Procedures:
- Female participants watched a woman called Elaine (confederate on CCTV as she perceived electric shocks during a learning experiment. Elaine pretended to show increasing personal distress and stated that as a child she had been hurt by an electric fence and hence was particularly distressed by the procedures.
- It was assumed at this point that all the watching participants would be feeling personal distress watching Elaine.
- The experiments suggested that the person watching could swap places with Elaine. By agreeing to swap places, participants were showing altruism i.e. they helped Elaine at cost to themselves (they would now receive the shocks).
- Batson et al then manipulated the degree of empathy participants felt for Elaine by saying that Elaine had…similar (high empathy condition) or dissimilar (low empathy…attitudes and interests to them.
Findings:
Results tend to follow a 1 verses 3 pattern; with the empathy / easy escape condition resulting in low helping and…..high helping in the other three conditions (Clarke 1991)
Conclusions:
These findings support Batsons view that similar attitudes encourage empathy, and increased empathy increases the likelihood of an altruistic gesture.
Criticisms: +
1) Lots of experimental evidence to support Batsons views. The research, being lab based, is relatively easy to replace to assess reliability and validity. There is also good control of variables. It does establish a link between empathy and altruism and it is true that increased empathy for someone will, in some circumstances increase the likelihood of helping.
2) As much of the evidence is drawn from lab research it is somewhat reductionlist and overly simplistic. Things get a lot more complicated in real world situations where considerations of family, friends, money, jobs etc… affect people’s behaviour therefore it has low ecological validity.
3) Participants may have guessed that the electric shock were not real and may have acted to please the experimenter (Demand characteristics). This makes it less valid. They may also have been distressed by the experience if they believed the socks to be real, but this could overcome at the end by debriefing.
The Negative State Relief Model
A01:
Calvin et al (1987) proposed a more selfish view of helping, stressing that people help others to avoid feeling sad (a negative state) and because it makes them feel good about themselves. This is called the Negative State Relief (NSR) model. It doesn’t matter whether the negative affect (mood) is caused by witnessing the distress of the victim or whether the helper was already in bad mood. Either way, you help to improve your own mood. Adults may internalise the reward of doing good…..Therefore, adults in a bad mood may help in order to alleviate their negative state. However if people can relieve their negative mood through some other source (such as hearing a good joke or getting some money) then they do not need to help.
Effect of Mood Enhancement (EME) study
A variation on Batson’s research was carried. Those participants in the high empathy group (i.e. those who shared in the same opinions as Elaine or Charlie) were offered some cash during the experiment.
Findings:
Accordingly, they helped less-their negative state at seeing Elaine or Charlie suffer was diminished by the cash. The reduction of their negative state in this was meant that they didn’t have to help reduce their negative feelings (conclusion).
Criticisms:
- It’s been found in numerous studies that being in a good mood results in more pro-social behaviour. Research have found people to be more helpful after listening to comedy, smelling pleasant odours, after finding money or by going outside on sunny days (Boron and Byrne,199…….). However if people feel their good mood will be affected by helping then they are more likely to not help and walk.
- Artificial studies: all lab studies are extremely artificial and lack ecological validity. Behaviour in the real world is subject to many other factors, such as social and cultural influences on behaviour – none of which are explored in these lab settings. Therefore it is difficult to generalise lab findings to a wider context.
- People have criticised Cialdini et al for proposing to negative a view of human behaviour. However the selfish view of human behaviour might be right.
- Helping does help negative state: it’s not in dispute those helping others/ another person in need does lead to an improved mood for the helper. So it has face validity.
