Pro-Social and Anti-Social Behaviour

David Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780415227605
• eBook ISBN: 9781134587544
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Pro-Social and Anti-Social Behaviour describes the nature and causes of pro-social and anti-social behaviour. It is an introductory level text aimed at students new to this area of Social Psychology. Topics covered include social psychological theories of aggression, altruism and bystander behaviour, and media influences on pro- and anti-social behaviour. Each section includes information on research carried out in these areas of study.

1
Introducing pro-and anti-social behaviour

Introducing pro-social behaviour

Introducing anti-social behaviour

Psychological approaches to pro-social behaviour

Psychological approaches to anti-social behaviour

Have you ever wondered why people go out of their way to watch when someone is hurt or injured? Consider the following instances. We often see car drivers slow down their cars to see what has happened in the accident on the opposite carriageway. Why do people behave in this way? This fascination may be explained by us not wanting to see one of our species injured and we are concerned to see that they will survive. But look at it another way. Why is it when two children fight in a school playground we see a huddle of other children immediately form around them, desperate to watch? Is this because they want to see if one survives the ordeal? I think not. It is much more likely that they want to see one child getting injured in some way, to know which child is dominant. We watch a strange mixture of television programmes too. Real-life situations where people have survived against the odds have become very popular recently but then we also watch violent films and sports involving aggressive behaviour.

A number of social-psychological theories have been proposed which suggest that the society in which we live and the features of modern life determine our behaviours. Another explanation proposes that behaviour results from an interaction of physiological arousal (e.g. how alert/emotional we are) and cognitive processing (e.g. how we assess a situation). There are some psychologists who believe that our propensity to behave in a pro-or anti-social way is inherited (part of our genetic make–up), and yet others believe we learn all our behaviour, whether pro-or anti-social, from parents and significant others. An important consideration is the extent to which the media influence our behaviour. A number of studies have shown that exposure to television violence is positively correlated with violent behaviour. Other studies suggest the relationship is weak and that viewers do discriminate between real life and fictional violence. It is also argued by some that television can be used to reduce aggressive behaviour and encourage pro-social behaviour.

Introducing pro-social behaviour

We have all probably helped other people at some time in our lives and most of us help others many times each day. Our giving of help need not be complex; it may be nothing more than holding a door open for someone loaded with books or shopping or a parent carrying a child. We may also help the proverbial old lady to cross the road. For situations like this we can define helping simply as the giving of assistance to another person. Helping is one facet of pro-social behaviour which Batson (1998: 282) believes is ‘the broad range of actions intended to benefit one or more people other than oneself—behaviours such as helping, comforting, sharing and co-operation.’

If we can explain helping and pro-social behaviour so easily, why are psychologists interested in studying it? Well, let me ask you a question. Why do some people fail to give assistance, such as helping the old lady to cross the road?

You might explain this difference by saying that some people have more time to spare than others do. However, consider that if someone does not help the old lady she may well become injured as she attempts to cross the busy road. Surely someone could now spare the time to help her?

Real-life examples

Now let me take your kindness a step further and ask you the question: what about a life or death situation: would you risk your life to save someone else? Your answer, which may well be that ‘it depends’, is what has fascinated psychologists and this is why they study pro-social behaviour.

History has revealed numerous spectacular examples where heroes have sacrificed their own lives to save the lives of others. Consider the rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe such as Miep Gies who helped hide Anne Frank and her family and Oskar Schindler who saved the lives of thousands. On 24 October 1999 Frank Foley, ‘the British Schindler’, was awarded Israel’s highest honour for a non-Jew for saving 10,000 people from the Holocaust. Why did these people risk their own safety for others —many of whom were strangers to them?

There are also cases where people involved in technological catastrophes have saved others. On 13 January 1982, Air Florida Flight 90, taking off from Washington DC, hit a bridge and plunged into the icy waters of the Potomac River. America later applauded the selfless acts of two men. The first was Lenny Skutnik, a passer-by, who stopped and watched as rescuers tried to pull survivors out of the river. When Priscilla Tirado lost her grip on a helicopter lifeline and started to sink, of all those witnessing the events only Skutnik, who later explained, ‘Somebody had to go into the water’, risked his own life by jumping into the water and pulling her to safety. The second man, Arland Williams (a passenger on the flight), continuously passed the rope from the rescue helicopter to other passengers. When the helicopter returned for him, he was nowhere to be found.

Animals have even been known to help people. In 1996 Binti Tua, a gorilla at Brookfield Zoo, Chicago, kept other gorillas away and then picked up and placed a 3-year-old boy, who had fallen into the gorilla pit, at the zookeeper’s door from where he could be rescued.

Why help others?

In the above examples some of the heroes survived but some did not. It may be the case that as the situation developed before their eyes they assessed the situation, decided they could survive the event and so helped because of the glory they would receive. Quite clearly we do honour the courageousness of their behaviour. But what about those who did not survive? Perhaps they expected to survive and receive the glory but their unfortunate miscalculation of events resulted in their deaths. However, when such surviving heroes are questioned about the motivation for their actions a frequent response is that ‘I didn’t have time to think’. And, if we were to stop and think we would probably still be standing there long after everyone else had gone home! So the motivation can’t be for the possible rewards.

Would you risk your life to save others? Perhaps you would but many people would not. It depends, of course, on who needs help. Suppose your house is on fire and your daughters are trapped inside. Would you hesitate? David Veivers faced precisely this situation in February 2000 and did not hesitate. After rescuing his wife, eldest daughter and two other girls he returned for his two younger daughters. Unable to survive what was described as an inferno he and his daughters lost their lives.

So would you risk your life to save others who are strangers to you? For Lenny Skutnik the answer was clearly yes but in this case there was no apparent danger. A major factor that determines whether people help or not is whether helping would put themselves in danger and if that danger is apparent they are less likely to help. Consider the following examples.

Shortly after Christmas in 1981, while postwoman Karen Green was at work delivering mail in Arizona she was assaulted by three men and two women, all of whom were drunk. As she struggled for fifteen minutes with her attackers, people witnessing the situation telephoned the police several times but did not directly intervene. Finally, she was forced into a car and driven away. Her body was found two days later. No one helped, possibly because they feared that they too might have been harmed.

In Manhattan, New York in 1982 a woman was being attacked in a car park by a man, and three CBS technicians passing by decided to help her. For their trouble, all three were shot and killed by the attacker.

The Kitty Genovese tragedy

If people don’t directly intervene at very least they could telephone for help as in the case of Karen Green above. In some cases they do not even do that. In 1964, New Yorker Catherine ‘Kitty’ Genovese, 28, was returning home at 3 a.m. from her work as a bar manager. As she neared home, which was in a middle-class neighbourhood of the New York borough of Queens, Winston Moseley jumped out of the shadows and attacked her. She screamed as loudly as she could, ‘Oh my God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!’ (Rosenthal 1964:33) and tried to defend herself. Her attacker was frightened away twice by lights coming on in windows, but he returned each time and his third attack, as Miss Genovese tried to crawl into an apartment block, was fatal. Police later discovered that although 38 people heard her screams and many looked out of their windows and saw the attack, no one went to her rescue and no one picked up a telephone to call the police until after she was dead. (Moseley, convict No. 64A0102, is currently in Great Meadow State Prison, New York State.)

It seems that the witnesses considered the situation and decided that if they intervened it might well result in harm to themselves: they could be injured or even killed. All thirty-eight observers may have decided that they did not want to be heroes or come to harm. So why did no one pick up the telephone? Surely this simple act might have saved Kitty’s life without any risk to themselves whatsoever. A twist to this story is that many people believed the Genovese family was involved with the Mafia and so feared reprisals if they intervened.

Defining pro-social behaviour

The crucial question, after considering more real-life examples, is why do some people behave pro-socially when others do not? We have already considered several possible answers and yet another possible answer to this question is that it revolves around two motives: egoism and altruism. The first, egoism, is when we are motivated by self-interest: we help because it makes us feel good. Those advocating this view believe that self-benefit is always the ultimate goal of helping. Alternatively, the second motive, altruism, is where we help to benefit another rather than to benefit ourselves. As an act altruism has two properties: it must benefit someone else and it must be potentially costly to the benefactor. More formally, Walster and Piliavin (1972) define altruism as, ‘helping behaviour that is voluntary, costly to the altruist and motivated by something other than the expectation of material or social reward’. This definition makes the distinction between egoism and altruism clear because there is a regard for the interest of others without apparent concern for one’s self-interest or obvious external rewards.

If egoism is our motivation then we help when we want the glory our actions will receive and we do not help when it is safer for us not to do so. At all times our concern is for ourselves. Anticipation of a delayed reward is often the hidden motive for a great deal of what is claimed to be altruistic behaviour. Many countries offer official rewards for services to the community but more often than not these services have been undertaken not for altruistic reasons but in the anticipation that they are award worthy. Simply, very few public honours come as a surprise.

If we help because of altruism the furthest thing from our minds is glory or what may happen to us. The definition provided by Walster and Piliavin, using the words ‘motivated by something other than’, is good because it states simply that psychologists are still interested in altruistic behaviour because we want to know just exactly what that something is.

Although McDougal first asked the question in the early 1900s as to why people do—and don’t—behave pro-socially, it was only in the 1960s, with the occurrence of a number of events such as the murder of Kitty Genovese, that psychologists began to focus their attention. It is estimated that in the 20 years between 1962 and 1982 over 1,000 academic articles on helping behaviour and altruism had been published, establishing it as a fundamental social psychological topic.

Progress exercise
Think of two or three occasions when you have helped another person who is in need. Why did you help them? Did you help for altruistic or egoistic reasons? What about other people? Do you think all people help for the same reason as you?

Introducing anti-social behaviour

In general terms anti-social acts are those that demonstrate a lack of feeling and concern for the welfare of others. Indeed, successful social interaction and the smooth running of society can only exist if most people do not behave anti-socially. Most societies have laws therefore, enforced via a police force and a legal system, to discourage, condemn and punish anti-social acts.

So what is aggression? In its simplest form aggression is any anti-social behaviour that hurts others. Although this definition would be favoured by the Behaviourists because aggression is defined in terms of the pure behaviour of the act itself, it is inadequate because it ignores the intention behind the behaviour. It is intention that is the crucial factor in providing an adequate definition of aggression.

Suppose a child throws a ball to another child intending to start a game of catch. The other child is not watching and the ball hits the child on the head. The child cries and runs to tell the teacher about the aggressive behaviour of the other ‘naughty’ child. Of course the child who threw the ball is innocent but, if we have defined aggression in terms of pure behaviour, the consequences of an act, then the child who throws the ball is unfairly guilty. Clearly we need to take intention into account when we define aggression. We can now move to a more complete definition if we say that aggression is any behaviour that is intended to hurt others. Even this may be inadequate as there are a number of other factors that need to be taken into account, such as whether aggression always intends to hurt others.

Hostile and instrumental aggression

As a Wiganer my favourite sport is rugby league. Anyone who watches this sport could easily argue that it is a very aggressive game. But, is the aggression demonstrated by the players on ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introducing Pro-And Anti-Social Behaviour
• Section I: Pro-Social Behaviour
• Section II: Anti-Social Behaviour
• Section III: Media Influences On Pro-And Anti-Social Behaviour
• Glossary
• References