• Prosocial Behaviour is any act performed with aim of befitting others. People engaging in prosocial behaviour have no goal other than helping other fellow humans.
• Altruism is any act or the desire to help others that does not benefit the helper but costs the helper instead. People help others out of a desire to help them.
• Prosocial Behaviour is positive, constructive, and helpful social behaviour.
• Social Exchange Theory argues that much of what we do is stems from the desire to maximize our outcomes and minimize our costs. It is based on self-interest. Helping others can increase the chance that someone will help us in future; results in social approval and increased self worth; and, it can decrease the distress of the bystander.
• Empathy and Altruism: People often help others from their good nature. Altruism is likely to come into play when we experience empathy for needy person, regardless of what we have to gain.

Why?
• Individual Differences: Some people help others. Some people are kind.
• Gender Differences: Men like to help in chivalrous ways. Women like to help in a nurturing ways and in long term.
• Effective of positive moods: Do good, feel good.
• The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis proposes that because of empathy, we help those in need because it feels good to do so.
• The Negative-State Relief Model proposes that people help others in order to relive and make less negative their own unpleasant state.
• The Emphatic Joy Hypothesis bases helping on the positive feelings of accomplishment that arise when the helper is able to have a beneficial impact on the people in need.
• The Genetic Determination Model traces prosocial behaviour to the general effects of natural selection, which favours any attribute that increases the odds that one’s genes will be transferred to future generations.
• The Reciprocity Norm – the expectation that helping others will increase the probability that they will help us in the future in the same unselfish way.



To help or not - Decision Steps

Step 1: Noticing the Emergency Event
• Emergencies do not announce in advance, there is no way to anticipate when one will occur.
• If you do not notice, you are too busy or occupied to notice it so it does not exist for you.

Step 2: Interpreting the Event as an Emergency
• When we are paying attention, we have only limited and incomplete information about what others are doing. E.g. we do not know why someone is running through a park. Maybe he is exercising or just catching a bus, but he could also be a runaway thief.
• There is a fear of making a blunder and interpreting the situation as an emergency.

Step 3: Assuming that the Bystander decides Helpfulness in his Responsibility and helps
• Once it is individual pays attention and interprets correctly that it is an emergency, a prosocial act will follow only if the individual takes responsibility to help. E.g. police officers investigate a crime, Medical officers deal with injuries.
• When responsibility is not clear, people tend to assume that the person who assumes the leadership in the emergency must be responsible. E.g. the lecturer would be responsible for dealing with classroom emergencies.
• One reason that lone bystander is likely to act is because there is no one else present who could take responsibility.

Step 4: Knowing what to do
• Even if bystander assumes responsibility, nothing useful can be done unless that person knows how to be helpful.
• Some situations and emergencies are sufficiently simple that almost everyone has the requisite skill. E.g. If you witness someone falling down, it is easy to offer help.
• Some emergencies require special skills and knowledge that many bystanders do not possess. E.g. A lifeguard would be better in the drowning child’s case.

Step 5: Deciding to help
• Even if the bystander’s response in the 1st 4 steps is yes, help would not occur unless that person arrives at the final decision to act.
• Helping could be inhibited by fears about potential negative results or outcome. E.g. wrong interpretations, the old man you were helping could be a decoy for others to pounce on you.