Social Responsibility

Prosocial behaviour: When one helps another person to benefit oneself.

Altruism: When one helps another person for no reward and even at some cost to oneself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6dTU7KVpsg&list=PL6DA960579F8EC5C5&index=70

Group Size/Diffusion of Reponsibility:

Latane and Rodin (1969)

Male participants helped a female researcher who had “crashed to the floor” next door 70% of the time when alone, compared with 40% with 2 naïve participants were together and only 7% when there was a passive stooge.

Latane and Darley (1970)

When smoke began to fill a room, 75% left the room to report the smoke when alone, 38% of the time when in small groups of participants, and compared to 10% with two passive stooges.

Arousal: Amato (1986)

Amato interviewed participants after a bushfire near Melbourne and found that higher donations to help victims came from people who reported more feelings of shock or terror.

Pryzbyla (1985)

After watching either a erotic or non-erotic film, female and male participants had an opportunity to help a male or female confederate who had knocked over some papers. The rate of helping was highest among males who had seen an erotic film and had the opportunity to help a female confederate.

In-group v. Out-groupLevine et al. (2005)

Manchester United fans were far more likely to help a jogger who fell over if he was wearing a Manchester United shirt than if he was wearing a Liverpool shirt.

ConfidencePantin and Carver (1982)

When female students showed a first aid training video, it increased their willingness to help a choking victim than those who didn’t watch the video.

DispositionOliner and Oliner (1988)

They interviewed 231 Europeans who had participated in saving Jews in Nazi Europe and 126 Europeans who didn’t. Rescuers expressed greater pity and empathy compared to non-rescuers. Rescuers often said that parental behaviour played a part (e.g. rescuer’s parents had few negative stereotypes of Jews compared to parents of non-rescuers).