Why Do People Help Others?
To discuss why people help others we must consider whether people are by nature selfless or selfish. The dominant view today in psychology is of universal egoism; that we are fundamentally selfish, and that altruism (helping motivated by the wish to benefit another person) an impossibility.
One form of universal egoism is Piliavin et al’s "arousal: cost-reward" model, whereby faced with a potential helping situation we weigh the probable costs and rewards of alternative courses of action, then arrive at a decision which produces the best outcome for ourselves.
Darley and Batson (1973) conducted an experiment into the effect of the cost time in the decision to offer help. They found that 63% of students with plenty of time to get to their next lecture helped a man clearly ill in the doorway, whilst 45% who were right on schedule helped, but only 10% of those who were late. However, although a natural setting was used, as an experiment this evidence is not very......
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