Prosocial behavior is defined as voluntary behavior intended to benefit another person. It includes helpful and altruistic acts according to social norms. Research on bystander intervention in emergencies found that the presence of other bystanders decreases the likelihood of any one person helping (the bystander effect). Latane and Darley identified five decision points people go through when deciding whether to help: noticing the emergency, defining it as such, taking responsibility, planning a response, and acting. Factors like ambiguity, mood, gender, attractiveness, and weather influence bystander intervention.

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Pro social Behaviour

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 Wispe (1972) defined prosocialbehaviour as behaviour that has
positive social consequences, and contributes to the physical
or psychological well-being of another person.
 It is voluntary and has the intention to benefit others
 Includes both being helpful and altruistic.
 What is thought to be prosocial is defined by a society's norms.

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Altruism
 Subcategory of prosocialbehaviour.
 Refers to an act that is meant to benefit another rather than
oneself.
 Batson (1991) proposed that true altruism is selfless.
 Can we ever prove that an act does not have a long-term
ulterior motive?

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The Kitty Genovese murder
 Single event credited with providing a major
force to research in prosocialbehaviour.
 New York, 1964. Kitty was attacked by a knife-
wielding man on her way home from work.
 Her screams and struggles drove off the attacker
at first but seeing no one come to the woman's
aid, the man attacked again.
 Stabbed eight more times and then sexually
molested.
 In the half-hour or so that it took for the man to
kill Kitty, not one of her neighbours helped her
 About half an hour after the attack began, the
local police received a call from an anonymous
witness. He did not want to 'get involved'.
 When the police interviewed the area's
residents, thirty-eight people openly admitted to
hearing the screaming.

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More recently… death of Wang Yue
Security camera footage showing 18
people walking or cycling past her bleeding
body

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Latane& Darley’s Bystander
"Apathy” (1969)
 Examined why people who are so willing to help in non-
emergency situations don't in emergency situations.
 Characteristics of Emergencies
Few positive rewards - Life is threatened for the victims and the
helpers.
 Reactions are untrained and unrehearsed. Yet it requires
instant action. It puts the potential helper in a lot of stress.

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The Bystander Effect
 Fifty-nine female and thirteen male students. Each ushered into an
individual room with an intercom system.
 It was explained to him that he was to take part in a discussion
about personal problems associated with college life.
 Intercom for anonymity.
 During the course of the discussion, one of the other subjects
underwent what appeared to be a very serious nervous seizure
similar to epilepsy.
 During the fit it was impossible for the subject to talk to the other
discussants or to find out what, if anything, they were doing about
the emergency.
 The dependent variable was the speed with which the subjects
reported the emergency to the experimenter. The major
independent variable was the number of people the subject
thought to be in the discussion group.

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Results:

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Five decision points:
 In all of Latane and Darley’s experiments, there were people
who did try to help in every condition.
 Latane and Darley identified several decision points that a
bystander must face before helping someone in trouble.

10. + Help or Don’t Help: Five Decision Points
Decision Point Description Factors Influencing
Decision
Noticing Realising that there is Hearing a loud crash
a situation that might or a cry for help
be an emergency
Defining an Interpreting the cues Loud crash is
emergency as signaling an associated with a car
emergency accident, ppl hurt
Taking Responsibility Personally assuming A single bystander > to
the responsibility to act act
Planning a course of Deciding how to help Ppl who feel they have
action and what skills might the skills to help > to
be needed help
Taking Action Actually helping Costs of helping (e.g.
danger to oneself must
not outweigh the
rewards of helping)

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Other factors
 AMBIGUITY: > ambiguity in the situation, < defined as an
emergency.
 Bystanders may rely on the actions of others to help determine if it
is an emergency or not. If all are doing this = likely seen as non-
emergency.
 MOOD: good mood > to help than bad mood BUT not as likely to
help if helping would destroy the good mood.
 GENDER: women > likely to receive help than men if bystander is
male, but not if bystander is female.
 Racial and ethnicity differences between victim and bystander <
probability of helping.
 ATTRACTIVENESS: > attractive > help.
 Victims who look like “they deserve what is happening” < likely to
be helped. E.g.

12. Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, homeless man, saved a woman who was being
Mugged. He was then stabbed by the mugger and collapsed.
Surveillance cameras showed over 20 people walking past him, shaking him,
taking cell phone photos of his body for an hour with no assistance.
Firefighters found him on their way to a call

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 (Rind, Strohmetz, 2006)
 Weather has an effect on people’s likelihood to help.
 A waiter would drop plates or food in a restaurant
 On sunny days, customers offered to help the waiter clean up
 On rainy and gloomy days, they hardly looked at the waiter
struggling.
 Results consistent at different restaurants

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Evolutionary theory for helping
behaviour
 Evolutionary biologists have grappled with instances of
cooperation in the animal world – e.g. Vampire bats regurgitate
blood to others despite the possibility of dying if three days elapse
without consuming blood.
 Stevens, Cushman and Hauser (2005) distinguished two reliable
explanations:
 1) Mutualism – cooperative behaviour benefits the cooperator as
well as others
 2) Kin selection – in which a cooperator is biased towards blood
relatives because it helps propagate one’s own genes; the lack of
direct benefit to the cooperator indicates altruism.
 Lacks human evidence (Kitty case difficult to explain at a biological
level).

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Empathy and Arousal
 While biological mechanisms could predispose you to act, if,
when and how you respond will depend on your history and the
immediate circumstances.
 A common experience before acting pro-socially is a state of
arousal followed by empathy.
 Adults and children respond empathically to signs that a person
is troubled, which implies that watching someone suffer is
unpleasant.
 People often fail to act prosocially because they are actively
engaged in avoiding empathy.