Human Observation Project Essay

Words: 2553
Pages: 11

Human Observation Project
General Psychology
Psyc 2301
Jazmin Rolon
20 August 2012

I. Problem:
Prosocial behavior refers to "voluntary actions that are intended to help or benefit another individual or group of individuals" (Eisenberg and Mussen 1989). This definition refers to consequences of the people who do the actions rather than the motivations behind those actions. These behaviors include a broad range of activities: sharing, comforting, rescuing, and helping. Though prosocial behavior can be confused with altruism, they are, in fact, two distinct concepts. Prosocial behavior refers to a pattern of activity, whereas, altruism is the motivation to help others out of pure regard for their needs rather than
…show more content…
XI. Results:
30 samples were taken on both days, out of these samples. The amount of people walking back and forth is unknown but in the 2 hour period with breaks in between 30 people stopped and helped. These samples are divided as follows: on D1 ten males stopped and helped the investigator, all of them 20 thru 30 years of age. There were five female soldiers that helped.
On D2 on the same exact time frame 15 samples were collected, 10 were me between 20 thru 30 years of age, there were 3 very helpful little boys no older than 10 and two women. No little girls stopped to help on any of the days. Everyone was very nice to the investigator and the infant. XII. Discussion:
One can go many ways about these findings; I am going to state that soldiers are more attentive and altruist as stated on the theory and hypothesis. There are variable factors like weather and the fact that everyone in Fort Hood has a good job and the economy problems do not affect them as hard as hard as they people on the civilian side. Therefor they could be on better moods and more prone to help. There were a bit of egotistic behavior on the second experiment but most of the soldiers were more interested on helping and keeping moving.
Another variable could have been the fact that soldiers are trained to show discipline at all times and civilians can show their expressions and feelings wild. All we can definitely conclude is that more males than females are whiling to