User:MandaG/Lecture Week 12

Prosocial Behaviour I love looking at this area of psychology it tends to restore faith in humanity for a while. Prosocial behaviour is the act of doing something good for an individual or society, philanthropy, adding to shared resources, helping in any way possible those in need. It is importnat becuase as discussed all semester, humans are social beings and prosocial behaviour promotes and builds positive relarionships.

Altruism Altruism is helping behaviours focused only on the well being of others and often at a personal cost. There has been much debate as to whether true altruism exists as the individual performing the alleged altruistic act will feel good for doing that which means they are getting something out of it to. Well for those who think that is the only reason to help someone, I feel kind of bad for you. I think that the feeling of good though a by product of the act itself is not usually a motivater in the first place and even if they do feel good the act may have cost them something else. Oskar Schindler was a great figure to come out of WWII. His altruism saved thousands of jewish peoples lives and cost him all his money and his security given what his punishment would be if caught. Hopefully he did get a good feeling from doing this, Lord know's he deserves it, but really are we going to say "Hey sure you risked all you had for other people but you got a warm feeling from it therefore you are just as selfish as the rest of us", surely not. Surely this is altruism. On a smaller scale I am a regular blood and plasma donor and yes I feel good about it, are people going to tell me my motivations for my actions are selfish? I understand where the arguement comes from but I like to believe that people occasionally do good to do good.

Recprocity It appears we are unwilling to accept that people just help people. Another theory on why people help others is this idea of reciprocity, that there is an obligation to return in kind what others have done for us. Again in some ways this may be true but I refuse, no matter how many studies demonstrate it, to believe that there are reasons for any form of helping (I might refer to the confirmation bias if one comes up to support my belief though). Reciprocity is found across cultures and even in animals! How the heck did they measure that? The idea of reciprocity also is decided through social norms, it is expected we should help those who have helped us. There is a social responsibility to help others who are dependent and in need, though many don't like it most will still do it.

Experiments The lecture and the text talks about Milgrams obedience experiment and Asch's conformity experimentI am at a bit of a loss as to how they fall under prosocial behaviour. Both experiment exhibit distinct antisocial behaviours with one having ordinary people "shock" people and one having someone preassured into making a bad decision. In some circumstances I guess either behaviour could be seen as a pro or a con though...

What Effects Whether We Will Help or Not
 * Mood- We are much more likely to help if we are feeling in a good mood, come on we're on top of the world why not help someone? We will be more likely to have a desire to maintain the good mood and focus on positive things and are more likely to have positive expectations about our helping behaviour. Conversely if it is too hard to help someone or we have other things to attend to we may not help someone. If we are in a bad mood you better hope you don't need or want anything from us. We tend to be very self focussed and already angry with people in general as it is others we will probably blame for our bad mood in the first place.
 * Attraction- If your car breaks down and you need a hand you better hope you look your best. I say this not to be superficial but because it has been shown that we are more likely to help attractive people than unattractive people.


 * Bystander effect- People are less likely to help if there are others around. I did psychology in college and my teacher had a strange love of this theory and sent us out in groups to test the theory. The idea was to form groups of three with one person as the poor sod who would fall over and scatter books etc, one to sit out of view and observe reactions, and one to casually blend into the crowd and see what people were saying. Now if you know me it wouldn't take much guessing to work out I was the [[Image:D-W015 Warnung vor Absturzgefahr ty.svg|200px|right|thumb|Helped once out of fourteen!]]poor soul who had to fall a number of times. I was very disheartned in the results. I don't do things by halves let me assure you. When I fell, boy did I fall and most of the time I genuinly did not mean to. Unlucky for me at the end of the experiment I was left with a number of scrapes cuts and bruises and the knowledge that of the 14 times I fell in a public area I was helped once, just once by a lovely old man I nearly took down with me. It was the bystander effect at its finest.