Prosocial Behavior, Aggression, and Social Loafing Explained

Introduction to Prosocial Behavior and Altruism

Prosocial behavior, as the name suggests, is behavior that is ultimately beneficial to others. Any act carried out with the aim of helping someone else rather than oneself qualifies as prosocial behavior. If the behavior involves no gain to the individual — and may in fact involve a personal cost — it is considered altruistic. There is some debate over whether true altruism exists, or whether even seemingly unselfish behavior is really motivated by a desire to impress others or to feel good about oneself.

The motivations for an individual's behavior are complex and varied. After the murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in the 1960s, researchers became very interested in the effect of bystanders on a person's willingness to offer aid. Genovese's murder was witnessed by 38 individuals, and not one of them even phoned the police.

The Bystander Effect

Research carried out by Latané and Darley in 1970 elucidated the so-called "bystander effect," whereby they discovered that people are actually less inclined to offer assistance the more bystanders are present. Latané and Darley (Aronson et al., 2002) identified five steps critical to the decision to offer assistance. First, a person must notice the event and interpret it as an emergency. They must then assume responsibility, have the knowledge of how to assist, and finally implement the decision to help. If any one of these steps does not occur, the person will not offer assistance.

In an emergency situation such as a mugging, Latané and Darley's research found that a victim would be better off with fewer bystanders present. When interpreting an event as an emergency, the presence of other bystanders who are not reacting dissuades an individual from perceiving the event as an emergency — a phenomenon called "pluralistic ignorance." Furthermore, a bystander is more inclined to accept personal responsibility for helping a person in distress when there are few other witnesses to the event.

Aggression and Cognitive Neoassociation Theory

Aggression is another term used by social psychologists to denote deliberate behavior intended to inflict physical or psychological pain. A variety of theories have evolved to explain the phenomenon of aggression in society. Many researchers view the foundation of aggression research to be Bandura's examinations of observational learning — specifically, his studies of children who learned aggressive behavior toward a doll. Aggression research is particularly relevant today given the prevalence of media violence in television, video games, and movies.

Cognitive neoassociation theory is one framework through which aggression may be understood. This theory is usually attributed to research by Leonard Berkowitz and is described as a "priming effects perspective" (Brennan, 2002). It posits that an individual's exposure to certain stimuli may activate related thoughts or feelings, "priming" the person for subsequent behavior. The individual's associations between that priming aggressive stimulus and other thoughts or memories may then predispose them to act aggressively. As Brennan (2002) notes, "watching a violent film can 'prime' hostile or aggressive thoughts… these hostile thoughts may automatically trigger in the viewer other hostile thoughts, feelings, and possibly even behavioral action tendencies."

The prevalence of aggression in society is supported by studies on cognitive neoassociation. Research conducted with undergraduates primed with violent movies demonstrated their tendency to act more aggressively compared to an unprimed control group. The implications of this theory are significant when considering the ongoing debate over media violence.

Social Loafing in Group Settings

Like the bystander effect, "social loafing" is another instance in which the presence of others influences an individual's behavior. In this case, social loafing refers to how people behave within a group. When results are judged from the group as a whole, this can affect an individual's performance. Researchers have found that a person's efforts are diminished when they believe they are contributing to a group's performance rather than being evaluated individually. (Although, on more difficult tasks, the presence of others has a relaxing effect that can allow the individual to perform better.) Social loafing is defined as "the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable" (Myers, 2001).

Social loafing might occur, for example, in a university course where students are required to complete group work. If individual contributions are communally pooled, there may be a tendency for certain students to put forth less effort than they would if their individual work were being evaluated separately.

Social loafing commonly occurs when people feel less individually accountable, and also when a person does not view their individual contribution as important — leading them to rely on the input of others instead.

A key strategy to reduce social loafing is to increase individual accountability. For example, if students submitting group work were given individual grades rather than a single grade for the group, each student would feel more personally accountable. Similarly, if more individual recognition were given for work contributed as part of a group, participants would not feel so dispensable, and social loafing would decrease.

Conclusion

By understanding the different dynamics researched by social psychologists, we may gain insight into societal phenomena such as prejudice, altruism, and social loafing. These concepts demonstrate that human behavior is profoundly shaped not only by individual motivation but also by the presence of others, the media environment, and deeply held ideological dispositions.

References

Aronson, E., Wilson, T., Akert, R., & Fehr, B. (2002). Social Psychology. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall.

Brennan, R. (2002). A multidisciplinary approach to the effects of violence in motion pictures. Retrieved May 6, 2004, from

Kendrick, D., Neuberg, S., & Cialdini, R. (2002). Social Psychology: Unraveling the Mystery. New York: Pearson, Allyn & Bacon.

Myers, D. (2001). Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers.