The negative state-releif model by Cialdini suggests that when we are experiencing negative states, we are motivated to alleviate this condition by helping others, which is personally rewarding. People learn during childhood that helping others is a positive behaviour that will make them feel good about themselves. Therefore, the motivation for helping is for egoistic reasons, depending on the anticipated emotional consequences. The primary objective in any behaviour that appears altruistic is actually the enhancement of our own mood. Cialdini carried out a study, where participants were given instructions to create high or low-empathy conditions and then put into a situation where they might help another person who was receiving electric shocks. However, just before the request for help was made, the researchers either offered a surprise monetary “bonus” or heaped lavish praise on the participants. The results were that the participants who received the surprise bonus showed no difference between the likelihood of high-empathy and low-empathy participants helping when the request for help was made. However, the participants who received unexpected lavish praise were still motivated to help when later requested to do so. This study demonstrated that experiencing a mood-lifting event, such as receiving money, may lessen our motivation to relieve our negative state by helping others. However, it also demonstrated that sometimes people experiencing empathy help primarily to relieve another person’s suffering.
Both researches agree that when we come across someone in need we are likely to feel sad, and after helping them we are likely to feel happier. The difference is the reasons that we help for. Cialdini believes that we help for selfish reasons to make us feel better about ourselves, whereas Batson’s view is that we help others because the victim needs help and, by helping, we feel better about ourselves. In support of the negative state-relief model Cialdini found that when person feels empathy for another person, they also feel sadness. When the researchers manipulated these two emotions independently, they found that higher levels of sadness produced more helping, whereas increasing the amount of empathy was not accompanied by increasing likelihood of helping the other person. To explain these contradicting findings, Batson argues that we are more likely to feel empathic concern when we feel a close attachment with the person in need and it is possible that this form of altruism has developed as a result of kin selection, the tendency to help members of one’s kin because they carry many of the same genes as you. Research by Batson has found that people are more likely to help others when their similarity to the observer is stressed. On the other hand, we may feel distress when we have no particular attachment to the person in need, in which conditions we may reduce our stress by helping or walking away.
When the costs of helping are low and the costs not helping are also low, it is possible to conduct an experiment to see whether people do help for egoistic reasons in those circumstances. This can be tested by seeing whether a male would be more likely to help a female than another female would, which would show that the male would be looking for some kind of reward, such as woman’s approval. However, another factor that could affect it is the role of males in the society. They are supposed to look after women and so this could contribute to the fact that they are more likely to help women in need.
Hypothesis: Male helpers will help a female student faster than a female helper would.
Null Hypothesis: There will be no difference in helping times between males and females and any differences observed will be to chance alone.
Method
Design: Field experiment
Participants: Random people in the street that help the confederate.
Apparatus and Materials: An empty envelope that is dropped by the confederate.
Procedure: The confederate, a female student studying AS Psychology, dropped a letter around midday on the main streets of Chichester and then the experimenter observed to see who would help the female student and pick up the letter, catch up with her and give it back to her. The time taken for someone to pick the letter up, the gender of the helper and their perceived age, judged by the experimenter was recorded. The experimenter and the confederate would then stop the helper and de-brief him/her by explaining the experiment, the expected outcome and the contribution of the helper. They would then thank the helper and leave. The procedure was repeated 20 times by different students and then all the results were collected in a table and Mann Whitney-U test was used as it tests the difference of independent measures.
Discussion
The results do support Cialdini’s Negative-State-Releif Model as they show that male helpers would help a female student faster than a female helper would, which shows that people help for egoistic reasons, in this case to get the approval of the female, which would in turn alleviate the negative emotions they might be experiencing. This shows that the primary objective in any behaviour that appears altruistic is actually the enhancement of our own mood.
The findings support previous research, such as Cialdini’s study, where participants were given instructions to create high or low-empathy conditions and then put into a situation where they might help another person who was receiving electric shocks. This study demonstrated that experiencing a mood-lifting event, such as receiving money, may lessen our motivation to relieve our negative state by helping others. However, it also demonstrated that sometimes people experiencing empathy help primarily to relieve another person’s suffering, which supports Batson’s Empathy-Altruism model. Batson argues that we are more likely to feel empathic concern when we feel a close attachment with the person in need and it is possible that this form of altruism has developed as a result of kin selection, the tendency to help members of one’s kin because they carry many of the same genes as you. Research by Batson has found that people are more likely to help others when their similarity to the observer is stressed. On the other hand, we may feel distress when we have no particular attachment to the person in need, in which conditions we may reduce our stress by helping or walking away. Our experiment does show the evidence of that, as other females helped the female confederate, which could be because they felt a close attachment with her.
Ethical considerations were taken, as people were de-briefed after the experiment. Although there was some deception involved, such as the confederate purposely dropping the letter and the participants not giving a fully informed consent, as they didn’t know they were part of a study in the first place, there does not seem to be any potential harm that could have been caused. The participants were de-briefed and there was no evident harm caused as they were generally happy to take part in a psychological study.
Limitations are that the sample is too small, and females dropping the letters all looked different, which does not take into account that some females are more likely to be helped than others if they look more attractive or easily approachable. Another limitation is that the study is done at one time of day and in one small area. It could be that only certain type of people walk into town at given time and for example at 12 o’clock on a week day most people are likely to be working and so the people in the streets would most likely be unemployed or retired people which would make the results biased. It might be that those kind of people are less likely to help as they do not feel any empathy or close attachments to the young people or they have less stimulus overload and worries, so their need to alleviate negative emotions is less. As the study is done in one area, it might not be possible to generalise findings to other areas and cultures. It is suggested that individualistic countries are less likely to help than collectivist countries due to the values and beliefs of that culture. Research also shows that in big cities people are less likely to help, which could be attributed to stimulus overload.
Modifications would be to conduct the same experiment in different areas and at different times of day. The sample should be made bigger to get more reliable results.
References
Psychology for A2 Level, Mike Cardwell, Liz Clark, Claire Meldrum (2001)