Selfless Helping
Selfless Helping - Related Videos
07:43
Analyzing Situations in Helping Behavior
0 Views •
2023
Source: Julian Wills & Jay Van Bavel—New York University Social psychologists and personality psychologists both attempt to predict human behavior, but they focus on very different factors. Whereas personality psychologists focus on how personality traits, character, and individual differences affect behavior, social psychologists focus primarily on the power of social situations in shaping behavior. We often underestimate the role that social situations can play in determining behavior. We...
01:55
Egoism and Altruism
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2020
Voluntary behavior with the intent to help other people is called prosocial behavior. Why do people help other people? Is personal benefit such as feeling good about oneself the only reason people help one another? Research suggests there are many other reasons. Altruism is people’s desire to help others even if the costs outweigh the benefits of helping. In fact, people acting in altruistic ways may disregard the personal costs associated with helping. For example, news accounts of the 9/11...
01:34
Environmental Enrichment for Rodents
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2026
All animal procedures described here must be conducted in accordance with institutional animal ethics guidelines and approved by IACUC. All procedures must follow the principles of the 3Rs—Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement—and must be performed by trained personnel. Environmental enrichment involves objects and practices that encourage natural behaviors, improve psychological well-being, and promote better welfare in laboratory rodents. Environmental enrichment should be tailored to the...
02:09
Bystander Effect
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2020
The discussion of bullying highlights the problem of witnesses not intervening to help a victim. This is a common occurrence, as the following well-publicized event demonstrates. In 1964, in Queens, New York, a 19-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked by a person with a knife near the back entrance to her apartment building and again in the hallway inside her apartment building. When the attack occurred, she screamed for help numerous times and eventually died from her stab wounds.
14:58
A Simplified Technique for In situ Excision of Cornea and Evisceration of Retinal Tissue from Human Ocular Globe
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Cited by 7 •
2012
The paper describes a simplified technique to excise corneal and to eviscerate retinal tissues from the ocular globe of human cadaveric donors. The technique described here will help to excise good quality tissues to be used for transplantation, surgical or research purposes without damaging other tissues of the ocular globe.
FAQs
Empathy and compassion can make another person’s needs psychologically salient, increasing the likelihood that an individual accepts time, effort, or risk to assist. In this framework, helping is analyzed through the helper’s motivation rather than only the visible action. The same assistance can therefore be studied differently depending on whether concern for another person or an expected reward best explains it.
Situational context can influence whether concern for another person becomes action. Social norms may make assistance feel expected, whereas moral values can guide helping as a matter of personal obligation. Studying these influences helps psychologists explain why the same individual may respond differently across circumstances and why selfless helping cannot be understood from personality or motivation alone.
Rather than treating helping as fixed, psychologists examine how its motivations develop over time. Empathy, compassion, social norms, and moral values offer distinct explanatory pathways: some emphasize sensitivity to another person’s experience, while others emphasize learned expectations or ethical commitments. This developmental perspective connects individual behavior with broader questions about how cooperation and ethical behavior emerge.
The key analytical difference is the helper’s expected payoff, not simply the visible usefulness of the act. Selfless helping draws attention to assistance performed without an expectation of personal reward, while broader discussions of prosocial behavior can include cooperation, caregiving, or charitable action for varied reasons. This distinction helps researchers interpret motivation alongside behavior.
Researchers examine how motivations develop, which situational factors influence decisions to assist, and how helping affects recipients and communities. These questions move beyond asking whether assistance occurred. They connect individual choices with wider patterns of cooperation, volunteerism, caregiving, charitable action, and ethical behavior, making the topic relevant across interpersonal and community settings.
Applications include understanding volunteerism, caregiving, charitable action, cooperation, and ethical behavior. In each setting, the framework directs attention to why people accept costs such as time, effort, or risk for someone else and to the consequences for recipients and communities. This makes selfless helping useful for linking motivational theory with real-world forms of assistance.