Psychology 3720F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Empathic Concern, Self-Perception Theory, Operant Conditioning

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 3720F/G
• Professor: katz

Document Summary

This course focuses on helping, although there are many forms of prosocial behaviours: defining helping behaviour, behaviour that is intended to benefit the recipient. They are the poorest nation in the world, have very little land and too many people and far from enough water. Yet if you go there, they would give you their land, give you their water, give you anything: aski(cid:374)g (cid:858)do people help(cid:859) is (cid:374)ot e(cid:374)ough, it does (cid:374)ot gi(cid:448)e (cid:455)ou a useful a(cid:374)s(cid:449)er. Instead, you must ask why do people help, when do people help, and whom do they help. Cot reward analysis of helping: people are motivated to maximize their rewards and to minimize their costs: arrive at a decision that will result in the best personal outcome for them. Situational factors that make bystander interventions more likely to occur include those that decrease the net costs of, increase potential rewards of helping or increase the costs of not helping: why people help.