1. Altruism 2: Who Helps Whom?
Tom Farsides:
17/11/00
Altruism 2: Who Helps Whom?
One for Helga & Me?
Williamson, G. M., Clark, M. S., Pegalis, L. J., & Behan, A. (1996). Affective consequences of refusing to help in communal and exchange relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22,

2. 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.

3. 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 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.
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 (identical) twins are more similar to each other than are dizygotic (non-identical, or fraternal) twins.

4. 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.
Samual Oliner was a Holocaust survivor. The rest of his family died in concentration camps. He was rescued by Christian friends of his parents.
He and his wife compared 231 rescuers with 126 roughly matched non-rescuers. They were specifically interested in what distinguished the two groups.
Compared to non-rescuers, rescuers:
Parents more caring, much less likely to use punishment, and more likely to reason and explain (‘Inductive’ child-rearing, postulated by Hoffman, 1970, to result in helpful kids).
More extensivity (attachment to and empathy, concern, and responsibility for outgroup members).
Little difference in feelings according to group membership.
Felt that “justice is not just for yourself and your own kind, but for others beyond your group”.
Higher self-efficacy.
But:
This represents a small sub-sample of the personality characteristics examined (Piliavin & Charng, 1990)
Data obtained long after the actions, with the possibility that the personality differences were caused by those behavioural (and consequent, e.g., self-perception) differences.

5. 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.

6. Interaction Staub (1974) Penner et al. (1995) Miller et al. (1996)
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).

7. Interactive effects of children’s empathy and moral reasoning
Miller et al. (1996)
Interactive effects of children’s empathy and moral reasoning
Miller et al. (1996)
Children learned about a boy and a girl who were hurt in an accident and were then given an opportunity to help the boy and girl by collecting crayons for them.
The more they worked on helping the boy and girl, the less time they had to play with attractive toys themselves.
Children high in both empathy (measured by facial reactions whilst learning about the boy) and other-oriented moral reasoning (measured via responses to ‘self vs. other’ moral dilemmas) were most helpful toward the boy and girl (far-right yellow bar).
Neither high empathy alone nor other-oriented moral reasoning alone was associated with a significant amount of helping (two bars below the line). I have no idea why they are below the line, indicating negative helping. I assume it is relative to a pre-intervention baseline or a control group.

8. Interactionism Snyder (1992) Carlo et al. (1991) Wilson (1976)
Strong situational cues often reduce the impact of personality. Personality flourishes when situation cues weak.
Carlo et al. (1991)
Used a procedure close to Batson’s ‘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.
Wilson (1976)
e.g., high self-confidence and independence
A person believing that they are dispositionally helpful (e.g., via labelling) tends to become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Cf. Self-perception theory. And social learning theory (aggression lecture).

9. 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
Attractiveness
Benson et al. (1976)
People making phone calls at an airport found a lost completed graduate school application, complete with s.a.e.
It was also accompanied by a photograph of either a relatively attractive or unattractive applicant.
The attractive person’s application was posted about half the time, the less attractive one’s about 1/3 of the time.
Attractive people get more help.
Similarity
Feldman (1968)
Residents of Athens, Paris and Boston more likely to help members of their own country.
Leung (1988)
(Collectivist) Chinese and Japanese participants helped members of their own group more than did (Individualist) U.S. American participants.
U.S. American participants helped members from other groups more than did the Chinese and Japanese.
Gaertner & Dovidio (1977)
White college students overheard a life-threatening injury occurring to either a white or an African American victim in an adjoining cubicle who was attempting to send them a message.
When they thought they were the only witnesses, the white students helped the white victim 81% of the time and the African American victim 94% of the time.
When they thought there were two other white witnesses, the white victim was helped 75% of the time, and the African American one only 38% of the time.
(Slight) diffusion of responsibility, plus modern (aversive) racism: not helping when diffusion of responsibility allowed a non-race-related explanation to be given for non-helping.

10. Penner & Fritzsche (1993) Just like Magic
Soon after basketball superstar Magic Johnson announced that he was infected with HIV, there was an increase in the amount of time volunteered by college undergraduates to assist a graduate student who had AIDS. However, by four and one-half months after the announcement, the amount of time volunteered had returned to the previous level.

11. Responsibility Barnes et al. (1979) Weiner (1980)
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)
Barnes et al. (1979)
Students asked to lend another student their lecture notes.
More students complied when told notes needed due to requester’s low ability rather than due to their low motivation.
Schmidt & Weiner (1988)
More students complied when requester wore an eye-patch and dark glasses (and whose eye-treatments made note-taking impossible) than when the requester missed the lecture to go to the beach.
More importantly, the more the sympathy in the first instance, the more willing to help, and the more anger in the latter, the less willing to help.
Dooley (1995)
PWA elicited more sympathy and willingness to help when AIDS contracted via blood transfusion than sexual activity.
Skitka & Tetlock (1993)
Compared to liberals’, political conservatives help more if a person is “good” or “reformed”, but they help less if the person is “bad” or “at fault”.
Conservatives attribute problems more personally; liberals more to the situation. Thus, conservatives are more prone to Weiner’s attributional decision-making processes.

13. Schneider et al. (1996) Assuming too much?
White and black students worked on the first part of a test.
They then anticipated working on the second part of the test with a same-sex white partner who allegedly had also just worked on the first part of the test.
Some students then received assumptive help (i.e., unsought and not obviously needed) from their partner in preparation for the next part of the test. Other participants received no such help.
The white students were relatively unaffected by the unsolicited help (Right-hand pair of bars).
Black students, however, felt more depressed and (as the graph shows) suffered reduced competence-related self-esteem if they were offered the help (Left-hand red bar indicates lower self-esteem than left-hand purple bar ).
Cf. Major et al. ( Brehm p. 306) and Crocker et al. ( Brehm p. 165). Why are you helping me? Are you treating me as an individual or as a social category member? If the latter, I’m depressed.
NB: Sensitive helpers may be aware of potential attributional problems by members of specific (i.e., patronised, e.g., black and/or beautiful) social categories. This may interfere with getting through Latané & Darley’s (1970) 5-step model. Another reason for modern “racism”?

14. Points to ponder
Consider the personality characteristics differentiating relatively helpful from relatively less helpful people from the perspective of Latané & Darley’s 5-step emergency intervention model.
When anger is evoked within Weiner’s (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 & Darley’s (1970) 5-step model.