Altruism: Helping Behavior In American Society

Altruism is an individual who commits unselfishness acts. There are three ways to increase helping behavior in American society by undoing the restraints on helping with modeling altruism, increasing feelings of responsibility, and teaching altruism. In a community where prosociality is common it benefits individuals. When there is emergencies bystanders can be seen as alienated, feeing apathy, and indifferent yet this is due because the presence of other bystanders. Bibb Latane and John Darley was able find his phenomenon in an experiment when staging creative emergencies. This is called bystander effect when an individual is unlikely to assistance in a situation because three or more bystanders that are present. However, when someone becomes helpful in an emergency situation we tend to model that behavior and help too.
Therefore, people’s tendency to help can be increased by others modeling prosocial behavior to them. In addition, children can develop altruistic behaviors by watching prosocial programs. Children who were less educated and watched the Mister Roger’s Neighborhood show were more willing with stating their feelings and wanting to …show more content…
Sometimes we can be indecisive on what to do in certain situations. Therefore, individuals tend not to help because of responsibility diffusion. Which means individuals are less likely to intervene because they feel a presence of a large group. This was seen in the bystander experiment in that individuals did not help the person in need because bystanders are less likely to help if the individuals in need are strangers, ambiguous situations and cannot read one another’s reactions. Therefore, interpretation matter in a situation because it reduces ambiguity. This can be done by face-to-face interaction because it allows the individual to see if the situation is an emergency and feel responsible to act