Psychology 3260: Personality

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Psychology 3260 Personality Social Development

• Don Hartmann
• Autumn 2007
• Lecture 21 Prosocial Behavior

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Calvin the Altruist
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References

• Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A. (1998). Prosocial
  development. W. Damon (Series Ed.), N.
  Eisenberg (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child
  psychology Vol. 3 Social, emotional, and
  personality development (5th ed., pp. 701-778).
  New York Wiley.
• Midlarsky, E., Bryan, J. H. (1972). Affect
  expressions and childrens imitative altruism.
  Journal of Experimental Research in
  Personality, 6 , 195-203.

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PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

• Introduction
• Overview
• Developmental trends
• Factors affecting the development maintenance
  of prosocial behavior
• The altruistic personality (Shigetomi et al.)
• Hypocritical models (Midlarsky Bryan)
• Gender differences in altruism (Abbott et al.)
• Next Moral Development (22)

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Introduction

• Case of Kitty Genovese
• Problem of definition of altruism Motivational
  (intent) versus Behavioral (what did they do?)
• Theories See text. Ethological Theory (we are
  pre-wired to act altruistically) generated some
  attention

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Developmental Trends

• Early examples of sharing and of empathic
  responding
• Age differences Age positively correlates with
  frequency of altruism. Why? Older kids
• understand when others are in need
• know how to help
• understanding the norm of
  social responsibilityhelp
  
  
  
• those in need

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Factors affecting development

• Factors affecting the development and maintenance
  of prosocial behavior
• modeling and reinforcement
• practice
• nurturing caregiversthink about this
• role-taking and empathy
• moral reasoning
• use of induction procedure

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When Discipline Fails Part I
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When Discipline Fails Part II
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Are People Consistent in Their Altruism

• Does the altruistic personality exist?
• Replication of the famous Hartshorne, May,
  Mahler study of the 30s by Shigetomi, Hartmann,
  Gelfand
• Basic question Are individuals consistent across
  domains of prosocial behavior?
• Studied 279 fifth and sixth grade children in SLC
  School District. Altruistic behavior measured
  with six classroom tasks which provided
  participants with opportunities to help other
  children

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Results of Shigetomi et al.

• Behavior Task (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
• Envel. Pict. (1) ---- .33 .06 -.02 -.10 .03
• Envel. Time (2) ---- -.09 .05 .01 .14
• Effic. Coop. (3) ---- .06 -.05 .04
• Free Choice (4) ---- .16 .05
• School Kit (5) ---- .08
• Money Vote (6) ----

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Practicing Preaching The Effects of
Hypocritical Models

• Introduction
• During game children observed model
• act generously or selfishly with their winnings
  on 5 successful trials and
• exhort either generosity ("I know that I don't
  have to give, but it would make some children
  very happy") or selfishness ("I could really use
  some spending money this week it makes some
  children feel bad to get charity")
• Children then played game and won on 5 trials,
  and were given opportunity to share

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So Why Talk Further About It?

• What can we infer from this study?
• Greatest (most extreme) effects occur when
  conditions match (gg, rr)?
• Action more important than admonition? Careful
  now!

• Action Preach Condit.
• Condit. Char. Greed Aver.
• Charity 44 28 36
• Greed 18 10 14
• Average 31 19 25

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Gender Differences in Altruism

• History Tremendous inconsistencies.
• With reputational measures, ? gt ?
• With behavioral measures, sometimes ? gt ?, ? lt ?,
  ? ?
• So what is the trend? Depends on what review you
  read!

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The Narrative Review

• Traditional narrative reviewperhaps the fault.
  Problems include the following
• selection of studies What is included
  what is excluded? What search
  engines do we use to find relevant
  studies?
• compare studies that have different methods and
  results How do you compare apples oranges?

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Meta Analytic Reviews

• Favored alternative Meta analytic review.
  Analogue of primary study that includes the
  following
• systematic method of study identification
  (analogous to systematic method of selecting
  subjects in primary study)
• method of combining studies
• assessing stability of results (file drawer
  issue)
• determining moderating variables that are
  associated with outcomes (e.g., type of helping
  task, such as rescue versus donating)

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Abbotts Procedures

• Finessed the study selection procedure
  by using the same sample of study used
  in the most frequently cited
  narrative review
• Identified each test of gender difference in the
  73 studies included in that reviewsome 195
  separate tests of gender differences
• For each hypothesis, identified an effect size
  (ES)which tells the magnitude of the difference
  between the sexes
• (M? - M?)/SDITS A STANDARD SCORE!

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Abbotts Procedures

• Determined the statistical significance of the
  average ES
• Determined the number of null
  studies in file drawers that would be
  required to wipe out significance
• Coded for each study a range of study variables,
  including the type of prosocial behavior, age of
  kids, gender of investigator, SES and residency,
  method of measurement, type of study (modeling,
  reinforcement).

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Are there Gender Differen-ces in Altruistic
Behavior
?

• Abbotts Results
• Highly significant difference
  favoring girls
• (90 outcomes favoring girls, 45 favoring boys
  the remainder no differences
• Average affect size .047 of a standard deviation
  (very, very small)
• About 2,000 studies no-effect studies would have
  to be present in investigators file drawers to
  wash out significance (the file drawer number).

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Sometimes even a little gender difference makes a
difference!
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Summary of Prosocial Behavior Lecture

• Introduction Definitions
• Developmental trends
• Factors affecting the development maintenance
  of prosocial behavior
• The altruistic personality (Shigetomi et al.)
• Hypocritical models (Midlarsky Bryan)
• Gender differences in altruism (Abbott et al.)
• Next Moral Development (22)
• Go in Peace