It is important that members of a community help each other. But some people seem like they are more likely to take responsibility for others.  Is this something that is biologically hardwired or is this something that can be learned?  Schools, including IB schools, promote prosocial behaviour by having students do a service project, brainstorming solutions to world problems, and personally reflecting on world issues.  But does this make a difference?  Does the promotion of prosocial behavior actually work?

In a study by Beaman, 80 psychology students were randomly exposed to one of the following conditions: a film that showed Latané talking about his famous studies of helping; a lecture on helping; a lecture on obesity and a control group that did not receive any treatment. Two weeks later, they were asked to take part in another study. When they arrived they were asked to go to another room.  On the way, there was a male confederate in the room lying on the floor in need of help. The question was whether the students would help the confederate. It was found that 42% of those who heard the lecture or watched the video on helping did help; only 25% of those that were in the control group or heard the obesity lecture actually helped.  It seemed that teaching about helping may make a difference.

However, there are several limitations of this study. The study has low internal validity; although it was good to wait for two weeks to see if there were long term effects of the presentations, there are many things that could have happened in that time, serving as confounding variables. In addition, the sample was biased, containing only psychology students and the assumption most likely was that the person on the floor was a fellow student.  In-group bias may have played a role here.  Finally, the situation appeared to be low-threat.  This may not be representative of several situations in which someone needs help.

It is difficult to create a lot of different situations because ethically it might cause undue stress and harm to see someone in need of help.  So, many health promotion programs are assessed with surveys of hypothetical situations. For example, Banyard et al (2005) had undergraduates attend 1, 3, or no lectures on how to help people who are threatened with sexual assault. Two months later they were given a survey to see how likely they were to help; the participants who had been in the lectures were more likely to help than in the control condition.

It would be unethical to create a situation where they witnessed someone being sexually assaulted, but the alternative lacks ecological validity.  Asking what you might do is not the same as what you would do.  A survey lacks the emotional stress of the moment and relies on rational thinking. It could also be that as these are psychology students, they may feel that they need to answer a certain way, showing the expectancy effect. It is possible that since the treatment groups watched seminars on intervention in such cases, they felt the need to respond positively.  Or, if they may have worried that they would be perceived in a negative way, they may show the social desirability effect. 

Greitemer and Osswald attempted to create a more realistic situation, testing to see if playing a “prosocial” video game would increase one’s willingness to help someone who was being assaulted.  In their study, university students were asked to either play a prosocial or a neutral (Tetris) video game. While they were playing, a confederate playing the role of the researcher’s ex-boyfriend walks in and begins to threaten the female researcher. The researchers found that 60% of participants playing the prosocial game helped compared to only 20% playing the neutral game.  

All three of these studies were highly standardized, making it possible to replicate the experiment to test for reliability.  In addition, even though two of the studies used deception, it was done under controlled conditions and ethical standards were met.  The participants were debriefed and informed about the deception.  This is one of the reasons why it is difficult to do field research; it is likely that it would not be possible to appropriately debrief people when done in a public space.

In all of these studies, the psychologists used opportunity sampling, making use of university students because they are readily available. However, university students tend to be intelligent, young, higher in socioeconomic status, and more social.  They may have more self-confidence or empowerment than other people, making it difficult to generalize the findings. In addition, in all of the studies, the helping situation followed a very short treatment. It would be difficult to use this research to argue that CAS programs, which last for two years, have a long-term effect. CAS works with several cognitive components – especially reflection. None of these experiments examined cognitive processes.  Also, as noted, demand characteristics could play a role in the research. Finally, in the real world, it is difficult to assess the success of such programs.  In a situation where someone needs help, the situations can be very different – and regardless of the training received, people may feel that they are not competent to help (e.g. they don’t know CPR), they may feel unwell, they may feel that others will help, or they may be afraid of harm. All of these factors may be more powerful in determining whether someone will help, rather than whether they played prosocial video games or attended a series of lectures.