23 - 7. Altruism

7. Altruism

© SPMM Course 7. Altruism Any action that is intended to help others is called Prosocial Behaviour in psychology. Altruism is often considered to be a motivation behind people’s prosocial acts. Altruism refers to the wish to help others with no expectation of reward. Bystander apathy: When alone, individuals will typically intervene if another person is in need of help: this is called bystander intervention. But intervention becomes less likely to an extent that no single person will intervene from a crowd or group of observers when someone is in need of help. This is called bystander apathy or Genovese effect. Pluralistic ignorance: This refers to members of a crowd looking at each other for signs of distress but remaining calm themselves, leading to misappraisal of the situation being safe leading to lack of intervention. Bystander competence is usually not required for intervention except in ambiguous situations where technical help is required e.g. blood at the scene. According to arousal/cost-reward model, emotional arousal on seeing a victim increases motivation to act. But a cognitive appraisal of costs and rewards occurs before an intervention is carried out. If the cost of helping is high, the bystander undertakes a cognitive reinterpretation - calling the situation as non-urgent, blaming the victim or diffusing or dissolving responsibility. Diffusion of responsibility: Similar to social loafing – ‘I have some responsibility, but so do others; let someone else help.' Dissolution of responsibility: Not knowing what others are doing, rationalizes that someone would have helped the victim. Males show higher agentic help and intervention while females show higher communal help and empathy. Social loafing: This is also called Ringelmann’s effect. It is seen in games such as tug-of-war and in clapping hands after a performance. The larger a group is, the less the individual performance

• as one thinks the others will do the job

© SPMM Course Notes prepared using excerpts from  Sapolsky, R. (2005) The Influence of Social Hierarchy on Primate Health Science, 648-652  Thambirajah, MS. Psychological Basis of Psychiatry, Elsevier 2005  Gross, R. Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour, Hodder Education; 6th Revised edition  Wolff, P., & Holmes, K. J. (2011). Linguistic relativity. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2(3), 253-265.  Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”?. Cognition, 21(1), 37-46.  J. French and B. Raven, The bases of social power in D. Cartwright and A. Zander (eds.), Group dynamics (pp. 607-623). New York: Harper and Row, 1960 DISCLAIMER: This material is developed from various revision notes assembled while preparing for MRCPsych exams. The content is periodically updated with excerpts from various published sources including peer-reviewed journals, websites, patient information leaflets and books. These sources are cited and acknowledged wherever possible; due to the structure of this material, acknowledgments have not been possible for every passage/fact that is common knowledge in psychiatry. We do not check the accuracy of drug-related information using external sources; no part of these notes should be used as prescribing information