13.3 The Social and Emotional Triggers of Helping

Our discussion of nature and nurture and the existence of altruism examines the why of helping—that is, the motivations that underlie prosocial behavior. Let’s take a closer look at when and whom we help. By definition, helping is a social process, one that it is influenced by how we think and feel about our relationships to other people. In this section, we’ll consider the social and emotional processes that trigger our prosocial tendencies.

Similarity and Prejudice

Think ABOUT

Stop and think about the last few times you helped someone else. How would you describe the person you helped? Most of the time, people help those who are close to them. If they do stop to help a stranger, it is often because they feel a sense of similarity to that person. After all, it is easier for us to imagine ourselves in the shoes of people like us, to take their perspective, and feel a sense of empathy for their situation (Krebs, 1975). In one study conducted in the 1970s, research assistants dressed either like hippies (think bell bottoms; sandals; flowered shirts; and long, flowing hair) or more conservatively (pressed slacks, polished shoes, short hair) (Emswiller et al., 1971). They positioned themselves in the campus student union, approached passing students, and asked to borrow a dime. Some of the students they asked were themselves dressed like hippies; others were dressed more conservatively. What did the researchers find? People were more likely to help if the other person dressed the way they did. When it comes to helping, birds of a feather most definitely do flock together.

The notion that people are more likely to help similar others has a pleasant ring to it, but the dark underbelly of this effect is people’s tendency to walk past those who are dissimilar or against whom they are prejudiced. Many studies of helping have revealed that markedly less help is given to members of socially devalued groups. In one study, researchers made phone calls to unsuspecting White participants (Gaertner, 1973). Speaking either without a distinctive accent or with a southern Black accent, the caller pretended to be someone whose car had broken down and who had just used his or her last dime to call what seemed to be a wrong number. The request: Will you please phone a garage and send out a tow truck? When participants presumed that the caller was White, they were significantly more likely to volunteer to call a tow truck than when they presumed that the caller was Black.

We know what you are thinking: This study took place 40 years ago. Surely times have changed! Maybe not. A more recent meta-analysis of similar studies (Saucier et al., 2005) found that racial discrimination in how help is given has not diminished over time. In one set of experiments published in 2008, 92% of White college students came to the aid of another White student who had fallen and seemed to be injured in the next room, compared with only 70% when the victim was Black (Kunstman & Plant, 2008). And those who did offer help to the Black victim were about a minute slower to respond. When Black participants were faced with the same situation, they were equally likely to help the victim regardless of his or her race. In follow-up studies, Whites reported that when the victim was Black, the situation seemed less severe and they felt less responsible for intervening. Indeed, according to the meta-analysis by Saucier and colleagues (2005), Whites are especially unlikely to help a Black individual when they can claim nonracial justifications for their inaction, evidence of what has been called aversive racism, a topic you might remember learning about in chapter 10.

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Race isn’t the only dimension on which prejudice plays a role in the failure to help. Even families aren’t immune. Parents are less likely to pay for tuition for their overweight than for their normal-weight children (Crandall, 1991), an effect that is typical of a general prejudice against those who are overweight (Crandall, 1994). Even when people do not actively harm members of socially stigmatized groups, the tendency to withhold help and assistance can be a subtle but pervasive form of discrimination. This type of discrimination is especially likely when people have a convenient excuse for their inaction. For example, as we reviewed in chapter 10 as well, a White participant is less likely to help a Black victim if it is plausible that someone else might intervene (Gaertner & Dovidio, 1977).

The Empathy Gap

We’ve already described Batson’s theoretical view that empathy is what drives true altruism. And one of the reasons people are more likely to help those they feel similar to is that they find it easier to empathize with their plight. More generally, however, people tend to underestimate other people’s experience of physical pain (Loewenstein, 2005) as well as the pain of social rejection (Nordgren et al., 2011). Because of this empathy gap, people often fail to give help when help is needed. Asking people to experience pain or rejection actually can help close this gap. In one study, middle-school teachers were more favorable to antibullying programs at their school after they were first asked to imagine in vivid detail the pain of being rejected (Nordgren et al., 2011).

Empathy gap

The underestimation of other people’s experience of physical pain as well as the pain of social rejection.

People are more likely to help when they focus on individual suffering than when they focus on tragic consequences to a large group. This is why many charitable organizations feature the experiences of individuals when soliciting donations.
[Top left: NetPhotos/Alamy; bottom left: © Nancy P. Alexander/PhotoEdit—All rights reserved; right: Courtesy Animal Legal Defense Fund, aldf.org]

Another way to close the empathy gap is to take the perspective of the person in need, that is, to imagine what that person is experiencing from his or her point of view. For example, after students listened to and took the perspective of a drug addict recounting his struggles with addiction, they were more likely to support funding a campus agency that would help fight addiction. Those who merely listened objectively to the same man’s experience were less willing to fund this new group (Batson et al., 2002). When people feel empathy for someone who is disadvantaged in society, they are also more likely to support policies that would help his or her group.

An interesting byproduct of empathy is that it makes people more likely to help when they focus on the suffering of a single individual than when they consider a tragedy that befalls a large group. In the aftermath of the tsunami that leveled many coastal communities in Japan in 2011, humanitarian groups rallied to raise money to meet the basic needs of the survivors and to begin to repair the massive damage that had been done. When such a disaster happens, the enormous scale of suffering is almost beyond comprehension. People can find it so emotionally overwhelming to contemplate that they actually downregulate their reaction to avoid distress (Cameron & Payne, 2011). In an ironic consequence, they are less likely to help in those situations where help is most sorely needed. This is why many fund-raising organization such as UNICEF, Save the Children, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund often feature the suffering of a representative child or animal to elicit most effectively the kinds of empathy that trigger helping.

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The Role of Causal Attributions

One factor that often contributes to people’s decision to help is whether or not they believe the person in need deserves her or his misfortune. This is where attribution theory enters the scene. You’ll recall from chapter 4 that people have a tendency, especially in individualistic cultures, to make dispositional attributions. They infer that another person’s condition is the result of his or her own personality or freely chosen actions, not the result of the situation. In addition, you may recall that we have a desire to believe in a just world where people generally get what they deserve. Because of these tendencies, people are quick to assume that others deserve their suffering. Even children as young as three assume that if a random bad thing happens to a person, that person must not be very nice (Olson et al., 2008). This means that if you are hoping to get some help when you find yourself in a bind, you might be fighting an uphill battle.

People are less likely to offer help to the homeless if they attribute the person’s need to his or her own lack of effort.
[Debbi Smirnoff/Vetta/Getty Images]

Thus, one key determinant of providing help to someone else is whether you think he is responsible for his current need. Is he in his present position because of something he could have controlled? If the answer is yes, we are more likely to turn our backs on him. If a classmate asks to borrow your notes from a class he missed, you are less likely to help him out if the reason for his absence was completely within his control (Weiner, 1980). On the other hand, when something uncontrollable happens, our response is to feel sympathy rather than disgust or anger, and this emotional response activates our desire to help out (Reisenzein, 1986). Thinking back to the studies where a confederate collapsed in a crowded subway car, we might wonder whether attributions played a role in people’s willingness to help someone who seemed disabled or their apathy about the person who seemed drunk.

The attributions people make affect their decision to help not only single individuals but also groups of people. When a group is socially stigmatized due to factors out of its control, people feel sympathy and offer their support for policies that would benefit its members (Weiner et al., 1988). For example, we might expect people to be much more supportive of charities that help those with cancer or heart disease than those suffering from obesity or drug abuse, which are viewed as being much more within a person’s control. More recent evidence suggests that some groups in society that might be most in need of help, such as the homeless and drug addicts, actually elicit disgust rather sympathy. When observing these groups, people show reduced activation in areas of the brain, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, where perceptions and impressions of human beings are formed (Harris & Fiske, 2006). That is, their brains react as though they were observing objects rather than people. In fact, when people dehumanize others, they assume that those others experience a smaller range of uniquely human emotions (Leyens et al., 2000). You can imagine how this makes it particularly unlikely that they experience empathy: If you assume that another person doesn’t have the capacity to experience complex negative emotions such as regret and anxiety, then viewing the world from their perspective will leave you emotionally unaffected.

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Other Prosocial Feelings

We have focused on the role of empathy in helping, but other prosocial feelings also play a role in motivating a tendency to help. Among these are guilt, communal feelings, gratitude, and feeling socially secure.

Guilt

Our previous discussion of attributions focused on judging how responsible someone else is for his or her situation, but sometimes people offer help because they feel a personal responsibility for another person’s plight. As we noted earlier, internalized morals play a strong role in helping. People often help because they think it is the right thing to do. Although doing the right thing boosts their self-esteem, failing to live up to their own moral standards can make people feel guilty. Usually this guilt stems from the thought that we have not treated another person or group properly. In this way, it cues the person that there is a need to repair a social relationship (Baumeister et al., 1994; Rank, 1932/1989). Guilt is a bit like a Bat-Signal beamed into the sky calling for the Caped Crusader, but instead it calls the person into action to right some wrong. Many studies have demonstrated that inducing people to feel guilty increases their tendency to help others (Cunningham et al., 1980). In one staged experiment, when shoppers at a mall were made to believe that they had broken a confederate’s camera (rather than being told that the camera was malfunctioning), they later were more than three times as likely to help a passerby whose bag full of candy was spilling on the ground (Regan et al., 1972). In these situations, helping someone (even if it is not the person who was harmed) can help people alleviate guilt.

Even when people do not feel personally responsible for harm done to another person or group, they can nevertheless feel guilt about that harm, a feeling labeled collective guilt. For example, when people identify with a group that is socially advantaged over others, they can feel collective guilt about an outgroup that is less fortunate, especially if they see that the outgroup’s disadvantaged position in society is illegitimate (Miron et al., 2006). Collective guilt motivates a desire to make reparations to victims of past injustice or otherwise support policies that level the playing field (Regan, 1971). This relationship has been found in many circumstances: among U.S. and British students reflecting on the harm to the Iraqi people during their countries’ occupation of Iraq (Iyer et al., 2007); Chileans reflecting on Chile’s disadvantaged indigenous people (Brown et al., 2008); South Africans reflecting on their country’s history of apartheid (Klandermans et al., 2008); men reflecting on gender inequality (Gunn & Wilson, 2011); and White Americans reflecting on racial disadvantage in the United States (Iyer et al., 2003).

Although this research shows that guilt is effective at motivating helping, this effect may be short lived. Some researchers argue that when people help out of guilt—over either personal or collective actions—they are simply engaging in negative state relief (Iyer et al., 2003). In other words, they are helping only to make themselves feel better. The problem with this kind of helping is that it sometimes leads only to token forms of help that actually reduce the likelihood of providing more significant help at a later time (Dutton & Lennox, 1974). This work leads back to the conclusion that the best forms of helping are motivated by sympathy or empathy rather than guilt.

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A Communal Feeling

All this talk of guilt and empathy reminds us that one of the strongest motivators of our behavior is to form, strengthen, and maintain close relationships with others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Bowlby, 1973). Guilt lets us know when we might be falling down on that job and need to give a little help to restore a close relationship, but sympathy and empathy motivate lasting change. In romantic relationships, being willing to make sacrifices for your partner is a strong predictor of the health of your relationship (van Lange et al., 1997).

Communal orientation

A frame of mind in which people don’t distinguish between what’s theirs and what is someone else’s.

Think ABOUT

In close relationships, people are more likely to adopt a communal orientation where they don’t distinguish between what is theirs and what is someone else’s. When “you and I” become a “we,” the person attends to his or her partner’s needs regardless of whether that partner ever will be able to reciprocate (Clark et al., 1986). People become more sensitive to the partner’s sadness and more likely to help when the partner is feeling down (Clark et al., 1987). Family relationships are the prototypical communal relationship, especially the relationship between a parent and child. Think of all the ways in which your parents have helped you over the years. (Now might be a good time to send a thank-you note!) How have you returned the favor? But even our relationships with friends and acquaintances can take on these communal characteristics when we treat a friend to lunch without ever keeping track of whether she pays us back. In our communal relationships, helping someone else feels a lot like helping ourselves. Maybe this is why we feel the largest boost in mood when we help someone we feel communally connected to and the biggest drop in mood when we turn our back on that person (Williamson & Clark, 1989, 1992).

The Recipient’s Gratitude

It is not surprising that when the people we help express their gratitude, we are more likely to help again, not just the person who thanked us but anyone else in need (Grant & Gino, 2010). This effect of gratitude on prosociality doesn’t happen only because being thanked makes us feel good or cues a norm of reciprocity (Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006). Rather, people who express their gratitude to us make us feel more communal and enhance our feelings of social value. When we feel like a valued part of a community, we are more likely to keep helping that community. Before you draw the conclusion that gratitude is only about appreciating others, keep in mind that gratitude also has benefits for us. People who count their blessings feel happier, become more optimistic, exercise more, and sleep better (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). And people who score higher in gratitude are rated by their friends as engaging in more helpful behavior (McCullough et al., 2002).

Feeling Socially Secure

Evidence such as this suggests that a focus on how others help you is beneficial because it emphasizes that you are a part of a social ecosystem, which is a lot better for mental health than an emphasis on your own self-interested egosystem (Crocker, 2011). In fact, people who suffer from feelings of insecurity in their social relationships, especially those who avoid becoming too close to others, find it more difficult to feel compassion for someone in distress and are less likely to come to that person’s aid. People who are either dispositionally more secure in their relationships or who are primed with a sense of relationship security feel more compassionate and behave more prosocially toward both family members and distant acquaintances (Mikulincer et al., 2005; van Lange et al., 1997).

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SECTION review: The Social and Emotional Triggers of Helping

The Social and Emotional Triggers of Helping

Helping is a social process that is influenced by how we think and feel about our relationships with other people.

Similarity and prejudice

People are most likely to help those who are similar to them.

This can lead to prejudicial behavior when people ignore the plight of those who are different.

The empathy gap

People tend to underestimate others’ pain.

This can result in an empathy gap and less likelihood of offering help.

Causal attributions

Because of attributional processes and a desire to see the world as just, people may convince themselves a person bears responsibility for his troubles.

This feeling can reduce empathy and thus helping.

Other prosocial feelings

People are motivated to help by feelings of guilt, communal connections, and others’ gratitude.

A clear sense of one’s own relational security can also facilitate helping.