My Purpose in Life is to Help Others: Helping Behavior

Introduction

There is no simple answer as to why some people decide to help. Social Psychologist have focused on several prosocial factors that could possibly explain why, when and how some people are more willing to help compared to others. Helping is described as the action to assist another person with a problem or to relieve their distress. I would say that my purpose in life is to help others. The following research paper will discuss some of the elements that contribute to the helping behavior.

The Reason We Help Others

What motivates someone to help another? Kassin, Fein, Markus, & Burke (2013), suggested how evolution impact the likelihood, to why some people help others. Evolutional scientist proposes 'the Selfish Gene' as an explanation for helping individual that are blood relatives, also called ' kin selection'(Kassin et al., 2013; Dawkins, 1976). The Selfish Gene is a concept that describes the process of helping “kin” to be able to pass on their DNA to future generations (Kassin et al, 2013; Dawkins, 1976). Evolutionary method of helping is motivated by the person's will for survival of self and kin. That being said, people provide favoritism towards members of their ingroups, as opposed to strangers. Another explanation of the implication of evolution in helping is reciprocal altruism as this concept describes how people that give help will later be more likely to receive help and if they fail to reciprocate, punishments and social exclusion may follow (Buss, 2004).

Next we will consider the motivation of rewards. Specifically, prior to providing assistance, the potential helpers analyze if rewards outweigh the costs of helping (Kenrick, Newberg, & Cialdini, 1999). Unconventionally, reward can be characterized by a desire to enhance one’s own emotional state rather than a desire to enhance the welfare of the person in need. For example, studies supporting the arousal/cost-reward model (Dovidio, Piliavin, Gaertner, Schroeder & Clark, 1991) and the negative-state relief model (Cialdini, Schaller, Houlihan, Arps, Fultz, & Beaman, 1987) insinuate that even seemingly altruistic actions may be motivated instead by a desire to enhance one’s own self-esteem or to gain rewards through helping. To explain, if costs outweigh the rewards, helping is not likely. However, if rewards are greater than cost, helping is more probable.

Many people would like to believe that they help out of concern for the other person welfare. Controversially, the truth is that egoistic factors can lead to helping because helping makes most people feel good. Helping others under these conditions is considered selfish, as it leads to a favorable mental state towards one's self (Kassin et al., 2013). Helping may even reflect one's own self-motivated emotion as they have a desire to reduce one's own distress (Kassin et al., 2013). On the other hand, it seems that at times we help for altruistic motives. This is seen while examining the empathy-altruism hypothesis, where ' taking the prospective of a person in need creates an empathic concern, which in turn produces the altruistic motives to reduce the other person's distress' (Kassin et al., 2013, p. 394). This is seen when a person decides to help another because they have empathy for those who needed help. The debate between whether we help because of altruistic or egoistic reasons continues and there is no end in sight. Nevertheless, distinguishing among the motivations to help is important because different motives are likely to affect behavioral, emotional responses, attribution, and the role of rewards in helping.

Deciding to Help Others

After the case of the infamous murder of Kitty Genovese, society was outraged when up to thirty-eight neighbours witnessed the attack and stood back doing nothing to help (Kassin et al., 2013). As a result, social psychologists took great interested and concerned with the motivation of the helping behaviour.

The decision to help is not always simple. In fact, a series of steps must be addressed in order for anyone to help. As explained by Kassin et al., (2013) there is a five-step model of recognizing the need to help, such as noticing, interpreting, taking responsibility, deciding how to intervene and providing help. If any of these steps are missing help will not be given. Example of the unhelpful crowd would be the perception that the attacker and victim have a close relationship and also that bystanders are afraid of making a fool of themselves. Unfortunately, part of the problem is that people tend to look to others in order to determine how to respond and their reaction can be bias. This is called the bystander effect and it can influence helping, as research shows that the presence of others can inhibits helping (Kassin et al., 2013). People have been known to be distracted by others or their own self-concern that changes their own perception and decreases the act of helping. One such concept is the diffusion of responsibility which is a psychological phenomenon in which people are less likely to take action when in the presence of a large group of people (Fisher, 2011). Or even the possibility of pluralistic ignorance which can inhibit helping as this phenomenon describes a situation where most of the group members privately believe one thing, however wrongly beleive the collective group believes the opposite (Fisher et al., 2011).

Other conditions that inhibit helping include time pressure and living in a rural instead of urban cities (Kassin et al., 2013). Situational conditions can also influence helping behavior by affecting our emotions with the mood we are feeling at the time of the event. Finally, role models and social norms can be powerful situational factors that lead individuals to help others (Kassin et al., 2013).

People with Purpose to Help

Despite the strong situational influences on helping, there are some people that are more likely to intervene and provide help than others. Social psychologists have found some evidence that helping may be due to our genetic DNA. However, there has also been some research findings explaining that there are some prosocial personality characteristics, such as empathy and moral reasoning, when seen together can promote a helping behaviour (Penner & Orom, 2010). Along those lines, researchers have examined how gender can play a role in helping behaviors. Kassin et al., (2013) explain how men are more likely to help a woman in a dangerous situation, whereas women are more likely to help friends and relatives in daily situations. Apparently, both genders are equally helpful, but it all depends on the type of help needed (Becker & Eagly, 2004).

People That Need Help

It has been found that some people are more likely to receive help than others. Apparently, attractive individuals, as well as victims who are perceived as innocent, are more likely to obtain help (Kassin et al., 2013). People are also more likely to receive help if the bystander perceives the victim as similar to themselves.

Conclusion

The decision to help someone is not as easy as one may think. Many factors need to be considered prior to helping. By making ourselves aware of the circumstances that lead to helping behavior such as bystander apathy, can help us make a more conscious decision when planning to help or stepping back.

Works Cited:

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