Pro-social behaviour – Likelihood of rendering help

I would like to highlight the effect of gender on the likelihood of receiving help.

Are females more likely to be helped than males? The answer is 'Yes', according to research done. Research has shown that men usually provide help to women in need. There are many reasons why men are forthcoming to help women. In most situations or in emergency instances, certain skills and knowledge are required whereby these skills and knowledge are more common among males than females. It is true most of the time in instances like changing of flat tyre or fighting off an attacker (there are cases where females are also equally able to, if not better, change flat tyre and to fend off any attacker).

More frequently, (younger) males help attractive rather than unattractive females. Researchers attribute the above to be primarily due to romantic or sexual attitudes and not entirely due to pro-social or altruistic reasons in these instances.

Is there anything such as pro-social behaviour where hidden agenda is not displayed when rendering help not only to the opposite sex but to all in general?

Conformity

Conformity is a type of social influence in which individuals change their attitudes / behaviour in order to adhere to existing social norms.

Social norms are rules that tell us how we are expected to behave in a given situation. Instances like observing traffic signs (most of us still conform but in some instances some do not), observing silence in libraries (some of us do by taking a siesta), switching off mobile phones during theatre performances or when in cinemas.

There are several factors which determine conformity such as cohesiveness, group size, descriptive norms (what most people do in a given situation), and injunctive norms (approved or disapproved behaviour in a given situation).

Can you think of situations when some people might not conform?

Heuristics

Heuristics are basically simple rules for making complex decisions or making inferences in a quick and seemingly effortless way. Some may call it judgemental shortcuts.

Although heuristics do help us to come to decisions within a shorter time, they are also known to create biases in our judgement.

There are two known types of heuristics (available and representative) which people tend to use in everyday life. In this blog I would like to discuss about availability heuristics.

Available refers to how people base their judgements on information that are readily accessible to them. As such information which are easier to bring to the mind are viewed as important, they create an extensive impact on people's subsequent judgements. But on certain occasions making judgements based on available heuristics may lead to some errors.

Based on this principle, many people still think more people die from shark attacks than mosquito-related diseases. The fact is more people die from mosquito-related diseases. The sad part is that our media tends to magnify shark-attacked victims more than those dying of mosquito-related diseases. As a result, people killed by sharks are brought to our minds more easily and as such has a stronger impact on our judgements.

Can you think of any other available heuristics which has created a positive impact?