Revise Human relationships: social responsibility for IB Psychology (8.3)

Prosocial behaviour is a broad category: any action intended to benefit another person, a group, or society — donating, volunteering, comforting, rescuing. Crucially, the term is silent about motive. A person may help to gain approval, to discharge a sense of duty, or simply to relieve their own discomfort at watching someone suffer. Altruism is the narrower, more contested idea: prosocial behaviour performed with no expectation of personal gain, and sometimes at a genuine cost to the helper. Whether 'pure' altruism exists at all — or whether every helpful act conceals some self-interest — is one of the central debates in this topic, and a debate you can exploit for critical-thinking marks.

Explanations for prosocial behaviour sit at the biological, cognitive and sociocultural levels. A strong essay does not have to cover all three, but it must anchor each explanation it uses to a named study — and then use that study, not just cite it.

Aim: to test whether willingness to help increases with genetic relatedness, as kin selection predicts. Procedure: participants held a painful, physically demanding isometric position (a 'ski-squat' against a wall); the longer they held it, the more money was earned for a specified beneficiary who varied in relatedness — from a close relative (parent, sibling) through cousins to non-relatives such as a charity. Findings: participants endured the discomfort for longer as the beneficiary's genetic relatedness increased, and the pattern replicated across cultural samples. Use it like this: the graded relationship between effort and relatedness is exactly what kin selection predicts — cost tolerated tracks shared genes — so the study supports a biological account of altruism. Evaluation: the controlled effort measure is a strength, but the artificial task has low ecological validity, and cultural learning about family obligation is a confound that a purely genetic reading ignores.

Aim: to test whether empathy produces genuinely altruistic helping, independent of self-interest. Procedure: participants watched 'Elaine' apparently receive electric shocks. Two variables were manipulated: empathy (high — told Elaine shared their values; low — told she was dissimilar) and ease of escape (easy — free to leave after two shocks; difficult — had to watch all ten). Participants were then offered the chance to take Elaine's remaining shocks. Findings: in the high-empathy condition most helped whether escape was easy or difficult; in the low-empathy condition helping dropped sharply when escape was easy. Use it like this: if helping were always egoistic, low-empathy participants would leave whenever they could — and they did; but high-empathy participants helped even with an easy exit, which self-interest cannot explain, supporting a genuinely altruistic motive. Evaluation: an elegant 2×2 design that isolates motive, but the lab task is artificial and the deception raises ethical concerns, limiting how far the 'altruism' generalises beyond the setting.

The bystander effect is the counter-intuitive finding that the presence of others REDUCES the likelihood that any individual helps in an emergency. Latané and Darley argued that failing to help is not apathy but the outcome of a cognitive decision process shaped by the social situation. Their decision model sets out five steps to intervention — notice the event, interpret it as an emergency, assume responsibility, know how to help, implement help — and failure at any single step stops helping. Two mechanisms explain most failures.

Aim: to test whether the presence of others reduces the tendency to react to a possible emergency (pluralistic ignorance). Procedure: participants completed a questionnaire either alone, with two other genuine participants, or with two passive confederates who deliberately ignored the situation, while smoke was pumped into the room. Findings: 75% of participants who were alone reported the smoke, but only 38% did so in groups of three, and reporting fell further when the two others were passive confederates. Many in the group conditions later said they had decided the smoke was steam or a harmless fault. Use it like this: because participants downgraded a genuine hazard to a non-emergency by reading others' calm as evidence, the study directly demonstrates pluralistic ignorance shaping interpretation (step 2). Evaluation: a controlled manipulation of group size, but an artificial task with low ecological validity, and deceiving participants into believing they might be in danger raises ethical concerns about psychological harm.

Aim: to test whether increasing the number of perceived bystanders reduces helping through diffusion of responsibility. Procedure: participants sat in individual cubicles for what they believed was a group discussion over an intercom; group size was varied so each thought they were one of two, three, or six people. A confederate then staged an apparent epileptic seizure over the intercom; the measure was whether and how fast the participant left to seek help. Findings: when participants believed they alone heard the victim, 85% helped; when they believed four others were also present, only 31% helped, and those who did help were slower. Use it like this: since the ONLY thing varied was the perceived number of others, the drop in helping isolates diffusion of responsibility as the cause (step 3). Evaluation: strong internal validity from tight control, but low ecological validity and clear ethical costs — participants believed a person was seizing and showed real distress.

Understanding what blocks helping tells us how to remove the blocks. Because bystanderism runs through Latané and Darley's five steps, effective strategies target specific steps. To defeat pluralistic ignorance (step 2), make the emergency unambiguous — a clear cry of 'She's having a heart attack — this is an emergency!' removes the interpretive doubt others' calm faces create. To defeat diffusion of responsibility (step 3), assign responsibility to a named individual — 'You in the red jacket, call an ambulance now' — so it can no longer be spread across the crowd. More broadly, research shows that simply teaching people about the bystander effect makes them more likely to help later, because knowing the mechanisms lets people recognise and override them; and modelling prosocial behaviour, plus fostering an inclusive in-group identity so more people count as 'us', both raise helping. Each strategy is strongest in the exam when tied back to the mechanism it counteracts.