English Assignment by Kent Yu Yoong for IMPERIA Institute of Technology Subang Jaya, Selangor.

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SCHOOL OF BUILT ENVIRONMENT
DEGREE IN ESTATE MANAGEMENT, QUANTITY SURVEYING &
CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT, OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND
HEALTH
ENGLISH 2
ENL 2113
ASSIGNMENT 1
MINI - RESEARCH (10%)
Why do people help others, as well as why they sometimes refuse to help
others?
JUNE 2016 SEMESTER
Name : Yu Yoong Kent
Student ID : 1008614
Lecturer : Ms. Elya Dayana Tajuddin
Date : 25th
July 2016

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Outline
Thesis: Why do people help others, as well as why they sometimes refuse to help others?
1) The scenarios / situations affect helper’s decision
a. What is the way of bystander to define emergencies?
b. Do the bystanders to be the one to help?
c. What is the costs and benefits for helping?
2) Personal Characteristic / Traits affect helper’s decision
a. The role of gender in helping
b. The personality traits that tend to help people
3) The psychology phenomenon affects helper’s decision
a. Evolutionary forces give people inclination in helping others
b. Egoistic motivation for helping
c. Altruistic behaviour motivate people to help
4) Interview Results
a. Why do people help?
b. Why do people refuse to help?

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Table of Contents
No Description Pages
1.0 Introduction 4-5
2.0 Methodology 5
3.0 Existing Theory and Extensions 6-10
3.1: The scenarios / situations affect helper’s decision 6-7
3.2: Personal Characteristic / Traits affect helper’s decision 8-9
3.3: The psychology phenomenon affects helper’s decision 9-10
4.0 Discussion of Interview Results 10-12
5.0 Conclusion 12
6.0 References 13-14

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1.0 Introduction
Helping behaviour in society is described by psychologists as a “Prosocial Behaviour”, which
refer “voluntary actions that are intended to help or benefit another individual or group of
individuals” (Eisenberg and Mussen 1989,3). The most evident example is the heroes of
September 11, 2001 lost their lives while helping others at the World Trade Center towers, the
Pentagon which were hit by the planes. Many of the heroes were just a normal people who
found themselves in an extreme situation. Therefore, it is easy to imagine how strong the desire
must have sought personal safety when the towers were hit by the planes. Nevertheless,
William Wik said to his wife “No, I can’t do that; there are still people here,’’ (Lee, 2001, p.28)
when his wife urged him to escape from ninety-second floor of the tower. Wik was perished
when the South Tower collapsed.
Rick Rescorla, who was the head of security for the Morgan Stanley brokerage firm had also
scarified himself for saving the lives of the three thousand seven hundred employees in this
tragedy. (Stewart, 2002). He guided his employees with yelling same instruction repeatedly
when the plane hit the South Tower – search a partner, don’t use elevators, and evacuate the
building. After most of the employees had evacuated the building, Rescorla made a final
inspection of the offices to ensure nobody was left behind, and his body was found in the debris
of the collapsed building from South Tower.
While on the other side, an interesting fact is why people sometimes refuse to help others. Why
they can be a bystander and don’t offer any means of help to people who in desperate need?
Several shocking cases were raised concern of the society in worldwide. The most sensational
case was the tragic murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 (Dovidio, Piliavin, Schroeder, & Penner,
2006). She was brutally attacked and stabbed repeatedly in front of multiple witnesses but no
one come to save her despite her pleading screams or even call the police until after the assailant

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escaped and Genovese eventually died. This case is often cited as an example of “bystander
effect”.
Another heartening cases occurred in April this year, which a 16-year-old girl Amy Inita
Joyner- Francis was slammed her head against a bathroom sink by gang of girl bullies because
of fighting over a boy. Multiple bystanders were standing and recording the event without
offering any means of help to Amy. She was eventually died due to the delays of calling
ambulance and her severe injury in her body.
Social psychologists were asked, why do people help and why do people don’t help? The
decision of whether to help or not to help is not so simple as it might seem, several factors need
to be considered in above cases. For this reason, research had been carried out to compile a
number of different reasons and scenarios about the explanation of why people help each other,
as well as why people sometimes refuse to help in this paper.
2.0 Methodology
Participants
There were 10 participants aged from 20 to 25 year olds participating including 5 males and 5
females. They were invited to answer the questionnaire that had been designed.
Procedures
Questions were designed meticulously to interview 10 participants that had been invited. This
research paper was completed by summarizing the answers offered by participants combine
with the literature reviews of psychologist’s theory in the past.

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3.0Existing Theory and Extension
3.1 The scenarios / situations affect helper’s decision -
People help or not is closely related to the time and situation. People always help regularly, but
help is not always forthcoming to those in need. Therefore, when do people help and when do
they not? Same as the Kitty murdered case, another young guy Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was
brutally stabbed when he tried to resolve the argument between a man and woman. He was lay
dying on the street and many bystanders just simple glance at him without calling ambulance.
Surprisingly, one of the passer-by did take a photo without offering any helps on this man.
Thus, many researchers try to focus of bystander intervention research (e.g, Latane & Darley,
1970) to investigate why people do not always help. Several important questions are listed to
answer the question:
1) What is the way of bystander to define emergencies?
2) Do the bystanders to be the one to help?
3) What is the costs and benefits for helping?
What is the way of bystander to define emergencies?
Regarding the first question of defining the situation, pluralistic ignorance (Latane & Darley,
1970) effects can be used to explain why sometimes help comes quickly but sometimes it costs
long hours to help. Pluralistic ignorance describe that people always predispose on others to
define the situation and incorrectly making decision that no intervention is necessary when
actually the help is urgently in need. For instances, bystanders may wait for the action of
others to decide what to do in an ambiguous situation (including the Kitty and Hugo murdered
case). Nevertheless, those others also don’t take any actions and don’t have any ideas what to
do. Eventually, pluralistic ignorance phenomenon leads people tend to less giving help.

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Do the bystanders to be the one to help?
The second question is closely related to the phenomenon known as diffusion of responsibility
(Darley & Latane, 1968). Diffusion of responsibility reflects the truth that the personal
responsibility of the bystanders seems to relieve when knowing that someone else could help
together for the same victim. The personal responsibility would not fall solely on the shoulder
of bystander when others are present. Hence, it might seem that the probability of victim getting
help would be higher when having more potential helpers. Nevertheless, the opposite is also
often the case.
What is the costs and benefits for helping?
Lastly, bystander will always involve in a cost-benefit analysis before engage for helping others.
Helpers need to integrate variety of explicit and implicit costs in order to offering help to others,
and the following formula can be simply explained the rational choice of helpers:
If  wiCi –  wjBj > 0, then decision = reject
Where C represents the costs to helpers, B represents the benefits to helpers, and w is the
magnitude of importance that helpers consider in a specific situation. According to this
formula, it is common sense that people will reject to help when the costs (in terms of time,
money, resources and risks) of helping others are relatively high. For example, lending a friend
a book is simple; intervening the assailant who stab Kitty Genovese may cost the life of helpers;
confronting the tragedy case of Hugo is totally different matter. The possible of rewards for
helping someone is also adaptive to above formula, if the benefits such as praise or monetary
reward are higher, potential helpers will more likely to offer helping.

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3.2 Personal Characteristic / Traits affect helper’s decision
Some people are ready and willing to help at any time but some people never help out.
Personality and individual differences are the main factors to cause the above scenarios.
Researchers have concluded that:
1) The role of gender in helping
2) The personality traits that tend to help people
The role of gender in helping
An interesting question is that whether the role of men or women are more likely to help.
Basically, men and women have equivalent level of helpfulness, but just only help indifferent
ways (Becker & Eagly, 2004). There are two reasons help to explain the gender differences in
helping. First, the physical differences between men and women limit the capability of helping.
For instances, man usually will intervene to help when confronting a thief which is a risky
situation. Second, the socialization for the roles of men and women makes them help in
different ways. Male gender roles are encouraged to take physical risk and taught to be
chivalrous, while female gender roles are taught to be caring and nurturing. Consequently, men
are assumed to be more likely jump onto the train tracks to help a fallen passenger, while
women are more likely to console their friend with personal emotion problems (Diekan &
Eagly, 2000).
The personality traits that tend to help people
Research had been shown that the people high agreeableness is more likely to help those in
needs including siblings, friends and strangers. (Graziano et al., 2007). Agreeable people are
usually generous, sympathetic and helpful in interpersonal relations, therefore this personal
trait is, in fact, more likely to help those people in needs. Apart from that, people with high

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sense of social responsibility and have an understanding of the situation of the victim is
experiencing will have sense of moral obligation to help others.
3.3 The psychology phenomenon affects helper’s decision
Finally, the question of why do people help and why do people don’t help needs to be asked.
What is the motivation of helping behaviour? Psychologists have concluded that:
1) Evolutionary forces give people inclination in helping others
2) Egoistic motivation for helping
3) Altruistic behaviour motivate people to help
Evolutionary forces give people inclination in helping others
Based on the evolutionary psychology, people are favour to help in some ways that may
promote the chances of their DNA will be passed along to next generation. (Burnstein, Crandall,
& Kitayama, 1994). In the past history, it is undoubtedly that the survival of human is closely
related with clan and family members, consequently, human is favour to help those closest to
them. The behaviour that especially likely to help genetic relatives is called kin selection
(Hamilton, 1964). Nevertheless, people do not only help their own family members but also
often help others that are unrelated to them. Reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971) gives the
answer. This notion describe that people believe helping others will increase the opportunity
that they will be helped later, then the probability to survive is increased. This evolutionary
forces still may not provide proximal influences for people to decide for helping others. So
what are other factors?
Egoistic motivation for helping
In fact, sometimes people help others is because for their own benefits: Egoistic. According to
the negative state relief model (Cialdini, Darby & Vincent, 1973), people sometimes help

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others is because they will feel happy and this can serve as other method to relief negative
moods. In other way, if people see an injured puppy yelling in pain, an unpleasant sense will
be arousal, people will understand the feeling and help to comfort the puppy to alleviate their
own discomfort arousal. Similarly, if the victim is suffering in pain or injured, people
vicariously having an aversive arousal, and then they are motivated to remove that unpleasant
state. Both of the above scenarios indicate that the potential helpers always help in an extent to
make themselves feel better.
Altruistic behaviour motivate people to help
Altruism is also serves to motivate for helping under some circumstances despite of many
researchers say that egoism is the only way motivate people to help. People with altruistic
behaviour is purely helping others without expecting any benefits. They are willing to accept
the cost of helping others whom they sympathize and scarify ow benefits. (Batson, 2011). For
example, monetary donations were made from across the globe to the stranded runners who
were unable to get back their home due to the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake disaster. People
undoubtedly provide any forms of aid but without requesting any benefits back.
4.0 Discussion of Interview Results
The answers for why do people help are encompassed in below:
1) Helping can help to increase the productivity at work- According to the surveys
conducted by Clear Company, 90% of the employees usually seek for other options
before making final decision. This indicate that those employees believe that helping
each other making decisions could ensure that the final decision making is the best,
which in turn could enhance the productivity of a business.
2) Helping makes people feel happy and good – 7 out of the 10 participants unanimously
agree that helping others makes them feel happier. There was also an article published

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by Best Health Mag, a study performed by York University, in which several candidates
were chosen to act in helping others for 6 months, as a result, those candidates who
keep helping others were happier than those that did not change their behaviour. The
reason is simply because of their natural distinct to help and the happiness.
3) Because society tell people to help – It is social norms that teach people to help each
other. People think that it is an obligation to help others because society expects it. The
education in school and the religion such as Christian, Muslim and Buddhist all have
insisted to help others is very important. This indicates that helping someone is
engrained in people since young, and that people may help someone instinctively
because they have been told to do so by society.
The answers for why do people refuse to help are listed in below:
1) Never offer to help anything for free - The reason to refuse to help people is because
the first person need to help is himself but not others. If helping others doesn’t make
them happy, then they will simply refuse to help. Moreover, it might take risk for others
to have chance to exploit them if they allow others to.
2) Refuse to help for people who doesn’t appreciate it – Sometimes helping others might
bring problems. For example, Michelle (one of the participants) described that her team
spent few days to analyse data and trends to solve the problems encountered by her
former client. Most importantly, she did not bill them because she wanted to help clients
but it turned out that the clients fired them on the spot after clients found the serious
problems showed by her teams. In overall, people refuse to help is because others are
not prepared to entertain it and others might not appreciate but blame for it.
3) Refuse to help because of not able to put 100% into it – Teaching someone blindly on
how to solve the math equation will do more harm than good. The harm effects may
destroy the interpersonal relationship. Therefore, sometimes kindness can turn into

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hurting people too in some cases. People refuse to help is because they have think it
through carefully before making decision on helping others, otherwise it will cost their
time, money and their relationships they hold with others.
5.0 Conclusion
“Why do people help?” actually is closely related to the question of “when and who help?”.
It is not simple yes/no proposition for potential helper decide to help at any time. In fact,
several situational factors such as the interpretation of emergencies, the presences of other
potential helpers and the results of a cost and benefit analysis are considered when people
making decision to help. Past research shown that men and women both help in different
ways. Men help others in a more physical active way, while women help others in a more
supportive way. Personal trait of agreeableness serves to predispose human to help others.
So, why would people help? Apart from the evolutionary forces such as kin selection, there
is additional evidence to show that the likelihood of providing assistances may be motivated
by egoistic and altruistic behaviours. Lastly, 10 participants in this experiment had provided
their comments of why do / don’t people help. They help others because it will increase
productivity of the work when cooperate with colleagues. In addition to feeling happy when
helping others, the social norms provide inclination that they are more likely to help others.
So why people reject to help? In a selfish perspective, people should always help
himself/herself first. Moreover, some people don’t appreciate and accept the help from
others. Lastly, sometimes the help may turn into hard when people don’t have full
capability to provide assistances.

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6.0 References
[1]: Alden, L. E., & Trew, J. L. (2013). If it makes you happy: Engaging in kind acts increases
positive affect in socially anxious individuals. Emotion, 13, 64-75. Available from:
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/one-way-to-get-over-your-social-anxiety-be-nice.html
[2]: Dennis L. Poepsel and David A. Schroeder, K2015, Helping and Prosocial Behavior,
Available from: http://nobaproject.com/modules/helping-and-prosocial-behavior#reference-
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[3]: Cammi Pham, K 2013, “Why I Stopped Helping People and You Should Too”, Available
from: http://www.cammipham.com/helping/
[4]: Fischer, P.; Greitemeyer, T.; Pollozek, F.; Frey, D. (2006). "The unresponsive bystander:
Are bystanders more responsive in dangerous emergencies?". European Journal of Social
Psychology 36 (2): 267–278.
[5]: Mikuliner, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2010). Prosocial motives, emotions, and behavior: The
better angels of our nature. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
[6]: Prosocial Behaviour 2010, Available from:
https://psicho567.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/11-12-132.pdf
[7]: Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help?
New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
[8]: Darley, J. M. & Latané, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of
responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 377–383.
[9]: Becker, S. W., & Eagly, A. H. (2004). The heroism of women and men. American
Psychologist, 59, 163–178.

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[10]: Diekman, A. B., & Eagly, A. H. (2000). Stereotypes as dynamic structures: Women and
men of the past, present, and future. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1171–
1188.
[12]: Graziano, W. G., Habashi, M. M., Sheese, B. E., & Tobin, R. M. (2007). Agreeableness,
empathy, and helping: A person x situation perspective. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 93, 583–599.
[13]: Burnstein, E., Crandall, C., & Kitayama, S. (1994). Some neo-Darwinian decision rules
for altruism: Weighing cues for inclusive fitness as a function of the biological importance of
the decision. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 773–789.
[14]: Trivers, R. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46,
35–57.
[15]: Cialdini, R. B., Darby, B. K. & Vincent, J. E. (1973). Transgression and altruism: A case
for hedonism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 9, 502–516.
[16]: Batson, C. D. (2011). Altruism in humans. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.