# Prosocial Behavior: Altruism and the Roots of Helping

Psychology I · Social Psychology · https://tryals.app/learn/psychology-i/prosocial-behavior-altruism-and-the-roots-of-helping

## Why We Help

**Prosocial behavior** is any action intended to benefit another person, whereas **altruism** is helping motivated by genuine concern for another's welfare, even at a cost and with no expectation of reward. 

| Concept | Core Motivation | Altruistic? |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Prosocial behavior** | Any benefit to another | Maybe or No |
| **Altruism** | Selfless welfare of another | Yes |

**Common pitfall:** Treating these terms as identical. All altruism is prosocial, but helping done for reward, reciprocity, or to relieve your own discomfort is prosocial yet not strictly altruistic.

## Theories of Helping

- **Empathy-altruism hypothesis**: Feeling genuine empathy drives helping for _their_ sake.
- **Negative-state relief model**: We help to reduce our _own_ distress at seeing suffering.
- **Social-exchange theory**: Helping occurs when rewards outweigh costs.
- **Kin selection**: Aiding relatives helps share and survive genes.
- **Reciprocal altruism**: Helping non-relatives as a long-run investment.

$$\text{help if } \text{reward} > \text{cost}$$

## Practice questions

6 of this lesson's 11 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Batson tested whether helping is genuinely altruistic by making escape from the situation easy.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** True. If helping merely relieves the helper's own distress, an easy exit relieves it more cheaply and the egoistic helper leaves. High-empathy participants helped anyway, which is the empathy-altruism hypothesis's key result, and the design is the reason it counts as evidence rather than assertion.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/prosocial-behavior-altruism-and-the-roots-of-helping/batson-tested-whether-helping-is-genuinely-altruistic-by-making

### 2. Kin selection explains helping relatives, and reciprocal altruism explains helping those who may repay it. Why does anonymous helping of a stranger you will never meet again resist both explanations?

A. Because anonymous helping does not actually occur, and every apparent case involves an unnoticed benefit.
B. Because kin selection covers all helping, since strangers may be distant relatives.
C. Because reciprocal altruism does not require the recipient to be identifiable, so the case is already covered.
D. Because neither mechanism has anything to work on here.

**Answer:** D. Because neither mechanism has anything to work on here.

**Why:** Both evolutionary accounts have prerequisites anonymous one-off helping removes: no relatedness for kin selection, no prospect of return for reciprocity. What remains is different in kind, internalised norms, empathic concern, and the mismatch argument that genuine anonymity was rare for most of human history, so a disposition that paid on average still fires.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/prosocial-behavior-altruism-and-the-roots-of-helping/kin-selection-explains-helping-relatives-and-reciprocal-altruism

### 3. Not all prosocial behaviour is altruistic, even though every helpful act benefits someone. What separates the two?

A. The motive, since altruism requires concern at a cost
B. Whether the help was requested or offered spontaneously
C. The size of the benefit received by the other person
D. Whether the helper and the helped are related

**Answer:** A. The motive, since altruism requires concern at a cost

**Why:** Prosocial describes the act and altruistic describes the motive. This is exactly why the debate is hard to settle empirically, the behaviour looks identical either way.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/prosocial-behavior-altruism-and-the-roots-of-helping/not-all-prosocial-behaviour-is-altruistic-even-though-every-helpful

### 4. Select every statement that is TRUE about prosocial behaviour and altruism.

A. Social-exchange theory treats helping as a cost-benefit calculation.
B. The empathy-altruism hypothesis holds that empathy leads us to help for the helper's own benefit.
C. Kin selection predicts helping is equally likely toward strangers and close relatives.
D. Helping to relieve one's own distress is prosocial but not strictly altruistic.
E. All altruistic acts are prosocial, but not all prosocial acts are altruistic.

**Answer:** A. Social-exchange theory treats helping as a cost-benefit calculation.; D. Helping to relieve one's own distress is prosocial but not strictly altruistic.; E. All altruistic acts are prosocial, but not all prosocial acts are altruistic.

**Why:** The subset relation, the classification of distress-relief helping, and the cost-benefit framing are all correct. Kin selection specifically predicts MORE helping toward relatives, since that is how shared genes benefit; and the empathy-altruism hypothesis says empathy makes us help for the OTHER person's sake, which is exactly what makes it a case for real altruism.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/prosocial-behavior-altruism-and-the-roots-of-helping/select-every-statement-that-is-true-about-prosocial-behaviour-and

### 5. Rank these four acts of helping from the one LEAST likely to count as altruism in the strict sense to the one MOST likely.

**Answer:**

1. Helping in exchange for an agreed payment.
2. Helping because it will be noticed and will improve your reputation.
3. Helping mainly to stop your own discomfort at witnessing the suffering.
4. Helping anonymously, at real personal cost, for a stranger you will never meet again.

**Why:** The sequence walks down a ladder of self-benefit: explicit payment, then social reward, then private emotional relief, and finally an act with the helper's benefit removed altogether by anonymity and cost. Only the last meets the strict definition - and the fact that the ladder is continuous is why the existence of pure altruism remains a live debate.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/prosocial-behavior-altruism-and-the-roots-of-helping/rank-these-four-acts-of-helping-from-the-one-least-likely-to-count-as

### 6. A donor says helping makes them feel good. Does that show the act was really self-interested?

A. No, feeling good afterwards is compatible with having wanted it
B. Yes, the pleasure is the reward that motivated the behaviour
C. No, because helping does not in fact produce pleasure
D. Yes, unless the donor reports feeling nothing at all

**Answer:** A. No, feeling good afterwards is compatible with having wanted it

**Why:** Consequence and motive are different things, and the pleasure follows from getting what you wanted, which was the other person's welfare. The version that counts all helping as selfish explains every possible observation and forbids none, which is why Batson's escape design matters: it finds a case where the two accounts finally disagree.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/prosocial-behavior-altruism-and-the-roots-of-helping/a-donor-says-helping-makes-them-feel-good-does-that-show-the-act-was