Helping Behavior and Altruism: An Empirical and Conceptual Overview

This chapter provides an overview of motivational, cognitive, and situational factors that influence helping behavior and altruism. The emotional experience of arousal as well as the overall level of arousal appears to be a critical determinant of prosocial behavior. There are several different types of emotion that can mediate intervention. The strong feelings of upset associated with high levels of psychophysiological activity motivates helping in emergency situations. Several empirical contradictions and the precise interrelationships in the cognition–affect–helping sequence are identified in the chapter. The chapter focuses on the arousal—the cost-reward model. Arousal is the process through which bystanders are mobilized for action that could lead to intervention and helping. The model may also be valuable for encouraging the orderly theoretical development of inquiry and for suggesting new research, new ideas, and new regions for study. Various conditions produce different emotions and levels of arousal and differentially influence the relative impact of costs and rewards; this suggests that there may be different types of helping situations and different types of motivations.