Attitude plays a crucial role in determining when and what form of help individuals provide to others in need. It is an important aspect of personality that can guide those interested in helping behavior and how to promote it. Attitudes are shaped by the environment surrounding people and can vary among individual differences, such as belief systems or situational details.
Attitudes are an enduring organization of motivational, emotional, perceptual, and cognitive processes with respect to some aspect of the individual’s world. They are influenced by the perception and evaluation of certain emotional and cognitive attitudes in social contexts or situations. Favorable attitudes lead individuals to respond favorably towards social settings, while unfavorable attitudes cause them to respond unfavorably.
Attitudes consist of three main components: cognition, affection, and behavior. Cognitive aspects evaluate the individual’s confidence and assessment of a particular issue, affective aspects dominate emotions, and behavior illustrates actions and deeds of an individual in relation to the issue concerned. Understanding the forces shaping individuals’ attitudes can lead to behaviors that are crucial for shaping their helping behavior.
Attitudes can have an indirect or direct relationship with helping others, with some researchers finding that positive attitudes may increase willingness and motivation to help, while others suggest that negative attitudes can serve as an impediment to helping. Societal or cultural attitudes also play a role in shaping collective actions of helping others.
The Social Exchange Theory and Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis are two primary psychological theories of helping behavior. The Social Exchange Theory provides an economic perspective to explain why individuals decide to assist or not assist a person in peril, while the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis suggests that the motivation behind offering help is driven by feelings of empathy, triggering selfless, other-oriented behavior.
Social Exchange Theory provides a useful perspective on helping behaviors, suggesting that individuals engage in social interaction when the payoffs exceed the costs and rewards surpass the costs. This mental accounting assumes that human relations are earned and initiated as transactions, with values used to appraise worth relative to perceived rewards. The perception of potential rewards may contribute to the decision to provide help, which varies from person to person and culture to culture.
Assistance can be more likely in certain conditions, such as intending to return a favor, receiving good rewards socially, or situational opportunities or norms encouraging helping. However, assistance is less likely in the presence of compensated interaction, frequent opportunities for interaction, presence of ready alternatives, competition, stress, or if it violates norms. Perceived costs of helping and helping attitudes can be affected by an individual’s involved values.
The empathy-altruism hypothesis argues that empathetic feelings toward others can lead to altruistic behavior. Empathy is a mechanism for attachment and loving behavior, and studies in social psychology support this hypothesis. Altruistic behavior occurs when levels of empathy are high, while egoistic motivations prevail when empathy levels are relatively low.
To foster more positive attitudes towards seeking help, one can share their experiences, use stories to communicate what it is like to be in a situation, use images and experiences to reframe tasks as opportunities for teamwork and collaboration, make helping fun, and use media campaigns to change the way people think about mental illness.
Attitudes are important for helping because they represent pro-social behaviors, explain pro-social actions, apply attitudes to societal problems, link negative attitudes within belief systems, and invoke practical advice for implementing helping behaviors effectively.
Your attitude while helping someone is more important than the help itself.
Ya gazie!
