The society has always considered helping and altruism as a characteristic of what human is. But is the main reason that people help the others written in their genes? Or is it influenced by different factors? The research of helping behavior has shown that there are actually multiple reasons of helping behavior. It appears that in numerous cases the societal norms or gratifications become the driving forces of such prosocial behavior as helping the other people. Basically, people choose to help each other for several reasons that include biological drive to help, receiving some kind of reward and social inclusion.
The first factor that largely influences the way people help each other is biological drive. People often help each other with the quite pragmatic aim of being helped back, and it is perfectly natural, as such helping behavior for ages has been crucial for the survival. For example, even in modern times, it is more beneficial for a person to have a lot of friends, who support a person when the times are bad, or generally, it is safer to live in friendly and non-conflicting environment. Evolutionary, helping behavior has always been aimed at survival, so another example is helping those, who belong to person’s kin. According to Hamilton’s kin theory, people are more likely to engage in altruistic behavior, when the help is needed for relatives of a person (West, Gardner and Griffin). Biologically, the purpose of such behavior is to indirectly influence the reproduction of kin’s genes. It means that biological motivation plays an essential role in establishing the safety of genes reproduction by encouraging helping behavior.
Another reason of helping behavior is receiving rewards for prosocial behavior. These rewards may be both external and internal. According to Batson if “you help in order to gain a good feeling, to avoid guilt, or to reduce your aversive arousal caused by witnessing another’s suffering, then your motivation is altruistic” (Batson). This is a type of internal motivation that does not give any obvious material reward, but gives emotional elevation or relief. Additionally, children often engage in prosocial and helping activities to avoid punishment. However, there are a lot of cases when helping behavior is shaped by external rewards. For example, a lot of movie stars and famous people use donation to non-profit organizations or run whole social campaigns to increase their ratings and enhance their public image. Therefore, helping behavior is closely connected with reward and punishments that have a capacity to stimulate people to act.
People also help each other for social motivation of improving the state of the group they belong to and deserve social inclusion. Collectivism is very strong motivation, as according to the studies people can even “harm an outside group due to its limitations to focus on benefits of just one group of individuals” (Klemola19). It is also possible to take close groups of people in terms of how their members help each other. In this case, people are motivated to help, because they feel connectedness between the group, which evokes more empathy and encourages people to act altruistically. Generally, social motivation is very strong and is often manipulated by media and governments to provoke people to behave in a certain way.
All in all, helping behavior is influenced by the variety of factors. Biological reason have helped humans to survive, as helping each other positively affects preservation of person’s genes, while gaining both internal and external rewards, as well as avoiding punishments effectively make people engage in prosocial behavior. Social motivation is also important, as it drives people to protect their social groups and circles, because of collectivism.
Works Cited
Batson, C. Daniel. "Empathy-induced altruistic motivation." Prosocial motives, emotions, and behavior: The better angels of our nature (2010): 15-34. Web.
Klemola, Arto. Motivations Behind Prosocial Behaviour: Why Plan Finland's long-term volunteers participate in the work and how they communicate about it to others. Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (2013). Web.
West, Stuart A., Gardner, Andy and Ashleigh S. Griffin. “Quick Guide: Altruism.” Current Biology 16 (13). Web.
