The Social Psychology of Prosocial Behavior

John F. Dovidio, Jane Allyn Piliavin, David A. Schroeder, Louis A. Penner

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351540513
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Staatsbürgerkunde & Bürgerrechte

Written by four leading researchers in the study of prosocial behavior, this book introduces a new perspective on prosocial behavior for the 21st century. Building on the bystander intervention work that has defined this area since the 1960s, The Social Psychology of Prosocial Behavior examines prosocial behavior from a multilevel perspective that explores the diverse influences that promote actions for the benefit of others and the myriad ways that prosocial actions can be manifested. The authors expand the breadth of the field, incorporating analyses of biological and genetic factors that predispose individuals to be concerned for the well being of others, as well as planned helping such as volunteering and organizational citizenship behavior and cooperative behavior within and between groups. They identify both the common and the unique processes that underlie the broad spectrum of prosocial behavior.Each chapter begins with a question about prosocial behavior and ends with a summary that answers the question. The final chapter summarizes the questions and the answers that research provides. Conceptual models that elaborate on and extend the multilevel approach to prosocial behavior are used to tie these findings together. The book concludes with suggestions for future research. The Social Psychology of Prosocial Behavior addressesthe following:
*the evolution of altruistic tendencies and other biological explanations of why humans are predisposed to be prosocial;
*how the situation and motives that are elicited by these situations affect when and how people help;
*the causes and maintenance of long-term helping, such as volunteering;
*how prosocial behavior changes over time and the developmental processes responsible for these changes;
*the consequences of helping for both the people who provide it and those who receive it;
*helping and cooperation within and between groups and the implications of these actions.
This accessible text is ideal for advanced courses on helping and altruism or prosocial behavior, taught in psychology, sociology, management, political science, and communication, or for anyone interested in learning more about prosocial behavior in general.

CHAPTER 1
An Introduction to Prosocial Behavior

Consider the following short vignettes as we set the stage for our consideration of prosocial behavior.

On September 11,2001, four commercial airliners were hijacked by terrorists. Two were flown into the towers of the 110-story World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, a third was flown into the Pentagon outside of Washington, DC, and the fourth crashed into a farm field in Pennsylvania. More than 3,000 people were killed as the result of the terrorists' actions. Within this horrendous tragedy, evidence of incredibly heroic prosocial acts by hundreds of people from all walks of life can be found. Trained professionals—police officers, firefighters, paramedics—and people in the buildings attacked risked their lives as they tried to rescue survivors of these attacks. New York Policewoman Moira Smith helped people out of one of the Twin Towers, and then went back in to help more people. She was killed when the building collapsed. Other ordinary citizens simply rose to the occasion. Brian Clark, a vice-president for a brokerage firm, heard someone call for help as he struggled down the stairway and found Stanley Praimnath trapped behind a pile of heavy debris. As Praimnath jumped, Clark grabbed his collar and lifted him to safety. Together they made their way down the stairway to safety, leaving the building only five minutes before it collapsed (Murphy, 2002).

Hurricane Katrina struck the coastal areas of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana on Monday morning, August 29, 2005, making landfall just east of New Orleans. Thousands of homes and businesses along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico were simply swept away when a 25-foot storm surge came ashore. Approximately 1.5 million people had left the affected area in anticipation of the storm, but over 100,000 people remained in the city of New Orleans itself when the hurricane hit. When the levees holding back the waters of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain failed, the city did not have the means to provide the basic resources of food, water, medical care, and safe housing for those in dire need. Those who had remained behind then had to be evacuated from the city and taken to relocation centers and shelters in the surrounding states and throughout the country. Although well over $1 billion in donations to charitable organizations was collected in short order and many billions more in aid from federal and state governments would be needed to address the full scope of the disaster, it was often the prosocial actions of the citizens of the communities where the shelters were located that made the most important and immediate impact on the lives of these unfortunate evacuees. After brief stays in the shelters, families were often moved to vacant apartments or rental houses made available by local owners, and some families were invited to stay in private homes. Clothing for those who had lost everything was donated and distributed free of charge. Doctors and other health professionals volunteered their time and expertise to provide care. Children who enrolled in new schools were warmly welcomed by their new classmates. Why would ordinary citizens open their homes, give so freely of their time and money, and do whatever they could to provide the necessities of life and to give such a warm reception to people whom they did not know?

Era Watson Walker was born in 1911 and grew up in the hills of rural Arkansas. When she was young, her mother would do volunteer work at their church, and Era thought that she had an “angel for a mother … the best person I ever knew.” As an adult, Era has had a full life, raising two adopted daughters while teaching fifth graders for 30 years. She also taught Sunday school and was a Girl Scout leader. When she retired from teaching in 1971 at age 60 to take care of the three children she adopted from one of her daughters, she began to fill her “free time” with some volunteer work. After the death of her husband of nearly 60 years in 1988, Era tried to volunteer somewhere each day. At age 93, she decided to cut back a little and stopped working at the Art Center of the Ozarks and the Jones Center for Families. But she still volunteers in the office of her church over the lunch hour on Wednesdays, she serves as a counselor for clients who come to the Bread of Life pantry on Thursdays, and on Fridays she is the receptionist for the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History. For her many years of work, Era was given the “Volunteer of the Year Award” by the local United Way Foundation. She says she volunteers because she “just likes working with and for people” and that she “didn't even think about getting a prize for it.” She has given thousands of hours to benefit the lives of others, continuing a family tradition of volunteering. Era says she thinks there is “a little bit of mamma in me.” No one would disagree.

Louis Soto is a volunteer who literally gives of himself—he gives blood. From 1958 until 1988, Louis gave 23 gallons of blood, one pint at a time, to help people whom he did not know and would never see, and he helped them to stay alive. He began his quest toward a personal goal of giving 35 gallons of blood in 1954, when he heard about a person who suffered from hemophilia and needed many units of blood each year to survive. Soto has been recognized by the Red Cross for giving blood in every city and town in his home state of Connecticut that had held a blood drive. He is trying to donate blood in the capital of each state in the union, and he thinks nothing of driving thousands of miles from his home to make a donation. His family celebrates the 17th birthday of each child—he has 11 children—by visiting the Red Cross blood donation station, and the family forms caravans to drive around the country to give blood when a need may arise. Obviously the organizers with the Red Cross know about Louis and his commitment, and they will occasionally make specific requests for his help: “We've got a child who needs 20 pints of blood. Do you want to take a ride?” (Hopfensperger, 1988). Who can say how many more gallons he may have given by now?

On the day after Christmas, December 26, 2004, a massive tsunami raced across the Indian Ocean from the site of a tremendous underwater earthquake. The water “piled up” as it approached the shore, and the tsunami wave rose to 80-100 feet along the hardest hit areas nearest to the origin of the quake. An estimated 300,000 people were killed. The people of the world responded to this disaster in prosocial ways, with governments, relief organizations, and individuals pledging billions of dollars for aid. Military units from countries around the world took food, water, and medical supplies to those most in need and ferried out the injured for medical attention. Volunteers from nongovernmental organizations such as the Red Cross/Red Crescent and others contributed logistical expertise and person-power to the relief efforts. The massive outpouring of help and the volunteers who did their part to coordinate the relief efforts corresponded to the massive scope of the disaster.

Rwanda is a country in east-central Africa, inhabited by people from two major tribes: the Hut and the Tutsi. They speak the same language, have a history of intermarriage, and share many cultural beliefs and values, but when Belgium controlled the country, they favored the Tutsis over the more numerous Hut, who were generally seen as less sophisticated agricultural people in comparison to the cattle-owning Tutsi elite. But when Rwanda became an independent country in 1962, the Hutus took power.

In early April 1994, the plane of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down; he died in the crash. Although it was not clear who was responsible, widespread ethnic violence erupted and genocide against the Tutsi people began. Encouraged by radio propaganda, Hut citizens began to murder their Tutsi neighbors. Within 100 days, 800,000 Tutsi and Tutsi sympathizers were brutally murdered. Despite credible reports of the ongoing genocide, not one country offered assistance or protection to the Tutsi. The United Nations, which had troops stationed in Rwanda when the killing began, withdrew entirely after 10 of its soldiers were killed (Gourevitch, 1999)

Paul Rusesabagina was the manager of a hotel where hundreds of people—Tutsi and moderate Hutu seeking safety from the carnage going on around them—sought safe haven. On several occasions, Hutu military authorities advised Rusesabagina that everyone in the hotel was to be turned over to the military; later there was a threat that the hotel would be attacked by the militia. Rusesabagina contacted industrial and governmental authorities and leaders of countries around the world, informing them about the situation and seeking their help to avoid a slaughter. Because of his previous connections with those in power, his guile and ability to make deals (e.g., bribery, trading liquor for the safety of his charges), and ultimately his willingness to put his own life on the line to protect the lives of those at the hotel, Rusesabagina was a true hero of this dark time in Rwanda's history, saving the lives of over 1,200 innocent men, women, and children from death. For this, he was recognized as the 2000 recipient of the Immortal Chaplains Prize for Humanity, and his story was told in the 2004 movie Hotel Rwanda.

In February 2005, the New England Patriots defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21 in Super Bowl XXXIX to win their third NFL Championship in the past 4 years. How had a team that only 5 years before had compiled one of the worst records in the league come back to start become a sports dynasty? One of the keys to success for the Patriots was an emphasis on the team—a group of individuals who are willing to work and make sacrifices together to achieve something larger than what the individual pieces might suggest would be possible. As Gestalt psychologists would say, “They make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.” Consider the statements of their head coach Bill Belichick (reported in Lavin, 2005): “The strength of the wolf is the pack…. On a football team, it's not the strength of the individual player but… the strength of the unit and how they all function together.” To a social psychologist, what Belichick is really saying is that success comes when the members of the team cooperate with one another. The players had confidence in their teammates; they trusted each other and believed that their sacrifices would be reciprocated. Cooperation as a prosocial action leads to success for the group, and everyone shares in the bounty.

You may have never done anything as heroic or dramatic as Policewoman Smith and Mr. Clark. You almost certainly have not given 20+ gallons of blood to the Red Cross or provided safety for refugees avoiding genocide, and the chances are slim that you have ever been on a NFL Championship team. However, you certainly have performed numerous helpful acts for others. You may have donated money or clothing to the relief efforts for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. You may not have volunteered to leave your job to go to a disaster area to help unfortunate victims rebuild homes or repair, but, like Era Walker, you may have distributed food at a local food pantry or homeless shelter. You may have been on a sports team that won the local league or high school conference championship, and you have probably worked on a group project that was especially good because everyone had done their fair share and made some sacrifices to make the project a success. Each of these actions is an example of a prosocial behavior: that is, “behavior that benefits others” (Hinde & Groebel, 1991, p. 5).

Our book is about people contributing to the well-being of others—how, when, and why they do it. As the vignettes demonstrate, prosocial actions may be given under many different guises, and a person may offer assistance to others for many different reasons. Our goal in this book is to explore the variety of ways that prosocial actions are performed and the many reasons why people benefit each other. Prosocial behavior involves interactions between a benefactor (or helper) and someone being helped. Thus, we also consider helping from the points of view of both the person giving assistance and the person receiving the help. In addition, we consider recipients of help as active participants in the transaction; how they behave and what they say have substantial impact on whether they will receive assistance. We do this by asking a number of questions about prosocial behaviors.

At first glance, it may appear that the questions about prosocial actions may have some pretty obvious answers, and that “common sense” is all that is needed to understand prosocial behavior. However, common sense does not always provide correct answers to questions about helping and being helped. Consider the following situation. It is early evening, and you are walking home from class. As you round a corner, you twist your ankle on the uneven pavement. You go down in a heap on the empty sidewalk and cannot get up! You are in intense pain; your ankle is badly sprained and may even be broken. As you lie there, you hear the voices of people in an apartment building across the street. If you hope to be helped, would you rather have a single person or 20 people know about your plight? It seems so clear that when there are more people available to help there should be a better chance of being helped. After all, conventional wisdom and common sense tell us that “there's safety in numbers.” Social psychologists, however, often find that such conventional wisdom sometimes lets us down; in many situations such as this one, the likelihood that any one person will help goes down as the number of people present goes up. Although you still may get help from at least one of the many people around you, the chance of any one of them helping is reduced. We examine this issue in detail in chapter 3.

Consider another situation. During the Depression of the 1930s, banks were not regulated by the federal government, so there was no insurance on people's deposits. Imagine that you lived in a small town with only one bank during the Depression, and the rumor began to spread that your bank was going to fail. The bank officers assure you and the other customers that everything will be fine; they tell you that everyone's money will be safe if everyone is just patient and allows the bank to deal with a short-term problem. For the town as a whole to survive, it is absolutely essential that the bank continue to operate. But you have your entire savings in that bank! Do you trust the bank, let your account remain, and help save the town? Do you rush to withdraw your money, even if your actions might contribute to a run on the bank and cause it to fail? In the long run, some faith in the bank would be the best course of action for everyone involved. You would have your money, the bank would remain in business, and the town would survive. But, as was seen during the Depression when thousands of banks failed, people will often do what is best for themselves personally in the short run, giving little thought to the impact on the “collective good.” What would you have done?

This example represents a form of prosocial behavior that moves beyond one person helping another to situations in which many people acting together (in this case, everyone leaving their money in the bank) might provide benefits for the group (in this case, saving the bank and the town). Groups acting in concert can often accomplish what individuals acting in the pursuit of their own self interest cannot. However, groups must depend on the combined efforts and actions of each of their members; in some cases, if even a single member does not work with others in a coordinated effort, the group may fail. Many examples of cooperation in which everyone helps each other can also be found, and we consider cooperation within and between groups when we get to chapter 8.

Or how about this situation? You are a new student at a university and are having terrible difficulty with a math class. But two people who sit near you are sailing through the class and seem to know and be liked by all the other students in the course. The class is given a homework assignment that counts for 10% of your grade and you have no idea how to do it. Each of these students realizes that you are lost and decides to offer you some help. One says, “Don't worry, I'll solve the problems and then let you copy my answers.” The other one says, “Don't worry, I'll show you how to solve the problems if you will help me move my new computer equipment into my room.” There is no way the instructor could ever find out how either of the people helped you, and you are pretty desperate. Which offer would you accept? Well, it turns out that most people would choose the second one, even though it requires much more time and effort. We discuss why in chapters 7 and 8.

Not all of the correct answers to questions about prosocial actions are counterintuitive, but we often find that our basic assumptions about prosocial behavior will rarely be correct in all circumstances. By recognizing the limits of “common sense” and “conventional wisdom” and the value of empirical research findings, we can understand prosocial behavior more fully.

Understanding Prosocial Behavior: A Common Concern

Why should we be concerned with prosocial behavior in the first place? Are people really interested in this topic? One indirect but valid way of determining what is important to members of a society or culture is to simply look at what they talk and write about (Goldberg, 1993). Using this approach, there is abundant evidence that people have, indeed, been interested in trying to understand the nature of prosocial behavior for a long time. Furthermore, this interest has not been restricted to just one culture or to just one period in the history of humanity. The multiple perspectives that have been used by others to understand prosocial behavior may help us to recognize some common and enduring themes that can contribute to our understanding of this topic. To gain these insights, we consider stories illustrating prosocial behavior that come from various cultures, writings from diverse religions, and ideas of major philosophers.

Folktales and Parables About Prosocial Behavior

Folktales, legends, and parables can provide insights into the themes that are of common concern to members of a culture and the lessons of life that are considered valuable enough to be passed on from generation to generation. Because prosocial behavior may have an adaptive value increasing the chances of an individual's, group's, and culture's survival (e.g., Campbell, 1975; Dawkins, 1976; Sober & Wilson, 1998), it is not surprising that the stories and folklore of many cultures stress the value of helping...