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Prosocial Behaviour: Doing what’s best for others
9-2What Is Prosocial Behaviour?
Prosocial behaviour is defined as doing something that is good
for other people or for society as a whole. Prosocial behaviour
includes behaviour that respects others or that allows society to
operate.
Obeying the rules, conforming to socially accepted standards of
proper behaviour, and cooperating with others are important
forms of prosocial behaviour.
9-2aBorn to Reciprocate
Reciprocity is defined as the obligation to return in kind what
another has done for us.
Most often people consider reciprocity to be direct – you help
someone who may help you later. However, scientists have
argued that some reciprocity may be indirect – help someone
and receive help from someone else, even strangers who know
you only through reputation. Helping someone or refusing to
help has an impact on one’s reputation within the group.
Does reciprocity apply to seeking help as well as giving help?
Often you might need or want help, but you might not always
accept help and certainly might not always seek it out. People’s
willingness to request or accept help often depends on whether
they think they will be able to pay it back (i.e., reciprocity). If
they don’t think they can pay the helper back, they are less
willing to let someone help them.
When someone helps you, you probably feel grateful for the
assistance. Gratitude is defined as a positive emotion that
results from the perception that one has benefited from the
costly, intentional, voluntary action of another person.
9-2bBorn to Be Fair
Fairness is a cultural norm. Norms are standards established by
society to tell its members what types of behaviour are typical
or expected.
Two norms that promote fairness are equity and equality.
Equity means that each person receives benefits in proportion
to what they have contributed (e.g., the person who does the
most work gets the highest pay).
Equality means that everyone gets the same amount.
, People who do see themselves as taking more than they give
may become depressed. To avoid depression, people may seek
to contribute their fair share.
The concern with fairness makes people feel bad when they
don’t contribute their fair share, but it can also affect people
who think that their good performance makes others feel bad.
When we outperform others, we may have mixed emotions. On
the one hand, we may feel a sense of pride and pleasure
because we have ‘beaten’ the competition. On the other hand,
we may feel fear and anxiety because those we have
outperformed might reject us or retaliate.
Interpersonal concern about the consequences of outperforming
others has been called sensitivity about being the target of a
threatening upward comparison.
Researchers who study fairness distinguish between two kinds
of unfairness, namely being under-benefited (getting less than
you deserve) and being over-benefited (getting more than you
deserve).
It appears that children between the ages of 4 and 8 get the
idea of paying back someone who has done something mean to
them. Paying back positive things comes more slowly. Younger
children notice when someone does something good for them,
and it makes them more likely to do something nice themselves
– but not necessarily for the same person who was nice to them.
That is, researchers distinguished between direct reciprocity
(paying back the same person) and generalised reciprocity
(performing a similar act toward just anyone).
With aggressive or antisocial acts, direct reciprocity appears
early in child development: being the target of unkind actions
makes children do unkind things, but only toward the same
person who was unkind to them.
9-3Morality
Time of day seems to matter. Evidence for a ‘morning morality
effect’ shows that people seem to be at their virtuous best in the
morning, and the likelihood of immoral actions increases later
in the day.
Moral reasoning: using logical deductions to
make moral judgments based on abstract
principles of right and wrong.
, Moral intuitions: judgments (about whether
an action is right or wrong) that occur
automatically and rely on emotional feelings.
9-4Cooperation, Forgiveness,
Obedience, Conformity and Trust
9-4aCooperation
Cooperation: Working together with someone
for mutual or reciprocal benefit
Psychologists have studied cooperation by using
the prisoner’s dilemma, which forces people to choose
between a cooperative act and another act that combines being
competitive, exploitative and defensive.
The prisoner’s dilemma is called a non-zero-sum game (an
interaction in which both participants can win (or lose)), a
term from game theory with important implications for
social life. Zero-sum games (a situation in which one
person’s gain is another’s loss) are those in which the
winnings and losings add up to zero. Poker is zero-sum,
because a certain amount of money changes hands, but there
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