PSYC 241 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Murder Of Kitty Genovese, Reciprocal Altruism, Fundamental Attribution Error
15 Jun 2018
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xWEEK 8
Altruism:
- A motive to increase another’s welfare without conscious regard for one’s self interest
- Help with no obvious benefit to ourselves
Helping involves a more obvious benefit to ourselves
Why do people help
- Instances when people help
o As part of a profession
o Doing little things for others
o Random acts of kindness
o Donating money to a charity
o Other donations – blood and organs
o Acting heroically
o Volunteering
Evolutionary perspectives on helping
- Kin selection
o One of our main goals is to pass off our genes to future generations
o Helping people related to us will pass down our genes indirectly
o We have a bias towards helping people who are biologically related to us
- Reciprocal altruism
o We help others so that other people will feel indebted and will help up when we
need it
- Cooperative group
o We are motivated to help people in our group, not just the people who have
helped us
o If the group is strong and healthy, then the group as a whole is better able to do all
the things necessary to survival
Why do people help?
- Social rewards – interpersonal and intrapersonal
o People who help may attain prestige – people will think well of them
o People like and respect others who help people
o We feel better when we help others
- Personal distress
o When we see people in need, that causes us to feel badly
o We are then more likely to help because this will alleviate our pain
- Empathetic concern
o When we see someone struggling, we feel empathy
o Because we are able to take the other person’s point of view, we help because we
don’t want that person to feel bad anymore
- Personal distress vs. empathetic concern
o E.g. seeing an advertisement for helping children in Haiti with a child in distress
on the page. Do we help because we feel empathy for the person or because we
want to make ourselves feel less upset?
o It is important to differentiate and understand which contributes more to helping
others because then we are better able to enhance helping
o Batson et al.
▪ You arrive for an experiment. The second participant, elaine is late.
▪ Learn that it will be the learner-observer shock experiment (milgram)
▪ You are assigned to the observer
▪ You see elaine over close-circuit TV. She takes two shocks and then says
that she had a trauma involving shocks when she was young
▪ Experimenter asks you to trade roles (dependent measure)
▪ Independent variable
• Empathy – told that elaine is either similar or dissimilar to them
o Low: elaine is dissimilar
o High: elaine is similar to you, shares attitudes and values
• Ease of escape (personal distress):
o Easy: you can leave right now
o Hard: you have to stay for 8 more trials – you don’t have to
trade places but you have to stay and watch 8 more trials
Easy escape –
leave now
Difficult escape –
stay for 8 more
shocks
Elaine is similar
90%
82%
Elaine is dissimilar
18%
65%
o People help because of empathy and personal distress
o How do we distinguish among these motives?
▪ Physiological indicators
▪ Eisenberg et al showed 2nd graders, 5th graders and college students a film
about kids who had been injured in a car accident were recovering in
hospital
▪ Facial expressions recorded; heart rate monitored
▪ Kids were then asked whether they would take homework to the kids in
the hospital
▪ People who volunteered showed:
• Eyebrows pulled in and upward
• Concerned gaze
▪ Empathy is a better indicator of helping
Bystander apathy
- Case of Kitty Genovese
o Walking home at night to her apartment in the apartment complex
o Someone attacked her and stabbed her
o She screamed for help
o People heard this happen and saw it happen
o She was dead for 30 minutes until someone called the police
o When questioned by the police, at least 38 people admitted to seeing the event
happen but no one called the police until it was too late
o Someone did call out and tell the man to leave her alone, the man left, then came
back and sexually assaulted her and then stabbed her 8 more times
o It was a long event and no one called
o First interpreted as fundamental attribution error (there must be something about
New Yorkers that makes them indifferent to others)
o However there are many cases where people fail to help
- You get influenced by the actions of others – if others aren’t doing anything, then you are
less likely to help
- If someone looks reputable (in a suit) people are more likely to help if they are lying on
the ground – people are more likely to be influenced by those who are higher in status—
he seems more similar to others around them—more likely to empathize with someone in
your group
- People will often pass by a person lying on the street because they see that no one else is
helping
- If you see someone else helping, you feel better about helping
o Ally response – someone else helps which makes it seem okay for you to help
- Two rules – 1 we must help. 2 we must do what others are doing
- Diffusion of responsibility: we are less likely to help if there are others present
o Classic study: Latane and Darley
▪ Participants listened to what they thought was a live conversation
▪ Another participant (actually a tape recording of an actor) had an epileptic
seizure
▪ Dependent variable – if you do something
▪ Independent variable –if you think you are in a group or if you are on your
own
▪ If participants believed they were the only ones present: 85% helped
▪ if participants believed that they were in a group of five participants: 31%
helped
• if they thought that there were 4 other people in the group who
weren’t doing anything, they were less likely to help
o Latane and Rodin
▪ Push over book case and someone says they are stuck under it
▪ Participants are doing a study filling out a questionnaire
