Pro- and antisocial behaviour notes
Theme 1: definition and theories of prosocial behavior
Why examine prosocial behavior?
- Important theme in religion, philosophy, folktales, …
o Universal
o Adaptive function (evolutionary psychology)
- 1900: scientists (Mc Dougall) shows interest in prosocial behavior, but interest readily
declines, he stated people have a parental instinct, he did not rely on experimental
research but on logical reasoning
- Turning point in the ‘60s due to a woman called Kitty Genovese (1964), people saw
her get murdered, but nobody called the police, eventually a neighbor called the
police when it was already too late. There was a shock not due to the murder only,
but due to the fact that her neighbors watched and did nothing, raised a lot of
questions and led psychologists to study prosocial behavior
What is prosocial behavior?
Prosocial behavior
Definition: behavior that is defined by society as generally beneficial to other people and/or
to the ongoing political or cultural system
Note:
- Always interpersonal, one person acting prosocial and one/or more person receiving
the act of prosocial behavior
- Context dependent, so not universal
Specific forms of prosocial behavior are:
1. Helping
a. = Any action that has the consequence of providing some benefit to or
improving the well-being of another person
b. 4 types of helping (McGuire, 1994)
i. Casual helping: small favor
ii. Substantial personal helping: considerable effort
iii. Emotional helping: emotional support
iv. Emergency helping: helping with an acute problem
c. 3-dimensional classification system (Pearce & Amato,
1980), (see the picture). Classified between
planned/formal helping (weekly volunteer) or
spontaneous/informal helping (picking up a pen) and
serious (severe) or not serious (non-severe) and direct
(giving a euro to a homeless guy) or indirect (donating to a charity)
2. Altruism
a. = Helping purely out of the desire to benefit someone else, with no benefit
(and often a cost) to oneself
b. Helping can be divided into altruism and helping for egoistic reasons
c. True altruism = you want to help another person’s welfare
d. Heroic act of helping/just not altruism = helping to e.g., feel good or for status
3. Cooperation
a. = Acting together (in a coordinated way) in the pursuit of shared goals, the
enjoyment of the joint activity, or simply furthering the relationship
,When are people prosocial?
Latané and Darley model
= Whether a person will act prosocial (or not) is the result of a logical decision-making
process that includes 5 steps (cognitive process), does explain when but not the underlying
reasons/motivations so not the ‘why’
1. Notice the event
2. Interpret event as emergency
3. Taking it personal
4. Know what to do
5. Implement decision
- Help is given when every step will be answered with yes, will a person come to a step
and answer this with no? No help is given
1. Notice the event
The clarity and context of the event as well as the mood of the helper
determines whether someone notices something is wrong
- Clarity: just seeing someone rubbing their knee might not let
you notice something is wrong but if you see them falling of
stairs and then rubbing their knee, it might
- Context: people in urban environments are less likely to notice
an event (stimulus overload)
- Mood: people in a good mood are often more attentive to their environment
2. Interpret event as emergency
Clear signs (e.g., screaming) of distress increase the chance of bystanders interpreting the
situation as an emergency
3. Taking personal
- Bystander effect: when you are the only person witnessing an emergency, you are
more likely to help than when there are more witnesses. The responsibility to help is
diffused when more people are present
- Inverse relationship: the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely anyone will
help
- Why?
o Pluralistic ignorance: looking to one another to (re)interpret situation (step 2)
o Diffusion of responsibility: believing that someone else will take responsibility
or believe that other people are better qualified/faster able to help
4. Know what to do & 5. Implement decision
On both topics is limited research. Shotland & Heinold (1985): 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
They do provide better quality of help
Why are people prosocial?
5 potential explanations:
,We help people because
1. The benefits outweigh the costs
2. It is the norm
3. We feel empathy and we want to reduce stress
4. We learned this from others
5. It is an inherited characteristic (evolutionary psychology)
1. Cost benefit analysis
= The decision to help depends on the consideration of costs and benefits: people want to
minimalize their costs and maximize their benefits (result of a cognitive process) (explains
personal differences, but doesn’t explain that in some situations all people are likely to help)
- Benefits for helping
o Social recognition
o Positive self-view
o Positive emotions
- Costs for helping
o Time and effort
o Loss of goods
o Risk getting injured
o Emotional toll
- Costs for not helping
o Social disapproval
o Physical/mental problems
2. It is the norm
Social norms: 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, the idea that
by helping someone else you will in the future receive help when needed by the
same person or by any other person who received help in the past (so doesn’t have
to be the same person, but believe that everyone will act this way)
- Social responsibility norm: we feel inclined to help others who are dependent on us
(helping an old lady cross the street or open the door for someone in a wheelchair)
Personal norms: one’s individual feelings of moral obligation on how to behave in a certain
situation. These norms help to predict a situation better than social norms do
Explanations presented mostly focused on cognitions (think + weight + decide = help), but do
people only help from cognition, or is there more to it? Like an emotional state?
3. We feel empathy and want to reduce stress
- Aversive arousal reduction: we want to reduce our arousal when witnessing an event
or emergency either by helping or by walking away -> altruism (for sake of the other)
vs. egoism (helping to reduce own negative feelings)
- Negative state relief model, also about helping in order to reduce arousal but more
about the egoistic part
1. Negative emotions evoked
2. Can we reduce them by doing something?
, 3. Is helping a way to reduce the negative emotions?
Help is likely if all steps are answered with yes, one is answered with
no? Helping is unlikely
Motivation stems from egocentric reasons: helping to make yourself
feel better
- Empathy-altruism model, also about helping to reduce arousal but more about the
altruistic part
1. Negative emotions evoked -> Yes
2. Do we feel empathy for the person in need?
Yes? Help Is likely
No? either help is unlikely, or help is provided out of self
interest
Motivation stems from altruistic reasons: helping to make the
other feel better
- All these models assume that people help because they get aroused or feel empathy,
but that makes it more difficult to apply these models to prosocial situations which
involve children, they don’t possess these empathy skills yet or only to a limited
degree
Overview
more likely to be prosocial
when:
- People notice the
situation, categorize the
situation as an
emergency, feel
responsible to help,
know what to do
More likely to be prosocial
because:
- The benefits of helping
outweigh the costs, it is
the norm, they want to reduce their stress and arousal
Theme 2: definition and theories of antisocial behavior
Intro
Why are people aggressive?
- Release internal energy/conflict?
- In genes and evolutionary adaptive?
- Physical disposition (hormones)?
- Frustration?
- Cognitive interpretation of arousal?
- Learned from others?
- Aggressive scripts?
- Many factors?
