Altruism 2: Who Helps Whom

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Altruism 2Who Helps Whom?
Tom Farsides 17/11/00
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Lecture contents

• Personality differences
• In helping.
• Associated with helping behaviour.
• In interaction with each other.
• In interaction with the environment.
• Characteristics moderating likelihood of help
• Attributions associated with giving and receiving
  help.

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The altruistic personality

• There are individual differences in helpfulness
  across situations and times.
• E.g. Rescuers and 60s civil right activists
  were more helpful than than non-rescuers and
  non-activists 20-40 years later.
• Rushton et al. (1984)
• Genetic basis to this individual difference
• In terms of behavioural tendenices and
  helping-related emotions and reactions (such as
  empathy), monozygotic twins are more similar to
  each other than are dizygotic twins.

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Rescuers, relative to non-rescuers (Oliner
Oliner, 1988)

• Greater actual and perceived similarity to Jews.
• More likely to have been directly asked to help.
• Parents more caring, much less likely to use
  punishment, and more likely to reason and
  explain.
• Much more likely to strongly identify with a
  highly moral (and morally acting) parent.
• More dispositional empathy.
• More willing to accept responsibility for own
  actions and others welfare.
• More extensivity (attachment to and empathy,
  concern, and responsibility for outgroup
  members).
• Higher self-efficacy.

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Ordinary helpers, relative to non-helpers, have

• More dispositional empathy
• Davis (1983)
• Correlation between empathy and donations to a
  telethon.
• Greater sense of responsibility
• Berkowitz Daniels (1964)
• People high in social responsibility more likely
  to help needy dependents.
• Other-oriented empathy/extensivity
• Penner et al. (1995)
• Correlation between this and length of service as
  a volunteer.
• Greater self-efficacy
• Rushton (1984)
• Volunteers particularly high in self-efficacy.

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Interaction

• Staub (1974)
• Those high in social responsibility and
  other-oriented moral reasoning were more likely
  to come to the aid of an ill person.
• Penner et al. (1995)
• Those high in other-oriented empathy and
  self-efficacy more helpful than those high in one
  or neither characteristic.
• Miller et al. (1996)
• (Cold) moral reasoning and (hot) empathic
  arousal may be necessary for self-sacrificing
  prosocial action (see next slide).

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Miller et al. (1996) Interactive effects of
childrens empathy and moral reasoning
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Interactionism

• Snyder (1992)
• Strong situational cues often reduce the impact
  of personality. Personality flourishes when
  situation cues weak.
• Carlo et al. (1991)
• Used a procedure close to Batsons Elaine one.
• Most people (78) helped in difficult escape
  situation, with little difference according to
  extensivity-type measure.
• In easy escape condition, 49 helped, with
  high-extensives more likely to help than
  low-extensives.
• Wilson (1976)
• In emergency situation, personality variables
  related to arousal, emotionality, and risk-taking
  predict helping.
• Batson et al. (1976)
• In non-emergency situations, personality
  variables related to cost-benefit concerns,
  confidence, and self-esteem predict helping.

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What sort of people receive help?

• Attractive people
• Benson et al. (1976)
• People similar to us
• Feldman (1968)
• Leung (1988)
• Gaertner Dovidio (1977)
• People similar to those we admire
• Penner Fritzsche (1993) - see next slide

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Penner Fritzsche (1993) Just like Magic
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Responsibility

• Barnes et al. (1979)
• Preferential help for those low in ability rather
  than low in effort.
• Weiner (1980)
• A cognitive (attribution)-emotion-action model of
  motivated behaviour.
• If need uncontrollable, help-eliciting sympathy
  evoked.
• If need controllable, help-inhibiting anger
  evoked.
• Schmidt Weiner (1988)
• Dooley (1995)
• Skitka Tetlock (1993)

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Schneider et al. (1996) Assuming too much?
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Points to ponder

• Consider the personality characteristics
  differentiating relatively helpful from
  relatively less helpful people from the
  perspective of Latané Darleys 5-step emergency
  intervention model.
• When anger is evoked within Weiners (1980)
  attributional model, does the anger stem from the
  need for help or from the request for such help?
• Critically compare the results of Schneider et
  al. (1996), Major et al. (184) and Crocker et al.
  (1991) - See Brehm et al. (1999, pp. 165, 306,
  375).
• Consider how the material related to this lecture
  (including that from the essential reading not
  explicitly covered in the lecture) fits into
  Latané Darleys (1970) 5-step model.