Analyse the situational determinates of alturism and helping in humans, and what are the implications of research in this area?

Psychologists have learned about the importance of costs and rewards in emergencies from several studies done on the subway systems of New York. The information from these and other studies suggest that the costs and rewards involved will affect whether help is forthcoming. When the costs of helping are low [no danger] and the costs of not helping are high [others will lay blame] people are likely to intervene directly and help. When the costs of helping are high, and the cost of not helping are low, people will generally ignore the victim. Other factors that influence people whether to help or not include, the characteristics of both victim and bystander. For example, appearance, behaviour, gender, race and personality. ‘Piliavin’ showed through studies that the appearance or attractiveness of victims alters the likelihood of helping. As was seen in the underground subway experiments [1969] Piliavin found that if the victim had an ugly facial birthmark, help was significantly reduced from about 86% to 61%. When the victim appeared lame or drunk, as predicted by the reward- cost analysis, help was offered less often in the drunk trials. 90% of the lame victims were helped within 70 seconds; only 20% of the drunk victims were helped within the same time span of 70 seconds. Again in studies by Piliavin, eagley and Crowley, and Guertness & Dovideo, have shown that gender differences, racism and personality have a great impact on helping others.

One of the critical questions in the research on helping, is why exactly do people help in an emergency situation, [Dovideo 1984, Krebs & Miller 1985]? What is the motivation? Most researchers agree that emergency situations create negative emotional states, but they disagree about why these feelings lead to helping. Some argue that the reason to help is basically selfish or egoistic – they help to relieve their own negative feelings. Some argue that people are genuinely altruistic – they want to help even though they receive nothing in return. An important factor seems to be whether people respond to emergency situations with reactions of personal distress or reactions of empathic concern. People with empathic concerns are more likely to help. That is concern for others rather than ones own distress seems to be more powerful motivation to help.

To conclude about helping and altruism, it is fair to say that when people do help, they usually feel good about themselves. These feelings motivate us in giving assistance. Still we have seen that often people do not help because they are unsure and afraid. They fear acting inappropriately, of getting involved in something that might be time consuming, dangerous or upsetting. As Maslow [1962] suggested, our need for safety takes precedence over our need for esteem. We would rather be safe than a Good Samaritan. This does not mean that people have little capacity for kindness; it means that this capacity can be deflected by concerns with safety.