PSYC 2012 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Liviu Librescu, Wesley Autrey, Prosocial Behavior
Document Summary
Motives: prosocial behavior differs from altruism, prosocial behavior is not always selfless, prosocial behavior requires an actual action/activity, altruism is the motivation to help with no benefit to oneself, examples. Increases changes of genes being passed down: empirical evidence. Individuals are more likely to report helping a genetic relative than a nonrelative in a life-threatening scenario (burnstein et al. , 1994) Norm of reciprocity aka reciprocal altruism: expectation that helping others will increase the likelihood of them helping us in the future. Following social norms: social responsibility norm, norm of justice. Adhering to societal norms may result in competitive advantage. Group selection: groups consisting of cooperative members are more likely to survive and pass on their genes than groups composed of selfish members. Helping is learned through observation and reinforcement: children learn to help by being rewarded, (cid:272)hool progra(cid:373)s (i. e. (cid:862)caught bei(cid:374)g good(cid:863, as people (cid:373)ature , reinforcements become less necessary, value of helping is internalized.
