Kontakt 2007, 9(2):325-330 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2007.050

Pro-social behaviour and altruism in emergencyHealth and Social Sciences

Helena Záškodná^1,*, Zdeněk Mlčák²

¹ Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích, Zdravotně sociální fakulta, katedra sociální práce a sociální politiky

² Ostravská univerzita v Ostravě, Filozofická fakulta, katedra psychologie a sociální práce

The contribution presents selected results of a number of researches of the pro-social behaviour and altruism in emergency situations. It deals in details with a procedural model by S. H. Schwarz and his co-workers, and it analyzes the most important steps of the model. They are as follows: a) realization of the emergency situation and its adequate definition, b) capability of helping (self-evaluation of the own competence in urgent situations), c) introduction of the pro-social motivation (action of internalized individual standards, moral duty of providing the help and personal responsibility), d) anticipation and consideration of positive and negative consequences associated with the help, e) protective mechanisms (which may induce reduction of the probability of the intervention through the mediation of attenuation of the feeling of responsibility), f) adequate help.
The model indicates a multiple conditioned nature of the human altruism and it presents factors, the presence of which can complicate or block providing of the help. A special attention is paid to individual standards, the internalization of which means a condition for the possibility that the personal conviction or possibly moral principle became regulators of decision processes concerning the manner of behaviour. They include standards prohibiting activities leading to harm in other people and which order activities leading to benefit and protection of interests of other person, i.e. particularly standard of the social solidarity and standard of the social responsibility. In a system of the psychical regulation, standards of individual persons are anchored by self-reward and self-punishment. The model puts the altruism within the framework of the pro-social behaviour in a narrow relationship just with personal standards and values, which arise from the given culture or possibly from cultural values. They are supplemented by newer empirical data, which support the validity of the model and which refine and extend it in certain aspects.

Keywords: Pro-social behaviour; model of crisis intervention by S. H. Schwartz; altruism; emergency; capability of helping; social standard; structure of responsibility

Received: October 15, 2007; Accepted: November 12, 2007; Published: December 21, 2007  Show citation