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Prosocial Behavior

Empathy and Helping Behavior

Many students state that they want to go into psychology because they want to help people. Does this sound like you? What is it that makes some people more likely to help others? One variable that is predictive of helping behavior is empathy. There are three components of empathy: perspective taking, personal distress, and empathetic concern. Perspective taking is a purely cognitive form of empathy as it denotes that one person is able to understand another person’s situation. Personal distress occurs when one person truly feels another person’s pain. Empathetic concern is when one person recognizes another person’s suffering and feels a concern for them. Being able to feel another person’s personal distress is one of the best predictors of helping behavior, because if a person feels another’s distress, they will want to help the other person, in order to reduce the distress that both of them now feel (Kassin et al., 2021).

Positive Mood and Helping Behavior Apart from a person’s level of empathy, being in a positive mood may also affect people’s level of helping behavior (Kassin et al., 2021). Research has conclusively shown that people who are in a good mood are more likely to help others. For example, if a person is in a good mood because they just found money on the street, that person is now more likely to help a stranger carry their groceries, as long as that positive mood is still present (Kassin et al., 2021).

Reciprocity

Positive mood is a very simple thing that affects your level of helping others. Another simple thing that affects helping behavior is reciprocity. Reciprocity means that when someone does a favor for you, you are more likely to do a favor for that person who helped you (Cialdini and Griskevicius, 2019). Researchers are not sure if reciprocity is something that is wired into our genes, or something that we just learn throughout our lives. Either way, research shows that it is a very powerful technique. So, if you think that you might need a favor from someone in the future, now is the time to do a favor for that person.

Helping in an Emergency Situation

Does a person’s immediate physical environment affect their likelihood to help another person? The answer is most definitely “yes,” when the helping behavior occurs in an emergency situation (Kassin et al., 2021). If a person is injured and lying on the ground, the fewer the people that witness the injury, the more likely the injured individual is to get help. This is called the bystander effect. This theory was developed after the murder of Kitty Genovese in the late 1960s in New York. Kitty was attacked outside of her apartment building in an attempted robbery. She fought off her attacker for a while. After 30 minutes, however, she lost the battle and died outside her apartment building. The strange thing about this situation is that a follow-up investigation of the murder found that 38 people in her building had heard the attack as it was happening. Nobody came down to help. Nobody called the police. The fewer people present in an emergency situation, the more likely you are to get help. The more people present, not only will it take longer to get help, but the chances of you getting help becomes greatly reduced. The reason that this occurs is known as diffusion of responsibility. It is the simple idea that if more people are able to help in a situation, every other person may assume that someone else can help, so that they do not have to get involved. Are there other issues that impact diffusion of responsibility (Rowan et al., 2022)?

Being able to help others is a powerful skill that plays an important role in our society. Predicting if or when a person will help another person requires a close analysis of one’s personality as well as the situation where the help is needed. Learned social skills and gender may also influence helping behavior and bystander intervention (Jenkins & Nickerson, 2019).

References

Cialdini, R. B., & Griskevicius, V. (2019). Social influence. In Finkel, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2019). Advanced social psychology: The state of the science (2nd ed., pp. 157–178). Oxford University Press.

 Jenkins, L. N., & Nickerson, A. B. (2019). Bystander intervention in bullying: Role of social skills and gender. Journal of Early Adolescence, 39(2), 141–166. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1177/0272431617735652

Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2021). Social Psychology (11th ed.). Cengage.

Rowan, Z. R., Kan, E., Frick, P. J., & Cauffman, E. (2022). Not (entirely) guilty: The role of co-offenders in diffusing responsibility for crime. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 59(4), 415–448. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1177/00224278211046256