Chapter 14

Key Terms

Prosocial behaviour: actions that are positive and intended to benefit someone else.

Altruism: a form of prosocial behaviour that can be costly for the altruistic person; it is motivated by the desire to help someone else.

Empathy: the capacity to experience an event from another person’s perspective.

Bystander intervention: a topic focusing on the reasons why bystanders to a crime or incident decide whether to help the victim.

Evolutionary psychology: an approach to psychology based on the assumption that much human behaviour can be explained by Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Inclusive fitness: the successful transmission of one’s genes directly via reproduction and indirectly by helping genetically-related individuals.

Kin selection: helping genetically-related relatives to enhance inclusive fitness.

Mutualistic collaboration: cooperation between two or more humans on a joint goal (e.g., survival) that is beneficial to all of them.

Reciprocal altruism: the notion that someone will show altruism in their behaviour towards someone else if they anticipate that person will respond altruistically.

Third-party punishment: punishing someone else who has treated a third party unfairly at some cost or sacrifice to yourself.

Bystander effect: the finding that a victim is less likely to be helped as the number of
bystanders increases.

Diffusion of responsibility: the reduced sense of responsibility for the well-being of a victim experienced by any given bystander when several other individuals are aware of the victim’s plight.

Weblinks

Links to Psychology Today articles on altruism
http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/altruism

A Psychology Today article on the evolutionary biology of altruism
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201212/the-evolutionary-biology-altruism

More detail on Greitemeyer and Osswald’s (2010) study of pro-social behaviour and video games
http://www.psypost.org/2010/03/prosocial-video-games-increase-likelihood-of-helping-others-392

The New York Times: Kitty, 40 years later
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/08/nyregion/kitty-40-years-later.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

A New York Times article about the Kitty Genovese murder and Krueger’s research on altruism
http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/catherine-susan-genovese-2011-10/

A BPS research digest article: Empathy breeds altruism, unless a person feels they have low status
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=altruism

A list, with links, of the academic theories about how we seek to help other people
http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/a_helping.htm

Shows two experiments into the bystander effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4S1LLrSzVE

Dovidio, J.F., Piliavin, J.A., Schroeder, D.A., & Penner, L.A. (2006). The social psychology of pro-social behaviour. Mostof what is known about pro-social behaviour is discussed thoroughly in thisbook by four leading experts
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780805849363/