Seeing from social media people rescuing another who is in danger without thinking of his/her own safety is a heroic deed in our eyes in that sense. A lot of times we pay respect, tribute to people who does the same thing. Especially when it was done to us personally – more than saying “thank you, you save my life”, we may feel a lifelong gratitude and indebtedness for that act. But why do some people in the scene of an event that requires help do not perform altruistic behavior or do not help? This leads us to think why people risk their lives over helping others while others not? Are there underlying factors behind the scene?
Helping is a prosocial behavior which is a voluntary behavior carried out to benefit another. It comes in two forms: (1) egoistic helping is when the helper’s ultimate goal is to increase her or his own welfare – which we may be aware of what most people do today, the self-fulfilling help; and (2) altruistic helping denotes the helper’ s ultimate goal is to increase another’s welfare with no self-benefit expected. Is this real?
Do men and women differs in helping behavior? According to different studies men and women differs in their willingness to engage in a prosocial behavior (helping). Men generally help more than women which applies to being more likely to help strangers, when there is an audience, there is a potential danger involve and more likely when the person in need is female (Eagly and Crowley, 1986). This contradicts to women being more helpful in terms of other forms of prosocial behavior like helping a friend or caring for children. Women are also more likely than men to provide social and emotional support to others (Shumaker & Hill, 1991). They are also more willing to serve as caretakers for children and the elderly (Trudeua & Devlin,1996). These findings indicate that men and women appear to be helpful in different ways. These differences are consistent with the culturally valued male role heroic rescuer, men tend to place themselves in danger when rendering assistance. In contrast, women are more likely to provide long-term help involving empathy and caretaking which is also consistent with culturally valued feminine gender role. In sum, both men and women help but on different occasions and situations with different helping ability to offer most likely.
If both gender help in different ways was there different reasons, why do we help? The principle of kin selection explained by evolutionary theorists that survival of the fittest and elimination of the unfit (as being selfish looking out first for oneself for survival) is not an individual survival but rather a gene survival that promotes reproductive fitness (Archer, 1991). Thus, the species tend to sacrifice or face danger even death just to preserved their genes. We exhibit preference for helping blood relatives because this increases the odds that our genes will be transmitted to subsequent generations. Another reason is reciprocal helping like in helping strangers which can be adaptive because any helpful act of favor is expected to be returned. For reciprocal helping to evolve, the benefit to the recipient must be high and the cost to the helper must be relatively low. Social norms also define the “rules” of helping others. The norm of social responsibility is one reason to help, stating that we should help when others are in need and dependent on us (Schwartz, 1975). A true example why a teacher has a sense of duty to their students like any police or firefighters dutybound to help even their lives are at stake. While social justice norm states that we should help only when we believe that others deserve our assistance. Collectivistic cultures hold to a broader and more stringent view of social responsibility than individualist cultures.
So, when do we help? Risky situations call for a second thought of helping. Why do bystanders so callous to a suffering victim crying for help for example? The bystander intervention involves a series of decisions when to help – the model of bystander intervention as outlined by Latane and Darley explains that the decision to help involves a five-step process, wherein at any step, a bystander’s decision could lead to either further analysis of the situation or to nonintervention. Helping bystanders also depends on the influence that they have on prosocial behavior. It depends on (1) audience inhibition effect (bystanders inhibit people from defining dangerous situations as emergencies); (2) diffusion of responsibility (bystanders make people feel less personally responsible for helping especially since many are present in the scene. The Arousal:Cost-Reward Model by Jane Piliavin and colleagues, on the other hand focuses attention on the perceived costs of helping. This theory entails that helping is a function of emotional arousal and analysis of the costs and rewards of helping – a combination of personal cost for direct help and cost for no help to the victim. What do we mean by this? We tend to help when there is great need for our help that we would feel guilty if we tend not to help and we are not helping at time when the situation will hold us or intervene a lot in our undertaking that moment like rushing for an interview – we tend to rationalize that “if I am not in a hurry, I can give that man a piece of advice” – seeing the man punishing a child. Sadly, a very rare situation that we get out of our way to help when a high personal cost is at stake. We also tend to help depending on following a good mood, but may sometimes try to eliminate negative moods by helping others.
Therefore, these conditions under which people are most likely to help others assumes there is egoistic motive underlying prosocial behavior. This contends that helpful bystanders are ultimately trying to improve their own well-being by helping.
With these assumptions, does true altruism really exist? Here is a contention to prove it does. The Empathy-altruism hypothesis contends that: bystanders who experience empathy will help to provide comfort for victims; and bystanders who experience personal distress will only help victims to reduce their own negative arousal state. This means that experiencing empathy (a feeling of compassion and tenderness upon viewing the victim) for someone in need produces an altruistic motive for helping especially when personal distress is high which signifies feeling unpleasant state of arousal which people are preoccupied with their own emotions of anxiety, fear, or helplessness upon viewing a victim’s plight.
In summary, helping depends on the motivation coming from the one who wants to help, in the same way not helping also depends on the motivation/underlying cause of not helping. We feel sad that not all people help and when they do, we feel we are indebted to this person as long as we live. That explains our culture of reciprocity as Filipinos. In the end, it is the person’s decision to help or not to help but we do not underestimate that there is true altruism because compassion is real. It is compelling us to be passionate about helping because we cannot withstand the plight of a victim that’s why we move, we act out of empathy and love. It is only a secondary thought that we help hoping that one day when we need help there is also someone out there showing compassion to our situation.
By: Jennlyn Y. Dizon
