A Heart of Gold; Helping Others

On Friday, I went to the Blaire House to spend time with Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.  This is my SPUD site; I play games, sing in prayer services, and interact with the residents of the Blaire House.  My parents called me that night, and asked why I would choose to spend time with these people, rather than playing with energetic and animated children.  I answered that I loved spending time with the residents because I loved seeing their smiles, and my mother told me that I have a heart of gold.  She made me wonder, did I really volunteer for altruistic reasons, or did I help because I wanted praise or recognition?

With over 1,000 other Holy Cross students volunteering in SPUD, I wonder why we all help others. At Holy Cross, we have a saying, “men and women for and with others.”  Do we help people, whether it is volunteering in SPUD or lending a classmate notes, because we have pure hearts of gold?  Or do we only seek to help others in order to receive a reward such as recognition or praise?  We fall victim to the fundamental attribution error, occurring because we underestimate the situational factors that contribute to helping behaviors and instead assuming altruistic acts are a result of one’s personality.  We automatically attribute altruism to people’s personalities, but in reality, helping behaviors can be caused by something else entirely. The reason we help others isn’t necessarily because we are good and altruistic human beings, nor because we seek to be rewarded. The answer could be simply because we have some spare time.

Darley and Batson demonstrated that extra time significantly impacts helping behaviors in their classic experiment. Seminary students were told to walk across campus in order to give speeches on either jobs of seminary students or the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The researchers controlled how much or little time the students had to walk across campus, in which some students were told to hurry because they were late and others were told that they were in no rush at all.  There was a confederate slumped in a doorway along the path that the students had to pass.  Darley and Batson (1973) found that 63% of students who were not in a rush stopped to help the confederate, whereas only 10% who were in a rush stopped to help.  Additionally, the topic of the speeches had no impact on the results, suggesting that priming had no impact on noticing an event in which help is needed. This study supports the argument that personality traits do not necessarily drive helping behaviors, but rather situational factors, such as the amount of time we have, impact whether we help or not.

Over one third of the students at Holy Cross volunteer in SPUD, tutoring young children, working in soup kitchens, and spending time with the elderly.  Our propensity to help, perhaps, is simply because we have some free time on Fridays to volunteer.  Maybe we volunteer because we want to be rewarded for our seemingly altruistic actions, or maybe we truly do have hearts of gold.  Next time you see someone helping others, avoid the fundamental attribution error and think about the situational factors that contribute to their helping behavior.  Maybe if we all slowed down for a few hours each week, ignoring our busy schedules for a while, we would all be more inclined to help others by volunteering in SPUD or offering to lend some notes to a struggling classmate.

[By Brittney Pond]

References:

Beardman, Stephanie, "Altruism and the Experimental Data on Helping Behavior." Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 15.4, 547-561. ( http://search.proquest.com/docview/1030334865/2E0704D7E9C44879PQ/1?accountid=11456 )