Altruism is an unselfish concern for the welfare of others. In rescuing his jailer, Dirk Willems exemplified altruism (Unit XN opener). So also did Carl Wilkens and Paul Rusesabagina in Kigali, Rwanda. Wilkens, a Seventh Day Adventist missionary, was living there in 1994 with his family when Hutu militia began to slaughter the Tutsi. The U.S. government, church leaders, and friends all implored Wilkens to leave. He refused. After evacuating his family, and even after every other American had left Kigali, he alone stayed and contested the 800,000-person genocide. When the militia came to kill him and his Tutsi servants, Wilkens’ Hutu neighbors deterred them. Despite repeated death threats, he spent his days running roadblocks to take food and water to orphanages and to negotiate, plead, and bully his way through the bloodshed, saving lives time and again. “It just seemed the right thing to do,” he later explained (Kristof, 2004).
Elsewhere in Kigali, Rusesabagina, a Hutu married to a Tutsi and the acting manager of a luxury hotel, was sheltering more than 1200 terrified Tutsis and moderate Hutus. When international peacekeepers abandoned the city and hostile militia threatened his guests in the “Hotel Rwanda” (as it came to be called in a 2004 movie), the courageous Rusesabagina began cashing in past favors. He bribed the militia and telephoned influential people abroad to exert pressure on local authorities, thereby sparing the lives of the hotel’s occupants from the surrounding chaos.
Both Wilkens and Rusesabagina were displaying altruism. Altruism became a major concern of social psychologists after an especially vile act of sexual violence. On March 13, 1964, a stalker repeatedly stabbed Kitty Genovese, then raped her as she lay dying outside her Queens, New York, apartment at 3:30 A.M. “Oh, my God, he stabbed me!”
Genovese screamed into the early morning stillness. “Please help me!” Windows opened and lights went on as neighbors (38 of them, said an initial New York Times report, though that number was later contested) heard her screams. Her attacker fled and then returned to stab and rape her again. Not until he had fled for good did anyone so much as call the police, at 3:50 A.M.
Reflecting on initial reports of the Genovese murder and other such tragedies, most commentators were outraged by the bystanders’ “apathy” and “indifference.” Rather than blaming the onlookers, social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latane (1968b) attributed their inaction to an important situational factor – the presence of others. Given certain circumstances, they suspected, most of us might behave similarly.
After staging emergencies under various conditions, Darley and Latane assembled their findings into a decision scheme: We will help only if the situation enables us first to notice the incident, then to interpret it as an emergency, and finally to assume responsibility for helping (FIGURE 80.1). At each step, the presence of others can turn us away from the path that leads to helping.
Darley and Latane reached their conclusions after interpreting the results of a series of experiments. For example, they simulated a physical emergency in their laboratory as students participated in a discussion over an intercom. Each student was in a separate cubicle, and only the person whose microphone was switched on could be heard. When his turn came, one student (an accomplice of the experimenters) made sounds as though he were having an epileptic seizure, and he called for help (Darley & Latane, 1968a).
How did the other students react? As FIGURE 80.2 shows, those who believed only they could hear the victim – and therefore thought they alone were responsible for helping him – usually went to his aid. Students who thought others also could hear the victim’s cries were more likely to ignore the victim. When more people shared responsibility for helping – when there was a diffusion of responsibility – any single listener was less likely to help.
Hundreds of additional experiments have confirmed this bystander effect. For example, researchers and their assistants took 1497 elevator rides in three cities and “accidentally” dropped coins or pencils in front of 4813 fellow passengers (Latane & Dabbs, 1975). When alone with the person in need, 40 percent helped; in the presence of 5 other bystanders, only 20 percent helped.
Observations of behavior in thousands of such situations – relaying an emergency phone call, aiding a stranded motorist, donating blood, picking up dropped books, contributing money, giving time – show that the best odds of our helping someone occur when
This last result, that happy people are helpful people, is one of the most consistent findings in all of psychology. As poet Robert Browning (1868) observed, “Oh, make us happy and you make us good!” It doesn’t matter how we are cheered. Whether by being made to feel successful and intelligent’ by thinking happy thoughts, by finding money, or even by receiving a posthypnotic suggestion, we become more generous and more eager to help (Carlson et al., 1988). And given a feeling of elevation after witnessing or learning of someone else’s self-giving deed, our helping will become even more pronounced (Schnall et al., 2010). So happiness breeds helpfulness. But it’s also true that helpfulness breeds happiness. Making charitable donations activates brain areas associated with reward (Harbaugh et al., 2007). That helps explain a curious finding: People who give money away are happier than those who spend it almost entirely on themselves. In one experiment, researchers gave people an envelope with cash and instructions either to spend it on themselves or to spend it on others (Dunn et al., 2008). Which group was happiest at the day’s end? It was, indeed, those assigned to the spend-it-on-others condition.
Why do we help? One widely held view is that self-interest underlies all human interactions, that our constant goal is to maximize rewards and minimize costs. Accountants call it cost-benefit analysis. Philosophers call it utilitarianism. Social psychologists call it social exchange theory. If you are pondering whether to donate blood, you may weigh the costs of doing so (time, discomfort, and anxiety) against the benefits (reduced guilt, social approval, and good feelings). If the rewards exceed the costs, you will help.
Others believe that we help because we have been socialized to do so, through norms that prescribe how we ought to behave. Through socialization, we learn the reciprocity norm, the expectation that we should return help, not harm, to those who have helped us. In our relations with others of similar status, the reciprocity norm compels us to give (in favors, gifts, or social invitations) about as much as we receive.
The reciprocity norm kicked in after Dave Tally, a Tempe, Arizona, homeless man, found $3300 in a backpack that had been lost by an Arizona State University student headed to buy a used car (Lacey, 2010). Instead of using the cash for much-needed bike repairs, food, and shelter, Tally turned the backpack in to the social service agency where he volunteered. To reciprocate Tally’s help, the student thanked him with a reward. Hearing about Tally’s self-giving deeds, dozens of others also sent him money and job offers.
We also learn a social-responsibility norm: that we should help those who need our help – young children and others who cannot give as much as they receive – even if the costs outweigh the benefits. Construction worker Wesley Autrey exemplified the social-responsibility norm on January 2, 2007. He and his 6- and 4-year-old daughters were awaiting a New York City subway train when, before them, a man collapsed in a seizure, got up, then stumbled to the platform’s edge and fell onto the tracks. With train headlights approaching, “1 had to make a split decision,” Autrey later recalled (Buckley, 2007). His decision, as his girls looked on in horror, was to leap from the platform, push the man off the tracks and into a foot-deep space between them, and lay atop him. As the train screeched to a halt, five cars traveled just above his head, leaving grease on his knit cap. When Autrey cried out, “I’ve got two daughters up there. Let them know their father is okay,” the onlookers erupted into applause.
People who attend weekly religious services often are admonished to practice the social-responsibility norm, and sometimes they do. In American surveys, they have reported twice as many volunteer hours spent helping the poor and infirm, compared with those who rarely or never attend religious services (Hodgkinson & Weitzman, 1992; Independent Sector, 2002). Between 2006 and 2008, Gallup polls sampled more than 300,000 people across 140 countries, comparing those “highly religious” (who said religion was important to them and who had attended a religious service in the prior week) with those less religious. The highly religious, despite being poorer, were about 50 percent more likely to report having”donated money to a charity in the last month” and to have volunteered time to an organization (Pelham & Crabtree, 2008) . Although positive social norms encourage generosity and enable group living, conflicts often divide us.
We live in surprising times. With astonishing speed, recent democratic movements swept away totalitarian rule in Eastern European and Arab countries, and hopes for a new world order displaced the Cold War chill. And yet, the twenty-first century began with terrorist acts and war. Every day, the world has continued to spend more than $3 billion for arms and armies – money that could have been used for housing, nutrition, education, and health care. Knowing that wars begin in human minds, psychologists have wondered: What in the human mind causes destructive conflict? How might the perceived threats of social diversity be replaced by a spirit of cooperation?
To a social psychologist, a conflict is a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas. The elements of conflict are much the same, whether we are speaking of nations at war, cultural groups feuding within a society, or partners sparring in a relationship. In each situation, people become enmeshed in potentially destructive processes that can produce results no one wants. Among these processes are social traps and distorted perceptions.
In some situations, we support our collective well-being by pursuing our personal interests. As capitalist Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations (1776), “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” In other situations, we harm our collective well-being by pursuing our personal interests. Such situations are social traps.
Consider the simple game matrix in FIGURE 80.3, which is similar to those used in experiments with countless thousands of people. Both sides can win or both can lose, depending on the players’ individual choices. Pretend you are Person 1, and that you and Person 2 will each receive the amount shown after you separately choose either A or B. (You might invite someone to look at the matrix with you and take the role of Person 2.) Which do you choose – A or B?
You and Person 2 are caught in a dilemma. If you both choose A, you both benefit, making $5 each. Neither of you benefits if you both choose B, for neither of you makes anything. Nevertheless, on any single trial you serve your own interests if you choose B: You can’t lose, and you might make $10. But the same is true for the other person. Hence, the social trap: As long as you both pursue your own immediate best interest and choose B, you will both end up with nothing – the typical result – when you could have made $5.
Many real-life situations similarly pit our individual interests against our communal well-being. Individual whalers reasoned that the few whales they took would not threaten the species and that if they didn’t take them others would anyway. The result: Some species of whales became endangered. Ditto for the buffalo hunters of yesterday and the elephant tusk poachers of today. Individual car owners and home owners reason, “It would cost me comfort or money to buy a more fuel-efficient car and furnace. Besides, the fossil fuels I burn don’t noticeably add to the greenhouse gases.” When enough others reason similarly, the collective result threatens disaster – climate change, rising seas, and more extreme weather.
Social traps challenge us to find ways of reconciling our right to pursue our personal well-being with our responsibility for the well-being of all. Psychologists have therefore explored ways to convince people to cooperate for their mutual betterment – through agreed upon regulations, through better communication, and through promoting awareness of our responsibilities toward community, nation, and the whole of humanity (Dawes, 1980; Linder, 1982; Sato, 1987). Given effective regulations, communication, and awareness, people more often cooperate, whether it be in playing a laboratory game or the real game of life.
Psychologists have noted that those in conflict have a curious tendency to form diabolical images of one another. These distorted images are, ironically, so similar that we call them mirror-image perceptions: As we see “them” – as untrustworthy, with evil intentions so “they” see us. Each demonizes the other.
Mirror-image perceptions can often feed a vicious cycle of hostility. If Juan believes Maria is annoyed with him, he may snub her, causing her to act in ways that justify his perception. As with individuals, so with countries. Perceptions can become self-fulfilling prophecies. They may confirm themselves by influencing the other country to react in ways that seem to justify them.
Participants tend to see their own actions as responses to provocation, not as the causes of what happens next. Perceiving themselves as returning tit for tat, they often hit back harder, as University College London volunteers did in one experiment (Shergill et al., 2003). Their task: After feeling pressure on their own finger, they were to use a mechanical device to press on another volunteer’s finger. Although told to reciprocate with the same amount of pressure, they typically responded with about 40 percent more force than they had just experienced. Despite seeking only to respond in kind, their touches soon escalated to hard presses, much as when each child after a fight claims that “1 just poked him, but he hit me harder.”
Perceived provocations feed similar cycles of hostility on the world stage. In 2001, newly elected U.S. President George W. Bush spoke of Saddam Hussein: “Some of today’s tyrants are gripped by an implacable hatred of the United States of America. They hate our friends, they hate our values, they hate democracy and freedom and individual liberty. Many care little for the lives of their own people.” Hussein reciprocated the perception in 2002. The United States, he said, is “an evil tyrant,” with Satan as its protector. It lusts for oil and aggressively attacks those who “defend what is right.”
The point is not that truth must lie midway between two such views (one may be more accurate). The point is that enemy perceptions often form mirror images. Moreover, as enemies change, so do perceptions. In American minds and media, the “bloodthirsty, cruel, treacherous” Japanese of World War II later became our “intelligent, hardworking, self-disciplined, resourceful allies” (Gallup, 1972).
How can we make peace? Can contact, cooperation, communication, and conciliation transform the antagonisms fed by prejudice and conflicts into attitudes that promote peace? Research indicates that, in some cases, they can.
Does it help to put two conflicting parties into close contact? It depends. When contact is noncompetitive and between parties of equal status, such as fellow store clerks, it typically helps. Initially prejudiced co-workers of different races have, in such circumstances, usually come to accept one another. This finding is confirmed by a statistical digest of more than 500 studies of face-to-face contact with outgroups (such as ethnic minorities, the elderly, and those with disabilities). Among the quarter-million people studied across 38 nations, contact has been correlated with, or in experimental studies has led to, more positive attitudes (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2011). Some examples:
However, contact is not always enough. In most desegregated schools, ethnic groups resegregate themselves in the lunchrooms and classrooms, and on the school grounds (Alexander & Tredoux, 2010; Clack et al., 2005; Schofield, 1986). People in each group often think that they would welcome more contact with the other group, but they assume the other group does not reciprocate the wish (Richeson & Shelton, 2007). “I don’t reach out to them, because I don’t want to be rebuffed; they don’t reach out to me, because they’re just not interested. “ When such mirror-image misperceptions are corrected, friendships may then form and prejudices melt.
To see if enemies could overcome their differences, researcher Muzafer Sherif (1966) set a conflict in motion. He separated 22 Oklahoma City boys into two separate camp areas. Then he had the two groups compete for prizes in a series of activities. Before long, each group became intensely proud of itself and hostile to the other group’s “sneaky,” “smart-alecky stinkers.” Food wars broke out. Cabins were ransacked. Fistfights had to be broken up by camp counselors. Brought together, the two groups avoided each other, except to taunt and threaten. Little did they know that within a few days, they would be friends.
Sherif accomplished this by giving them superordinate goals – shared goals that could be achieved only through cooperation. When he arranged for the camp water supply to “fail,” all 22 boys had to work together to restore water. To rent a movie in those pre-DVD days, they all had to pool their resources. To move a stalled truck, the boys needed to combine their strength, pulling and pushing together. Having used isolation and competition to make strangers into enemies, Sherif used shared predicaments and goals to turn enemies into friends. What reduced conflict was not mere contact, but cooperative contact. A shared predicament likewise had a powerfully unifying effect in the weeks after 9/11. Patriotism soared as Americans felt “we” were under attack. Gallup-surveyed approval of “our President” shot up from 51 percent the week before the attack to a highest-ever 90 percent level 10 days after (Newport, 2002). In chat groups and everyday speech, even the word we (relative to 1) surged in the immediate aftermath (Pennebaker, 2002).
At such times, cooperation can lead people to define a new, inclusive group that dissolves their former subgroups (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1999). To accomplish this, you might seat members of two groups not on opposite sides, but alternately around a table. Give them a new, shared name. Have them work together. Then watch “us” and “them” become “we.” After 9/11, one 18-year-old New Jersey man described this shift in his own social identity: “1 just thought of myself as Black. But now I feel like I’m an American, more than ever” (Sengupta, 2001). In a real experiment, White Americans who read a newspaper article about a terrorist threat against all Americans subsequently expressed reduced prejudice against Black Americans (Dovidio et al., 2004).
If cooperative contact between rival group members encourages positive attitudes, might this principle bring people together in multicultural schools? Could interracial friendships replace competitive classroom situations with cooperative ones? Could cooperative learning maintain or even enhance student achievement? Experiments with adolescents from 11 countries confirm that, in each case, the answer is Yes (Roseth et al., 2008). In the classroom as in the sports arena, members of interracial groups who work together on projects typically come to feel friendly toward one another. Knowing this, thousands of teachers have made interracial cooperative learning part of their classroom experience.
The power of cooperative activity to make friends of former enemies has led psychologists to urge increased international exchange and cooperation. As we engage in mutually beneficial trade, as we work to protect our common destiny on this fragile planet, and as we become more aware that our hopes and fears are shared, we can transform misperceptions that feed conflict into feelings of solidarity based on common interests.
When real-life conflicts become intense, a third-party mediator – a marriage counselor, labor mediator, diplomat, community volunteer – may facilitate much-needed communication (Rubin et al., 1994). Mediators help each party to voice its viewpoint and to understand the other’s needs and goals. If successful, mediators can replace a competitive win-lose orientation with a cooperative win-win orientation that leads to a mutually beneficial resolution. A classic example: Two friends, after quarreling over an orange, agreed to split it. One squeezed his half for juice. The other used the peel from her half to flavor a cake. If only the two had understood each other’s motives, they could have hit on the win-win solution of one having all the juice, the other all the peel.
Understanding and cooperative resolution are most needed, yet least likely, in times of anger or crisis (Bodenhausen et al., 1994; Tetlock, 1988).When conflicts intensify, images become more stereotyped, judgments more rigid, and communication more difficult, or even impossible. Each party is likely to threaten, coerce, or retaliate. In the weeks before the Persian Gulf war, the first President George Bush threatened, in the full glare of publicity, to “kick Saddam’s ass.” Saddam Hussein communicated in kind, threatening to make Americans “swim in their own blood.”
Under such conditions, is there an alternative to war or surrender? Social psychologist Charles Osgood (1962, 1980) advocated a strategy of Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction, nicknamed GRIT. In applying GRIT, one side first announces its recognition of mutual interests and its intent to reduce tensions. It then initiates one or more small, conciliatory acts. Without weakening one’s retaliatory capability, this modest beginning opens the door for reciprocity by the other party. Should the enemy respond with hostility, one reciprocates in kind. But so, too, with any conciliatory response.
In laboratory experiments, small conciliatory gestures – a smile, a touch, a word of apology – have allowed both parties to begin edging down the tension ladder to a safer rung where communication and mutual understanding can begin (Lindskold et al., 1978, 1988). In a real-world international conflict, U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s gesture of stopping atmospheric nuclear tests began a series of reciprocated conciliatory acts that culminated in the 1963 atmospheric test-ban treaty.
As working toward shared goals reminds us, we are more alike than different. Civilization advances not by conflict and cultural isolation, but by tapping the knowledge, the skills, and the arts that are each culture’s legacy to the whole human race. Thanks to cultural sharing, every modern society is enriched by a cultural mix (Sowell, 1991).We have China to thank for paper and printing and for the magnetic compass that opened the great explorations. We have Egypt to thank for trigonometry. We have the Islamic world and India’s Hindus to thank for our Arabic numerals. While celebrating and claiming these diverse cultural legacies, we can also welcome the enrichment of today’s social diversity. We can view ourselves as instruments in a human orchestra. And we – this book’s worldwide readers – can therefore each affirm our own culture’s heritage while building bridges of communication, understanding, and cooperation across our cultural traditions.
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If you just finished reading this book, your introduction to psychological science is completed. Our tour of psychological science has taught me much – and you, too? – about our moods and memories, about the reach of our unconscious, about how we flourish and struggle, about how we perceive our physical and social worlds, and about how our biology and culture in turn shape us. My hope, as your guide on this tour, is that you have shared some of my fascination, grown in your understanding and compassion, and sharpened your critical thinking. I also hope you enjoyed the ride.
With every good wish in your future endeavors (including the AP® exam!),
David G. Myers
www.davidmyers.org