Tobias Greitemeyer

The Bystander-Effect: A Meta-Analytic Review on Bystander Intervention in Dangerous and Non-Dangerous Emergencies.

Research on bystander intervention has produced a great number of studies showing that the presence of other people in a critical situation reduces the likelihood that an individual will help. As the last systematic review of bystander research was published in 1981 and was not a quantitative meta-analysis in the modern sense, the present meta-analysis updates the knowledge about the bystander effect and its potential moderators. The present work (a) integrates the bystander literature from the 1960s to 2010, (b) provides statistical tests of potential moderators, and (c) presents new theoretical and empirical perspectives on the novel finding of non-negative bystander effects in certain dangerous emergencies as well as situations where bystanders are a source of physical support for the potentially intervening individual. In a fixed effects model, data from over 7,700 participants and 105 independent effect sizes revealed an overall effect size of g = -0.35. The bystander effect was attenuated when situations were perceived as dangerous (compared with non-dangerous), perpetrators were present (compared with non-present), and the costs of intervention were physical (compared with non-physical). This pattern of findings is consistent with the arousal-cost-reward model, which proposes that dangerous emergencies are recognized faster and more clearly as real emergencies, thereby inducing higher levels of arousal and hence more helping. We also identified situations where bystanders provide welcome physical support for the potentially intervening individual and thus reduce the bystander effect, such as when the bystanders were exclusively male, when they were naive rather than passive confederates or only virtually present persons, and when the bystanders were not strangers.

Effects of prosocial video games on prosocial behavior

Previous research has documented that playing violent video games has various negative effects on social behavior in that it causes an increase in aggressive behavior and a decrease in prosocial behavior. In contrast, there has been much less evidence on the effects of prosocial video games. In the present research, 4 experiments examined the hypothesis that playing a prosocial (relative to a neutral) video game increases helping behavior. In fact, participants who had played a prosocial video game were more likely to help after a mishap, were more willing (and devoted more time) to assist in further experiments, and intervened more often in a harassment situation. Results further showed that exposure to prosocial video games activated the accessibility of prosocial thoughts, which in turn promoted prosocial behavior. Thus, depending on the content of the video game, playing video games not only has negative effects on social behavior but has positive effects as well.

A meta-analytic review of help giving and aggression from an attributional perspective: Contributions to a general theory of motivation

The present review syntheses 64 investigations on the determinants of helping and aggression involving more than 12,000 subjects, providing empirical tests of Weiners (1986, 1995) theory of social conduct. A meta‐analytic test of the proposed causal cognition‐emotion‐behaviour sequence reveals that judgements of responsibility determine the emotional reactions of anger and sympathy, and that these emotional reactions, in turn, directly influence help giving and aggression. Results are highly consistent across several potential moderator variables including type of culture, sample characteristics, publication year, and publication status. Moreover, the present analyses suggest that the hypothesised model holds true for real events as well as for simulated data. Exploratory comparisons between the helping versus the aggression domain suggest that comparable results are obtained for these two domains, except that perceptions of responsibility are more likely to exert an additional proximal role in aggressive retaliation as compared to help giving. The implications of these findings for a general theory of motivation in the interpersonal and the intrapersonal domains are discussed.

Video Games Do Affect Social Outcomes A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of Violent and Prosocial Video Game Play

Whether video game play affects social behavior is a topic of debate. Many argue that aggression and helping are affected by video game play, whereas this stance is disputed by others. The present research provides a meta-analytical test of the idea that depending on their content, video games do affect social outcomes. Data from 98 independent studies with 36,965 participants revealed that for both violent video games and prosocial video games, there was a significant association with social outcomes. Whereas violent video games increase aggression and aggression-related variables and decrease prosocial outcomes, prosocial video games have the opposite effects. These effects were reliable across experimental, correlational, and longitudinal studies, indicating that video game exposure causally affects social outcomes and that there are both short- and long-term effects.

Facebook’s emotional consequences: Why Facebook causes a decrease in mood and why people still use it

Abstract Facebook is the world’s most popular online social network and used by more than one billion people. In three studies, we explored the hypothesis that Facebook activity negatively affects people’s emotional state. A first study shows that the longer people are active on Facebook, the more negative is their mood afterwards. The second study provides causal evidence for this effect by showing that Facebook activity leads to a deterioration of mood compared to two different control conditions. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that this effect is mediated by a feeling of not having done anything meaningful. With such negative outcomes for its users, the question arises as to why so many people continue to use Facebook on a daily basis. A third study suggests that this may be because people commit an affective forecasting error in that they expect to feel better after using Facebook, whereas, in fact, they feel worse.

Playing prosocial video games increases empathy and decreases schadenfreude.

Past research provided abundant evidence that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive tendencies and decreases prosocial tendencies. In contrast, research on the effects of exposure to prosocial video games has been relatively sparse. The present research found support for the hypothesis that exposure to prosocial video games is positively related to prosocial affect and negatively related to antisocial affect. More specifically, two studies revealed that playing a prosocial (relative to a neutral) video game increased interpersonal empathy and decreased reported pleasure at anothers misfortune (i.e., schadenfreude). These results lend further credence to the predictive validity of the General Learning Model (Buckley & Anderson, 2006) for the effects of media exposure on social tendencies.

Self-regulation and selective exposure: the impact of depleted self-regulation resources on confirmatory information processing.

In the present research, the authors investigated the impact of self-regulation resources on confirmatory information processing, that is, the tendency of individuals to systematically prefer standpoint-consistent information to standpoint-inconsistent information in information evaluation and search. In 4 studies with political and economic decision-making scenarios, it was consistently found that individuals with depleted self-regulation resources exhibited a stronger tendency for confirmatory information processing than did individuals with nondepleted self-regulation resources. Alternative explanations based on processes of ego threat, cognitive load, and mood were ruled out. Mediational analyses suggested that individuals with depleted self-regulation resources experienced increased levels of commitment to their own standpoint, which resulted in increased confirmatory information processing. In sum, the impact of ego depletion on confirmatory information search seems to be more motivational than cognitive in nature.

Highlighting Relatedness Promotes Prosocial Motives and Behavior

According to self-determination theory, people have three basic psychological needs: relatedness, competence, and autonomy. Of these, the authors reasoned that relatedness need satisfaction is particularly important for promoting prosocial behavior because of the increased sense of connectedness to others that this engenders. In Experiment 1, the authors manipulated relatedness, autonomy, competence, or gave participants a neutral task, and found that highlighting relatedness led to higher interest in volunteering and intentions to volunteer relative to the other conditions. Experiment 2 found that writing about relatedness experiences promoted feelings of connectedness to others, which in turn predicted greater prosocial intentions. Experiment 3 found that relatedness manipulation participants donated significantly more money to charity than did participants given a neutral task. The results suggest that highlighting relatedness increases engagement in prosocial activities and are discussed in relation to the conflict and compatibility between individual and social outcomes.

Effects of Songs With Prosocial Lyrics on Prosocial Behavior: Further Evidence and a Mediating Mechanism:

Previous research has shown that exposure to prosocial songs increased the accessibility of prosocial thoughts, led to more interpersonal empathy, and fostered helping behavior. However, inasmuch as cognition, affect, and behavior were measured in different studies, it remained unclear what variable constituted the mediating path from media exposure to action. This was tested in the present research. In four studies, listening to songs with prosocial, relative to neutral, lyrics increased helping behavior. This effect was mediated by interpersonal empathy. The results are consistent with the general learning model and point to the importance of the affective route in explaining how media exposure influences social behavior.

Information Sampling and Group Decision Making: The Effects of an Advocacy Decision Procedure and Task Experience

Group discussions tend to focus on information that was previously known by all members (shared information) rather than information known by only 1 member (unshared information). If the shared information implies a suboptimal alternative, this sampling bias is associated with inaccurate group decisions. The present study examines the impact of 2 factors on information exchange and decision quality: (a) an advocacy group decision procedure versus unstructured discussion and (b) task experience. Results show that advocacy groups discussed both more shared and unshared information than free-discussion groups. Further, with increasing experience, more unshared information was mentioned in advocacy groups. In contrast, there was no such increase in unstructured discussions. Yet advocacy groups did not significantly improve their decision quality with experience.