PS270 Lecture Notes - Murder Of Kitty Genovese, Discussion Group, Normative Social Influence
Document Summary
Prosocial behaviour: any act performed with the goal of benefiting another person. Altruism: desire to help another person even if it involves no benefit, or even a cost, to the helper. People engage in interactions that maximize their own rewards and minimize their costs. People will only help when the rewards outweigh the costs of helping: distress; social approval; self-worth; reciprocity. That is, there is no true altruism there is always self-interest underlying good deeds: people may only help someone because seeing someone in distress causes people to feel uncomfortable. Alleviating the discomfort, in a sense, is a reward. Empathy: the ability to experience events and emotions the way another person experiences them. Empathy-altruism hypothesis: empathy leads to helping for purely altruistic reasons, regardless of personal gains. Example: helping someone pick up there books after dropping them, you feel empathy for their situation which leads you to help them collect their things.
