Chapter 13. Prosocial Behavior

Introduction

Prosocial behavior is an action by someone that is intended to benefit another person or group of people. In attempting to understand why someone may choose to help another person, we can think about the possible social and emotional triggers. As discussed in the text (page 484), how similar we feel we are to the person in need can play a role in whether we decide to help her or him. For instance, research suggests that we are more likely to help someone who dresses like us (e.g., Emswiller et al., 1971). Certain prosocial feelings have also been shown to increase the tendency for prosocial behavior, such as guilt (Cunningham et al., 1980) or a communal orientation, which is a frame of mind in which people don’t distinguish between what’s theirs and what is someone else’s (e.g., Clark et al., 1987).

Instructions

For this task imagine that you are on the board of directors of a charitable organization. As part of your job, you need to indicate your recommendation for how much financial assistance each of the following potential fund recipients should receive. You will make this recommendation by rating on a 1 to 10 scale as to how much money they should receive, with “1 meaning the least amount of money possible” and “10 meaning the most amount of money possible.”

Experiment

Results

Debriefing

The purpose of this task was to look at whether portraying a person as responsible for their misfortune influenced the degree to which they were offered help. As already mentioned, an important factor contributing to our decision to help is whether or not we believe the person in need deserves her or his misfortune. If the potential recipient is portrayed as personally responsible for their misfortune, then we are inclined to believe that they deserve the outcome, and therefore we are less likely to help (e.g., Weiner, 1980). As discussed in the text (page 484), causal attribution is just one of the social and emotional factors that influence our prosocial behavior.

References:

Clark, M. S., Oullette, R., Powell, M. C., & Milberg, S. (1987). Recipient's mood, relationship type, and helping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 94-103.

Cunningham, M. R., Steinberg, J., & Grev, R. (1980). Wanting to and having to help: Separate motivations for positive mood and guilt-induced helping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38(2), 181-192.

Emswiller, T., Deaux, K., & Willits, J. E. (1971). Similarity, sex, and requests for small favors. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1 (3), 284-291.

Farwell, L., & Weiner, B. (2000). Bleeding hearts and the heartless: Popular perceptions of liberal and conservative ideologies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 845-852.

Weiner, B. (1980). A cognitive (attribution)-emotion-action model of motivated behavior: An analysis of judgments of help-giving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(2), 186-200.

Weiner, B. (1993). On sin versus sickness: A theory of perceived responsibility and social motivation. American Psychologist, 48, 957-965.

Quiz