 This is lecture 11. So in this lecture, we'll be talking about one of human nature's finest attributes, and that is our tendency to help others. So in this part of the lecture, we'll be discussing some of the theories of why we help others. But before we do so, let's start off with some definitions. First of all, a definition of prosocial behavior. Well, prosocial behavior is basically just another word for helping behavior. It's any act performed with the goal of benefiting another person. So anything you do to benefit someone else. And prosocial behavior or helping behavior can take many forms. And one specific form is altruism, something that you probably also heard of before. Well, altruism is a very special form of prosocial behavior. It has the same core attributes, namely it's an act that you perform to benefit someone else. But there's two extra layers to altruism. First of all, it's very important that you have no intention to gain anything for yourself. So you do not have an intention to gain any profit for any positive outcome for yourself. It's solely a purpose is to help others. So that's one special addition to altruism. And the second one is that you will perform this behavior even if it has costs for you. So even if it's not only not bringing you anything, but it may even involve some costs for you. So this difference between prosocial behavior and altruism has been discussed a lot by psychologists, by philosophers and also by people, characters from my one of my favorite sitcoms, namely Friends. And I will now want to show you a part of a small film clip in which Joey and Phoebe discuss the difference between altruism and helping and specifically if there's something like a selfish good deed. Is it possible to do something for someone else without gaining anything yourself? Please take a look. Sorry, Phoebe. I just, you know, I just wanted to do a good deed like you did with the babies. This isn't a good deed. You just want to get on TV. This is totally selfish. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What about you having those babies for your brother? Talk about selfish. What are you talking about? Well, yeah, it was a really nice thing and all, but it made you feel really good, right? Yeah, so? Well, it made you feel good, so that makes it selfish. Look, there's no unselfish good deeds. Sorry. Yes, there are. There are totally good deeds that are selfless. Well, may I ask for one example? Yeah, it's, you know, there's no you may not. That's because all people are selfish. Are you calling me selfish? Are you calling you people? Yeah, sorry to burst that bubble fees, but selfless good deeds don't exist. Okay. And you know the deal on Santa Claus, right? Selfless good deal. I'm going to beat you, you evil genius. Joey, when you said the deal with Santa Claus, you meant? That he doesn't exist. Right. So why do we help others? Why do we show pro-social behavior to others? Well, there are several theories out there that explains our helping behavior. And one of these theories that we have it again is evolutionary theory. Evolutionary psychologists argue that we tend to help others definitely when they are related to us. And this is called kin selection. Kin selection means that we show helping behavior towards people that are genetically related to us. And that makes evolutionary a lot of sense because we want to protect our genes. So we also want to protect our offspring and basically anyone that is related to us genetically. So that's why we are very helpful towards our offspring, our children, but also towards others that are genetically related to us. And there's quite some evidence actually that we are even that we are more likely to help others that are related to us, that are blood relatives compared to friends, for example, that are not genetically related to us. And especially when it comes to life or death situations. So there's quite some examples, anecdotal evidence, but also some experiments done with hypothetical scenarios in which people are asked, so are you more likely to rescue your nephew from a building that's on fire than compared to to a colleague, for example, then we see that we are more likely to to help others that are genetically related to us. So that's basically one of them. The core principles of evolutionary psychology is we want to protect our genes. We want to make sure that we reproduce and that we that that our genes live on. So that's why we protect people and help people that are genetically related to us. That's one explanation. But evolutionary psychology also offers explanations for why we help people that are not related to us because we do so we do that as well. And one of these explanations also offered by evolutionary psychologists is that we help others because we would like to receive help in return. So based on the reciprocity norm, and we already discussed this, that when we show certain behavior towards others, we expect that same behavior in return. And we also oftentimes get that. So let's imagine that a friend of yours asks you, so I'm moving house, can you please help me move some boxes and move some furniture? This might not be something that you ideally would like to do on a Saturday morning. But you think to yourself, well, of course, it's very nice to help a friend. But also maybe in the back of your mind, you're thinking to yourself, well, I actually also have to move houses in half a year or so. So then I can rely on that friend to help me because I also offered help in beforehand. So the reciprocity norm is actually one of the reasons that also evolutionary psychologists argue that we help others so we can help get help back. And this is good for us. This is good for our well being. And it's it can also mean that we once we offer help to people that they can offer help to us in times of great need, and maybe even when our survival depends on it. The third reason why we also offer help to strangers or people that are not genetically related to us is an idea of group selection that's also described in your book. And that means that on the bigger scale, so if you zoom out a bit, we know that that groups of people that are helpful towards each other have a higher chance of surviving over a long, long time. So people that are very selfish and don't offer help to others, they actually have a higher tendency to become extinct and that group has a lower chance of surviving. So even though helping is sometimes costly to the self on the long run, it's oftentimes good for the group. So it's actually in a way a sort of a social dilemma, something that we discussed in a previous lecture. So evolutionary psychology came up with several explanations for why we are helping, but there's more theories out there helping us to understand why we help others. And one of these theories is the social exchange theory. This theory is also part of lecture 10 actually. It's chapter 10 also in your book on relationships, but it comes back in this lecture in lecture 11 on helping. And according to the social exchange theory, basically what we decide to do stems from sort of a weighing scale from benefits and costs. And what we decide to do is sort of the outcome of what offers us the most benefits. So when it comes to helping, there's oftentimes costs involved. Sometimes helping can be dangerous for us, especially if someone is in need. For example, if you will have to run into a burning house, of course, that's very dangerous for you. It might actually be painful or uncomfortable for you to help. And at the very least, it will likely cost you time. So there's some costs involved in helping. And if the costs are too big, we will, according to the social exchange theory, decide not to help. But also helping has a lot of benefits as well. And that's also recognized by the state shows social exchange theory. For example, there's oftentimes rewards when it comes to helping that are linked to our image. Helping is also a social norm. So we receive social rewards when others see us helping people. So if a person sees you offering help to a person in need, we will definitely get praised. So you will get applause, you will get likes on social media if you talk about it. And you might even receive a bonus or it might even offer some possibilities when it comes to your career or other opportunities. So offering help, and that's something we all know, it's good for our self image. It's actually also good for how we feel. So we also, it gives us a good feeling if we help others. And that's actually also the third explanation, that helping helps us regulate our emotions and our mood. So there's actually two different courses how our mood affects our choice to help others. So when we are in a good mood, we tend to help others more. And this has also been experimentally demonstrated that after people coincidentally, actually not coincidentally, was placed by a researcher, find a coin of like 50 cents, that after that they have a higher chance of offering help to someone they come across a person in need. So if you are in a good mood, you're more likely to offer help. So that's basically a feel good, do good explanation. This is also great because if you offer help, your good mood maintains. So it helps you to maintain your positive mood that you're already in. On the other hand, though, being in a negative mood might also induce helping behavior. And that is because offering help can increase your moods, can can lighten up your mood. So and this is actually an explanation that sounds like the complete opposite of it, it works in that sense as well, feel bad, do good. So that means that if you are in a bad mood, offering help can be a way of getting in a more positive mood. Especially if you have a bad mood because you have lingering feelings of guilt, you feel guilty towards the person, for example, if you then help that person, that can that can sort of be the perfect way of restoring that guilty feelings and feeling better again. So overall, helping is good for our moods. Even if it's a good mood or a bad mood, it will help you become in a more positive mood. And also it can help us cope with different emotions. And what I want to add to this is that it's also good for a self image. So if you offer help to a person, this can actually be some sort of an ego boost. You can feel better about yourself like the person you are, you become more self aware and you start considering yourself as a good and decent human being. That's of course in the end what we all want. We want to feel good about ourselves. So if you suffer from bad self esteem or you feel bad about yourself, offering help can also be a great medicine for that. So overall, I can say it's good for your well-being. So so far we talked about pretty selfish reasons to help. We help others because we want to protect our genes or we want to get something back or we want to lift our own moods. But that's not the only reason we help. And that's according to the empathy, altruism, and hypotheses. We also sometimes offer help because we feel empathy for a person, because we feel bad for a person. And then we will attempt to help this person purely for altruistic reasons regardless of what we personally gain. So the moment we feel empathy for a person, we feel really bad for a person, we want to offer help regardless of how it makes us feel. And that's basically sort of the answer to the dilemma that Joey and Phoebe were talking about. Is there something like a selfless good deed? Yes. The moment you start feeling empathy for a person and you deeply care, then you want to offer help regardless of what's in it for you. So these are basically, there's basically two paths of showing helping behavior. If you see another person in distress, you can yourself also start experiencing distress. So that's the upper roots basically. So the moment you also start experiencing distress, you feel upset, anxious, disturbed, then you probably have egoistic reasons to offer help. You have a motivation to reduce your own distress. And then you show behavior that is basically, you show helping behavior because you want to reduce your own distress. And on the bottom hand, you can also sometimes view another person's distress and not feel any distress yourself. So you perfectly find yourself, but you're only feeling distress for the other person. And then you experience empathy. You have feelings of sympathy and compassion for another person, but you're not personally bothered by it. Then if you then offer help, you have an altruistic motivation to reduce another person's distress. You will still show helping behavior, but then it's for altruistic reasons. So as an example of this, let's imagine that you are in an airplane, and you're sitting next to a crying baby. You have people that are super disturbed by that, which I can fully understand. It's pretty difficult to sit next to a crying baby, especially if you know there's going to be a very long plane, lots of hours that I'm stuck with this baby. So maybe you're trying to calm this baby down because you yourself are very bothered by it. So then you offer help, you start maybe playing with the baby, or you try to calm it down a little bit or help the mother or the father that is taking care of the baby. Then you're helping for egocentric reasons. But some other people like myself, I'm also a mother, so I have three kids. I know babies cry. If I see or hear a crying baby, I am not really disturbed by it personally. I'm probably just thinking, I'm happy it's not my own kid, but I will feel empathy for the caregiver. And I feel like, oh, this is such a hard situation if you're in a plane and your baby is crying. So I will also offer help. But then it's more for altruistic reasons because I just want this situation to calm down. I want this baby to be chill and I want the parents to be chill as well. So then I am offering help for more altruistic reasons. So in a nutshell, summarizing all this, why do we help? We help to protect our genes. We help to get something in return, to look good in the eyes of others, because it makes us feel good and because we care. So basically, there's so many reasons to offer help. Helping is good for everything. So you probably think to yourself right now, well, we will be helping all the time, right? That's not the case. Because there's, even though helping is so good for us, and it's basically good for everything, there's oftentimes situations that we do not offer help, even though we should actually offer help. And we'll return to this question in the second part of the lecture.