Emotional arousal leads us to
help. However, we behave in a prosocial way not to reduce our negative emotions but to experience
the joy that helping brings us
Cost-benefit analysis:
- Decision to help depends on the consideration of costs and benefits: people want to
minimalize cost (costs for helping: time and effort, loss of goods, risk) and maximize benefits
(benefits for helping: social recognition, positive self-view); (costs for not helping such as
social disapproval)
- Costs → effort, time, loss of resources, risk of harm, negative emotional response
- Benefits → social approval, self-esteem, positive emotional response
- Costs of not helping → disapproval, damaged self-esteem, negative emotional response
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