Helping behavior refers to voluntary actions intended to help others, with reward regarded or disregarded. It is a type of prosocial behavior (voluntary action intended to help or benefit another individual or group of individuals, such as sharing, comforting, rescuing and helping).
Altruism is distinguished from helping behavior in this way: Altruism refers to prosocial behaviors that are carried out without expectation of obtaining external reward (concrete reward or social reward) or internal reward (self-reward). An example of altruism would be anonymously donating to charity.
Perspectives on
Kin selection theory
Kin selection theory explains altruism from an evolutionary perspective. Since natural selection screens out species without abilities to adapt to the challenging environment, preservation of good traits and superior genes are important for survival of future generations (i.e. inclusive fitness). Kin selection refers to an inheritable tendency to perform behaviors that may favor the chance of survival of people with a similar genetic base.
W. D. Hamilton proposed a mathematical expression for the kin selection:
rB>C
"where B is the benefit to the recipient, C is the cost to the altruist (both measured as the number of offspring gained or lost) and r is the coefficient of relationship (i.e. the probability that they share the same gene by descent)."
An experiment conducted in Britain supported kin selection It is illustrated by diagram below. The result showed that people were more willing to provide help to people with higher relatedness, something which occurs in both genders and in various cultures. The result also shows gender difference in kin selection: men are more affected by cues suggesting a similar genetic base than women.
Reciprocal altruism
Reciprocal altruism is the idea that the incentive for an individual to help in the present is based on the expectation of receipt of help in the future. Robert Trivers believes it is advantageous for an organism to pay a cost for the benefit of another non-related organism if the favor is repaid (when the benefit of the sacrifice outweighs the cost).
As Peter Singer notes, “reciprocity is found amongst all social mammals with long memories who live in stable communities and recognize each other as individuals.” Individuals should identify cheaters (those who do not reciprocate help) who lose the benefit of help from them in the future, as seen, for example, in blood-sharing by vampire bats.
Economic trade and business may be fostered by reciprocal altruism in which products given and received involve different exchanges. Economic trades follow the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” principle. A pattern of frequent giving and receiving of help among workers boosts both productivity and social standing.
Negative-state relief model
The negative-state relief model of helping states that people help because of egoism. Egoistic motives lead a person to help others in bad circumstances in order to reduce personal distress experienced from knowing the situation of the people in need. Helping behavior happens only when the personal distress cannot be relieved by other actions. This model also explains people's avoidance behavior when they notice people in need: this is an alternative way for them to reduce their own distress.
Supporting studies
In one study, guilt feelings were induced in subjects by having them accidentally ruin a student's thesis data or by them seeing the data being ruined. Some subjects experienced positive events afterwards, e.g. being praised. Subjects who experienced negative guilt feelings were more motivated to help than those who had a neutral emotion. However, once the negative mood was relieved by receiving praise, subjects no longer had high motivation to help.
A second study found that people who anticipate positive events (in this case, listening to a comedy tape), show low helping motivation since they are expecting their negative emotions to be lifted up by the upcoming stimulation.
Empathy-altruism hypothesis
People may initiate helping behavior when they feel empathy for the person they are helping—when they can relate to that person and feel and understand what that person is experiencing.
Daniel Batson's Empathy-altruism hypothesis asserts that the decision of whether to help or not is primarily influenced by the presence of empathy towards the person in need, and secondarily by factors like the potential costs and rewards (social exchange concerns).