PSY 345 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Plaintext, Soup Kitchen, Social Experiment
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Prosocial Behavior
- Any action intended to help others
- Social relationships help organisms survive. By cooperating with another organism, 2+
living things are usually able to do more (when working together) than one f those
organisms on its own
- Cooperating as a group helps with survival
- These animals engage in cooperative and competitive behavior, but generally within the
confines of their social group. However, humans and chimps patrol the territory they live
in and engage in coordinated group violence against other groups
- Humans and chimps also form coalitions within their social groups which allows them to
defeat individuals too powerful for any one of them to defeat on their own
- Chips are also highly capable of recognizing when they need help from another chimp to
obtain a desirable food item. They also seem to know which other chimps in their social
group are most likely to help them to do this, and actively seek out those individuals
- Many primates (chimps and humans), will help other organisms gain access to desired
items even when the primates can’t immediately gain access to those item in return
o Ex: primates are good at helping others get items even when there is no direct
benefit
- Primates even display behaviors of reconciliation with individuals they experienced
conflict with, sometimes comforting individuals who were the victims of aggression as
well
- So what are these behaviors? These demonstrations go above simply working with
others to survive – these actions we call prosocial behavior serve a much greater social
purpose than simply obtaining desired resources
o Ex: zombie apocalypse
- Engaging in prosocial behavior functions to strengthen social relationships with the
organisms around you – this involves helping, sharing, empathizing, and cooperating
with other social group members on a widespread or individual level
o Ex: building a house or skyscraper
- The idea that organisms possess these specific functional traits to engage in prosocial
behavior is particularly interesting for social psychologists because it means that
psychological systems developed in response to social factors over time
- Social groups are as natural to us any anything else, and our minds have adapted to the
idea of thriving within a social group
- The theory of kin altruism attempts to explain how the amount of prosocial behavior a
human being engages in is a function of how many children exists within a person’s
genetic family, not just their genetic offspring
o Uses a fairly complex mathematical model involving correlations – the higher the
genetic similarity between relatives, the higher the chance of engaging in
prosocial behavior between relatives, vice versa
▪ Ex: you will want to spend energy to try to benefit your siblings and their
children compared to less genetically related individuals. These
individuals are more genetically related to you than friends, distant
relatives, etc. so you are more efficiently able to spend energy to help the,
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Document Summary
By cooperating with another organism, 2+ living things are usually able to do more (when working together) than one f those organisms on its own. Cooperating as a group helps with survival. These animals engage in cooperative and competitive behavior, but generally within the confines of their social group. However, humans and chimps patrol the territory they live in and engage in coordinated group violence against other groups. Humans and chimps also form coalitions within their social groups which allows them to defeat individuals too powerful for any one of them to defeat on their own. Chips are also highly capable of recognizing when they need help from another chimp to obtain a desirable food item. They also seem to know which other chimps in their social group are most likely to help them to do this, and actively seek out those individuals.
