Why We Help
It's In Our Genes!
Helping may even be in our genes. Along with individual personality traits, humans also have a group adaptive response, known as the genetic determinism model. This states that behavior is caused by genetic attributes that evolved because they enhance the probability of passing along genes to future generations (Baron, Byrne, & Branscombe, 2007). Therefore behavioral characteristics that have been successful will be passed along.
Prosocial behavior is a biological predisposition that can be either enforced or halted by situations, cognitions, and internal attributes. |
We Want To Feel GoodThe empathy-altruism hypothesis states that prosocial behavior is motivated by the desire to help someone and the feeling after helping (Baron, Byrne, & Branscombe, 2007).
Selective altruism is the idea is it impossible to feel empathy towards a very large group and so only help one individual. For example,many people feel bad for homeless people on cold nights but it's impossible to do something for every single homeless person, therefore you might give money or a blanket to the one that you encountered. |
Helping As An AccomplishmentEveryone who has ever helped another person knows that it gives us a sense of purpose. The empathetic joy hypothesis states that people help to gain the positive feeling of accomplishment knowing they helped someone in need.
Smith, Keating and Stotland (1989) tested this hypothesis in a study with college students. They had participants watch a video of a girl who was very distressed and mentioned that she wanted to drop out of college. She was either described as similar to the participants which created high empathy or different which created low empathy. After watching they would have an opportunity to give advice and were either told they would be able to receive feedback on their advice and others were told they wouldn't know what she ended up doing. The conclusion was that empathy alone was not enough to motivate them to engage in prosocial behavior, but knowing that they would receive feedback as well did impact their behavior. |
We Don't Feel As Bad
People decide to help to gain positive emotions but can also choose to help to alleviate negative emotions. In presence of someone who is in need can easily made people feel so bad that they help in order to reduce the negative emotions they feel. This idea is known as the negative-state relief model.
Studies have shown that even negative emotions that were not caused by the situation itself can push people to engage in prosocial behaviors to feel better (Dietrich & Berkowitz, 1997; Fultz, Schaller, & Cialdini, 1988). |