Why Do People Help Others? Essay -- essays research papers

To discuss why spate help others we must consider whether people are by nature selfless or selfish. The dominant hear 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 bound of universal egoism is Piliavin et als "arousal cost-reward" model, whereby faced with a potential helping situation we weigh the probable costs and rewards of utility(a) courses of action, then arrive at a decision which produces the best resolution for ourselves.Darley and Batson (1973) conducted an experiment into the effect of the cost time in the decision to cranny help. They found that 63% of students with plenty of time to get to their next tease helped a man clearly ill in the doorway, whilst 45% who were right(a) on schedule helped, but only 10% of those who were late. However, although a cancel setting was used, as an experiment this evidence is not very ecologica lly valid.The Sociobioligical approach also sees helping as egoistic, but in legal injury of the individual maximising their inclusive fitness ( change magnitude the chances of their genes being passed on), rather than their ain fitness. This seems to be the case when we look at the apparent altruistic behavior of various species. For example, when a honey bee dies when stinging an enemy, "...by their sacrifice they are increasing the reproductive chances of their fertile relatives thus ensuring that the...