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Helping Behavior
Definition
Helping behavior is providing aid or benefit to another person. It does not matter what the motivation of the helper is, only that the recipient is assisted. This is distinguished from the more general term prosocial behavior, which can include any cooperative or friendly behavior. It is also distinguished from the more specific term altruistic behavior, which requires that the motivation for assisting others be primarily for the well-being of the other person or even at a cost to oneself.
History and Background
The value of one person helping another is an ancient virtue discussed by the Greeks, evident across cultures and civilizations, and pervasive in world religions. One ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, suggested that groups of people needed to form social contracts to ensure that individuals ...
- Action Control
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- Helping Behavior
- Negative-State Relief Model
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- Prisoner's Dilemma
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- Reciprocal Altruism
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- Basking in Reflected Glory (BIRGing)
- Brainwashing
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- Collective Self
- Contingencies of Self-Worth
- Deindividuation
- Downward Social Comparison
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- Independent Self-Construals
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- Mental Control
- Mere Ownership Effect
- Misattribution of Arousal
- Moral Development
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- Name Letter Effect
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- Overjustification Effect
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- Self-Affirmation Theory
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- Self-Deception
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- Self-Esteem
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- Self-Evaluation Maintenance
- Self-Expansion Theory
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
- Self-Handicapping
- Self-Monitoring
- Self-Perception Theory
- Self-Presentation
- Self-Promotion
- Self-Reference Effect
- Self-Regulation
- Self-Reports
- Self-Serving Bias
- Self-Stereotyping
- Self-Verification Theory
- Social Comparison
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- Spotlight Effect
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- Uniqueness
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- Zeal
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- Action Identification Theory
- Actor–Observer Asymmetries
- Adaptive Unconscious
- Alcohol Myopia Effect
- Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic
- Assimilation Processes
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- Attention
- Attribution Theory
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- Automatic Processes
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- Hostile Attribution Bias
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- Mind-Wandering
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- MUM Effect
- Nonconscious Processes
- Norms, Prescriptive and Descriptive
- Omission Neglect
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- Priming
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- Prototypes
- Recency Effect
- Responsibility Attribution
- Risk Appraisal
- Salience
- Satisficing
- Schemas
- Scripts
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
- Self-Reference Effect
- Self-Serving Bias
- Self-Verification Theory
- Shifting Standards
- Similarity-Attraction Effect
- Social Categorization
- Social Cognition
- Social Cognitive Neuroscience
- Social Comparison
- Social Impact Theory
- Social Projection
- Spontaneous Trait Inferences
- Spreading of Alternatives
- Subliminal Perception
- Subtyping
- Symbolic Interactionism
- Theory of Mind
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- Three-Dimensional Model of Attribution
- Transactive Memory
- Value Pluralism Model
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