- Explain the factors that influence human altruism
- Describe attraction and the triangular theory of love
- Explain social exchange theory
- Discuss research on the link between love and the experience of pain or pleasure
If you go to YouTube and search for episodes of “Primetime: What Would You Do?” you will find video segments in which apparently innocent individuals are victimized, while onlookers typically fail to intervene. The events are all staged, but they are very real to the bystanders on the scene. Viewers are often outraged when bystanders fail to intervene and are convinced they would help if in a similar situation. But would they? Research suggests that viewers are overly optimistic in their beliefs that they would play the hero. So when do people help, and when do they not? All people are not equally helpful—who helps? Why would a person help another in the first place? We already learned about the bystander effect and reasons people might not intervene, but what do we know about when, who, and why people do help?
Why Help?
The question of why a person would help another needs to be asked. After all, often helping someone else comes with a personal expense of time, money, or energy. What motivation is there for that behavior? Psychologists have suggested that 1) evolutionary forces may serve to predispose humans to help others, 2) egoistic concerns may determine if and when help will be given, and 3) selfless, altruistic motives may also promote helping in some cases.
Evolutionary Roots for Prosocial Behavior
Our evolutionary past may provide key information about why we help (Buss, 2004). Our very survival was no doubt promoted by the prosocial relations with clan and family members, and, as a hereditary consequence, we may now be especially likely to help those closest to us—blood-related relatives with whom we share a genetic heritage. According to evolutionary psychology, we are helpful in ways that increase the chances that our DNA will be passed along to future generations (Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama, 1994)—the goal of the “selfish gene” (Dawkins, 1976). Our personal DNA may not always move on, but we can still be successful in getting some portion of our DNA transmitted if our daughters, sons, nephews, nieces, and cousins survive to produce offspring. The favoritism shown for helping our blood relatives is called kin selection (Hamilton, 1964).
But, we do not restrict our relationships just to our own family members. We live in groups that include individuals who are unrelated to us, and we often help them too. Why? Reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971) provides the answer.
reciprocal altruism
Reciprocal altruism is when individuals in a social group help each other out and share resources, with the understanding that they will receive help and resources in return when they need it.
Because of reciprocal altruism, we are all better off in the long run if we help one another. If helping someone now increases the chances that you will be helped later, then your overall chances of survival are increased.
There is the chance that someone will take advantage of your help and not return your favor. But people seem predisposed to identify those who fail to reciprocate, and punishments including social exclusion may result (Buss, 2004). Cheaters will not enjoy the benefit of help from others, reducing the likelihood of the survival of themselves and their kin.
Evolutionary forces may provide a general inclination for being helpful, but they may not be as good an explanation for why we help in the here and now. What factors serve as proximal influences for decisions to help?
Egoistic Motivation for Helping
Most people would like to think that they help others because they are concerned about the other person’s plight. In truth, sometimes the reasons we help may be more about ourselves than others: Egoistic or selfish motivations influence helping behavior. Implicitly, we may ask, “What’s in it for me?” There are two major theories that explain what types of reinforcement helpers may be seeking.
- The negative state relief model (e.g., Cialdini, Darby, & Vincent, 1973; Cialdini, Kenrick, & Baumann, 1982) suggests that people sometimes help in order to make themselves feel better. Whenever we are feeling sad, we can use helping someone else as a positive mood boost to feel happier. Through socialization, we have learned that helping can serve as a secondary reinforcement that will relieve negative moods (Cialdini & Kenrick, 1976).
- The arousal: cost–reward model provides an additional way to understand why people help (e.g., Piliavin, Dovidio, Gaertner, & Clark, 1981). This model focuses on the aversive feelings aroused by seeing another in need. If you have ever heard an injured puppy yelping in pain, you know that feeling, and you know that the best way to relieve that feeling is to help and to comfort the puppy. Similarly, when we see someone who is suffering in some way (e.g., injured, homeless, hungry), we vicariously experience a sympathetic arousal that is unpleasant, and we are motivated to eliminate that aversive state. One way to do that is to help the person in need. By eliminating the victim’s pain, we eliminate our own aversive arousal. Helping is an effective way to alleviate our own discomfort.
As an egoistic model, the arousal: cost–reward model explicitly includes the cost/reward considerations that come into play. Potential helpers will find ways to cope with the aversive arousal that will minimize their costs—maybe by means other than direct involvement. For example, the costs of directly confronting a knife-wielding assailant might stop a bystander from getting involved, but the cost of some indirect help (e.g., calling the police) may be acceptable. In either case, the victim’s need is addressed. Unfortunately, if the costs of helping are too high, bystanders may reinterpret the situation to justify not helping at all. We now know that the attack of Kitty Genovese was a murderous assault, but it may have been misperceived as a lover’s spat by someone who just wanted to go back to sleep. For some, fleeing the situation causing their distress may do the trick (Piliavin et al., 1981).
The egoistically based negative state relief model and the arousal: cost–reward model see the primary motivation for helping as being the helper’s own outcome. Recognize that the victim’s outcome is of relatively little concern to the helper—benefits to the victim are incidental byproducts of the exchange (Dovidio et al., 2006). The victim may be helped, but the helper’s real motivation according to these two explanations is egoistic: Helpers help to the extent that it makes them feel better.
Altruistic Help
Although many researchers believe that egoism is the only motivation for helping, others suggest that altruism—helping that has the improvement of another’s welfare as its ultimate goal —may also be a motivation for helping under the right circumstances.
Batson (2011) has offered the empathy–altruism model to explain altruistically motivated helping for which the helper expects no benefits. According to this model, the key to altruism is empathizing with the victim, that is, putting oneself in the shoes of the victim and imagining how the victim must feel. When taking this perspective and having empathic concern, potential helpers become primarily interested in increasing the well-being of the victim, even if the helper must incur some costs. The empathy–altruism model does not dismiss egoistic motivations; helpers not empathizing with a victim may experience personal distress and have an egoistic motivation, not unlike the feelings and motivations explained by the arousal: cost–reward model. Because egoistically motivated individuals are primarily concerned with their own cost–benefit outcomes, they are less likely to help if they think they can escape the situation with no costs to themselves. In contrast, altruistically motivated helpers are willing to accept the cost of helping to benefit a person with whom they have empathized—this “self-sacrificial” approach to helping is the hallmark of altruism (Batson, 2011).
Although there is still some controversy about whether people can ever act for purely altruistic motives, it is important to recognize that, regardless of motivations, altruistic behavior results in benefits to the recipients. The residents who offered food, blankets, and shelter to stranded runners during the Boston Marathon bombing undoubtedly received positive rewards because of the help they gave, but those stranded runners who were helped got what they needed as well. “In fact, it is quite remarkable how the fates of people who have never met can be so intertwined and complementary. Your benefit is mine; and mine is yours” (Dovidio et al., 2006, p. 143).